Better in-field medical care, and better equipment means that people are surviving injuries which would have been fatal in the past. Many are returning home severely disabled, but alive and with the need to reintegrate into civilian life. All American Patriots is running a thought provoking piece on what this means to the assistive technology community, the veterans themselves, and the the caregivers and people around them.

Wounded servicemembers in need of accommodations for their visual, hearing, dexterity and cognitive disabilities are the fastest-growing group requesting assistive technologies, a senior Defense Department official said in a May 29 interview.

“Recently, we have been overwhelmed with requests from our wounded servicemembers as they are coming back and also learning that they need to have a different type of technology or can benefit from assistive technology,” Dinah Cohen, director of the department’s Computer/Electronic Accommodations Program, or CAP, said on the “Dot Mil Docs” program on BlogTalkRadio.com.

When the war on terror began, it became clear that demand for assistive technology would grow from people with established needs to others who previously had no need for the help the technologies provide, Cohen said.

“Post-9/11, it was very obvious to me as men and women were coming back from the global war on terror that many of them were coming back with devastating injuries that would benefit from the same accommodations that are used to meet the needs for people with disabilities,” Cohen said.