Augmented environments for pediatric rehabilitation

Computer-mediated, augmented environments endow the real physical surroundings with additional properties or information. We present two augmented environment systems developed at the largest paediatric rehabilitation hospital in Canada. One enables children with motor impairments to create music while the other facilitates the relearning of community mobility skills in adolescents with acquired brain injury. We describe system features, results of preliminary studies with selected client populations and argue that further investigation of augmented environments as assistive technologies for paediatric rehabilitation is warranted.

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