Mobile Communication Tools for a South African Deaf patient in a pharmacy context
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Date
2012
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
IIMC International Information Management Corporation
Abstract
This paper presents a case for iterative community-based co-design to facilitate the emergence of an innovative mobile system to address a potentially life-threatening scenario for Deaf people in South Africa. For Deaf people that communicate in South African Sign Language, miscommunication due to language barriers, under-education, under-employment and physiological deafness can lead to a potentially dangerous therapeutic outcome when Deaf people potentially misunderstand a pharmacist's instructions on how to take prescribed medicine. The design for a mobile communication aid to address this problem emerged from iterative cycles of action research performed with a local Deaf community that also involved pharmacists and a multi-disciplinary research team. Conventional user-centred design techniques were innovatively appropriated for the community-based co-design. The paper illustrates the community-based co-design process and points the way toward imminent implementation, as well as the potential application of the mobile solution to other scenarios in Deaf people's lives.
Description
Keywords
ICT for eInclusion and eAccessibility, eHealth & information systems
Citation
Chininthorn, P., et al. (2012). Mobile Communication Tools for a South African Deaf patient in a pharmacy context. In P. Cunningham & M. Cunningham (eds.), Information Society Technologies - Africa (IST-Africa). Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: IIMC International Information Management Corporation