A digital assistance system providing step-by-step support for people with disabilities in production tasks

The use of Assistive Technology (AT) plays a significant role in the advancement of greater independence for individuals with disabilities in their work life. In particular, digital step-by-step support can enable people to perform production tasks that were formerly difficult to accomplish. In this paper, we focused on finding a solution for a specific production process. To this end, we set up a prototype assistive system for performing a cutting task which provides step-by-step support for people with disabilities. In an evaluation study with impaired people, we investigated how our assistive system affects the task efficiency as well as participants' subjective evaluation of perceived mental effort and system usability. Results show advantages for step-by-step support with regard to users' task efficiency and subjective evaluation.