The usability of a wireless vocal fold vibration switch for individuals with complex communication needs: a caregiver-inclusive iterative home-based evaluation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose: A vocal fold vibration switch is a type of access technology that detects voluntary vibrations of the vocal cords. In two sequential usability studies, we evaluated successive prototypes of a novel wireless vocal fold vibration switch.Methods: Each usability study enroled 7 dyads consisting of individuals with complex communication needs and their caregivers. Each study entailed a 2-week period of independent home use flanked by initial and final usability tests. Each usability test comprised nine tasks including donning and configuration of the switch, connecting it to other devices, and actual activation of the switch. Perceived task difficulty was measured via nine 21-point scales, while caregiver impressions were captured through open-ended questions, both encapsulated within a usability questionnaire. Caregivers described their experience in an open-ended interview in the second usability study.Results: Perceived task difficulty was uniformly low with both prototypes. The vast majority of tasks could be completed either independently or with hints. A small number of contraindications for use were identified with the second prototype, which included episodes of dystonia and heavy breathing, and some aspects of the physical design and robustness were flagged as needing further improvement.Conclusions: The overall qualitative feedback was overwhelmingly positive with caregivers generally desiring to keep and eager to recommend the device to others. Additionally, caregivers expressed that the vocal fold vibration switch expanded the switch user’s capabilities, and they foresaw applications beyond the study setting. Overall, our findings suggest that the wireless vocal fold vibration switch is useable in the home setting.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".