How Users Are Silently Shaping Assistive Technology

I first met Robert Woo in 2011, during his third time walking with a powered exoskeleton. The architect was paralyzed in a construction accident four years earlier, but he was determined to get strong again. Watching him poke around in the conditioning room in the exoskeleton prototype, the technology sounds amazing. I had a similar reaction when I reported on the first brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), which enabled people with disabilities to move robotic arms or speak through mere thought. Both types of bionic technology seemed to approach magic.

But that initial feeling of panic, which I’ve learned over the years of reporting on this technology, is just the beginning. What matters is not what these programs can do in a carefully laid out demo but how they work in the real world. Are they working honestly? Can people with disabilities use them for their own purposes? And what exactly does it cost—in time, effort, and trade-offs—to do so? The question is not whether the technology looks impressive the first time but whether it holds up a century.

A special report in this magazine, “Cyborg Tech From the Inside” takes that idea seriously. In my article for Woo, a major exoskeleton user who has spent 15 years testing these systems, the issue of technology cannot be separated from the issue of its use. Woo’s constant feedback drove further development. In Edd Gent’s reporting on the pioneers testing early BCIs, the knowledge of this rare technology likewise reaches something far more complex. As one of the participants in the experiment notes, these first-discovered people are like the first astronauts, who briefly arrived in space before returning to Earth. Together, these stories recast these people not as medical patients but as the ultimate beta testers and co-engineers of the bionic age.

I saw the gap between display and everyday use firsthand when I chatted with Woo at a Manhattan showroom recently, where he was testing out a new self-balancing exoskeleton. The Wandercraft. This device is an amazing development that kept him upright without crutches, but it also revealed a real-world conflict. As Woo tried to walk out the door, a mere inch of slope on the Park Avenue sidewalk was enough to trigger the machine’s safety sensors and halt his progress. It was a stark reminder of how far these systems have to evolve before they fit into everyday life.

For the people who use them, that seamless integration is the ultimate goal. Getting there will depend not only on technological development but also on how these systems hold up in a controlled environment, over time, and under real-world conditions. Looking inside doesn’t make these technologies invisible, but it does change the way we judge them—not by what they can do for a photo once but by what they can sustain for a lifetime. That’s the standard their users have been using all along.

Our commitment to exploring technology from the user’s perspective extends beyond this special report. To provide a necessary corrective to the “techno-solutionism” that often dominates the coverage of aids, IEEE The Spectrum created the Taenzer Fellowship for Disability-Engaged Journalism, where six writers with disabilities contribute articles about the devices they rely on every day. As Special Programs Director Stephen Cass notes, these reporters “are not afraid to ask very pointed questions about technology and have a deep understanding of how it affects people.” You can read the work of others at spectrum.ieee.org/tag/taenzer-fellowship.