Amy is registered blind and uses different types of technology to assist her during the day.

She has two Alexas—one in her bedroom and another in the living room. These allow her to communicate with staff when they are in the office—Amy just has to ask Alexa to phone Cornerstone and she’ll be able to get in contact with a member of staff.

“My iPad links up to my Alexa too,” Amy explained. “Staff will put the rotas in my iPad calendar and Alexa will tell me who is on when.”

This feature is particularly helpful as it provides Amy with a calendar that can be easily accessed and updated. Before being supported by Cornerstone Amy had used a brailler to braille out rotas, which was time-consuming as Amy detailed;

“Because so many shifts were changing it was difficult to braille it all the time. Every time something changed I had to use a new sheet of paper.”

Using the calendar function, on her iPad and Alexa, allows Amy to quickly and easily keep track of her schedule and various appointments and activities. Amy regularly attends physio and hydrotherapy as well as maintaining a busy social life. She enjoys concerts and bowling and has recently started attending bingo with Support Practitioner, Susan.

Assistive technology also ensures Amy can contact help in an emergency. Whenever Amy is alone she puts on a wristband that she can press if she has a fall and is out of reach of an Alexa. The wristband is linked to a support centre and if Amy pressed the band, the support centre would alert Cornerstone staff via the service phone.

Technology is not just used for scheduling and emergencies, however, but to assist Amy in her leisure time. Amy uses the Alexa to hear the news, check the weather and listen to audiobooks and she uses the iPad to FaceTime with her brother in Australia and her parents when they go to Portugal.

Additionally, Amy uses adaptive technology on her laptop. The program JAWS reads out each letter as she types, which gives her access to the internet.

If you would like to read more stories from the people we support you can click here.

You can read more about what the people we support, our colleagues and teams across Scotland have been up to in our Autumn Newsletter