Dalhousie University

Purpose

Research showed that health disparity within virtual care stems from the fact that a large amount of human-computer interaction (HCI) systems are designed for someone conceived as the "standard person" overlooking all the people with different physical, sensory or cognitive features. The issue of matching product features with users' characteristics is currently being addressed by the own user adapting themselves to the interface. As a consequence, users who are not able to adapt themselves are simply left out and cannot benefit from those products or services. The goal of this project is to develop an inclusive HCI design of virtual care to accommodate cardiac rehab patients with disability. This project is divided into 3 PAGE 4 main phases. In the first phase of this project, the research team will explore the current state of inclusivity of the technologies that are currently being used by cardiac rehab older adult patients. In the next phase, the research team will put the patients with disability at the core of our research study and will capture their unique needs in terms of receiving virtual cardiac rehabilitation. After conducting a series of studies and understanding where the technology should be and what features they have to offer to the patients, the research team then will conduct a feasibility and barriers assessment to clarify a path forward and provide recommendations to technology providers, health providers, health administrators, and government authorities on how to make virtual care more inclusive and accommodative to people with disability.