Social robotics is an emerging field, with many applications envisioned for people with disabilities. This project examined the so far invisible views of disability service organization workers towards social robotics. Because community service workers' views shape community-based rehabilitation (an area of health interventions that focuses on social determinants), it is important to examine their views towards social robotics applications which are largely developed under a clinical/medical view of disability. We administered a survey to employees of a Saskatchewan disability service organization. Out of 44 respondents, 80 % were female, most aged 21-65 years. Robotics applications perceived to be important included domestic robots, and rehabilitation robots. Least important applications included eldercare robots, companion robots, and pet robots. Most participants felt that robots cannot replace human touch, human interaction, or emotional companionship, and that they cannot/should not replace human workers in the disability setting. Many expressed concerns about safety, normality for disabled people, and artificial interactions. Respondents also had views on whether a social robot can be a bully or could be bullied. We submit that the perspectives our respondents exhibited might be useful to consider in the development of social robots for applications around disability in order to ensure acceptable and relevant products.

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People increasingly can and want to obtain and generate health information themselves. With the increasing do-it-yourself sentiment comes also the desire to be more involved in one’s health care decisions. Patient driven health-care and health research models are emerging; terms such as participatory medicine and quantified-self are visible increasingly. Given the health consumer’s desire to be more involved in health data generation and health care decision making processes the authors submit that it is important to be health policy literate, to understanding how health policies are developed, what themes are discussed among health policy researchers and policy makers, to understand how ones demands would be discussed within health policy discourses. The public increasingly obtains their knowledge through the internet by searching web browsers for keywords. Question is whether the “health consumer” to come has knowledge of key terms defining key health policy discourses which would enable them to perform targeted searches for health policy literature relevant to their situation. The authors found that key health policy terms are virtually absent from printed and online news media which begs the question how the “health consumer” might learn about key health policy terms needed for web based searches that would allow the “health consumer” to access health policy discourses relevant to them

So far, the very meaning of health and therefore, treatment and rehabilitation is benchmarked to the normal or species-typical body. We expect certain abilities in members of a species; we expect humans to walk but not to fly, but a bird we expect to fly. However, increasingly therapeutic interventions have the potential to give recipients beyond species-typical body related abilities (therapeutic enhancements, TE). We believe that the perfect storm of TE, the shift in ability expectations toward beyond species-typical body abilities, and the increasing desire of health consumers to shape the health system will increasingly influence various aspects of health care practice, policy, and scholarship. We employed qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate among others how human enhancement, neuro/cognitive enhancement, brain machine interfaces, and social robot discourses cover (a) healthcare, healthcare policy, and healthcare ethics, (b) disability and (c) health consumers and how visible various assessment fields are within Neuro/Cogno/Human enhancement and within the BMI and social robotics discourse. We found that health care, as such, is little discussed, as are health care policy and ethics; that the term consumers (but not health consumers) is used; that technology, impact and needs assessment is absent; and that the imagery of disabled people is primarily a medical one. We submit that now, at this early stage, is the time to gain a good understanding of what drives the push for the enhancement agenda and enhancement-enabling devices, and the dynamics around acceptance and diffusion of therapeutic enhancements.

Social robotics, brain machine interfaces and neuro and cognitive enhancement products are three emerging science and technology products with wide-reaching impact for disabled and non-disabled people. Acceptance of ideas and products depend on multiple parameters and many models have been developed to predict product acceptance. We investigated which frequently employed technology acceptance models (consumer theory, innovation diffusion model, theory of reasoned action, theory of planned behaviour, social cognitive theory, self-determination theory, technology of acceptance model, Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology UTAUT and UTAUT2) are employed in the social robotics, brain machine interfaces and neuro and cognitive enhancement product literature and which of the core measures used in the technology acceptance models are implicit or explicit engaged with in the literature. OPEN ACCESSTechnologies 2013, 1 4