How does “voice activation” technology help someone with a spinal cord injury control their environment?

Another option to be able to control a computer, or be able to control functions in your house is voice activation. How it works is you meet with either an occupational therapist, an assistive technology professional or a vendor who sells the product, and they train you on its use. And they’re looking at the quality of your voice and can you consistently speak the commands with the same voice quality to activate them. So if I want to say, “turn the lights on,” I have to tell people to relax and say it normally like we’re talking. When you look at voice activation and are training somebody, it can be challenging because you think you’re training to say this; I’m going to say, “Turn on the lights.” So voice activation can be a tricky thing for someone to initially learn, but it’s incredibly helpful to allow people to access their environment if they don’t have any hand or arm motion to be able to press buttons or reach to turn on switches.