2nd Session
During this module, we learnt about assistive mobility and social mobility. When we were learning about assistive mobility, we watched a video about a tv star whose body is like that of a 60 year old even when he is just 50. This allowed us to know better about what the disabled think when they know that this physical problem is going to affect their lives. However, their willpower is what enables them to move forward in the face of their predicament. We also learnt that mobility loss can affect people in terms of loss of independence and one’s self-worth, which could then lead to depression. For social mobility, we learnt about social inequality. Apparently, this is most often seen in Singapore as compared to other countries. There are different social classes, which consists of the rich, the middle class, the working class, and the poor, basically. Studies have shown that it is quite hard to break free of your social class since birth. For example, if your parents are rich, you are more likely to be able to afford good tuition, and since your education level is high, you will be able to get a decent job and live wealthily for the rest of your life. This shows that social inequality is indeed a big problem.
Overall, this module was pretty helpful as we got to better understand how mobility loss and social inequality affect people.
1st Session
The mobility module allowed us to think more about the mobility related problems that the elderly are facing and how to help them. Mobility means the ability to move freely and easily. There are four different types of mobility, which are assistive mobility, social mobility, urban mobility, and digital mobility. Assistive mobility is mostly for the elderly who are too weak to move about properly, and the disabled. Social mobility refers to the different social classes of people, for example, low income people being stuck in that social class. The freedom that comes with social mobility refers to moving up in class, whether for yourself, or for others. Urban mobility points to the development currently occurring in cities. One example is the type of transport we can use to travel around places. Lastly, digital mobility refers to the technology being used to navigate around the city. Nowadays, people use social media a lot more often. Overall, the teacher wanted us to think about a question: ‘Is mobility just a mindset?’. The answer to this question can be seen from a video shown to us, depicting a disabled man who lost his ability to walk after an accident which affected his spinal chord. However, the man accepted his fate and despite his injury, continued to work as long as he still can. We feel that mobility is just a mindset. It is only a physical hindrance and as long as people can get over that fact, they can still continue to move about freely using other tools to assist them.
During this lesson, we attended the talk about urban mobility. We had to think about ways to use PMDs in a safer way. One of the solutions that we came up with was installing lights along a line separating the road and the pedestrian walkways where PMDs can be used. This way, people would be able to see the division more clearly and this would prevent them from driving onto the road, hence preventing accidents. In all, this is not very useful as we are not planning to create a prototype that helps in mobility.
