iHelpY: New Multisensory Device to Facilitate World Exploration and Motor Skills of Blind Infants

To fully understand how we process spatial and motor representations; the role of sensory feedback must be considered. To date, no robust methodology allows for such investigation; therefore, we created the iHelpY device. It is a multisensory device for facilitating blind infants motor exploration and reaching skills. In iHelpY the rehabilitator controls the kind of stimulation, audio, tactile, and multisensory while the infant is making the hand movement (i.e. reaching for a ball on the table). It comes with a method to provide feedback related to the movement. Given its sensory nature, it is suitable for young children with visual impairment. A demonstrative experiment was performed on one blind infant with and without using the iHelpY compared to one sighted without the device to directly assess the benefit of the sensory feedback on body movement. iHelpY is the first-ever science-based rehabilitation technology for infants with visual impairment. This is a particularly important need because there are currently no multisensory technological rehabilitative solutions for early intervention in blind infants.