Assistive Technology’s higher purpose

First, a disclaimer: this is not a how-to piece. How-to’s and recipes are the the bread-and-butter of this blog, and I hope you find at least some of them useful as you go about your work in assistive technology (AT).

But today is more of a why-to, to see why assistive technology can be so empowering and why many of us have committed our lives to working in this field. Not only that, it’s in poetic form. That might sound weird, or out of place, but I hope you’ll bear with me.

Reflecting on AT’s higher purpose

I encountered this poem over the weekend, while reading Parker Palmer’s book On the Brink of Everything. I’m not a big poem person, but this one resonated with me. It’s really not about assistive technology at all, but somehow it reminded me of why I work in this field.

Assistive technology’s higher purpose is to play a role in helping people live their best lives, whatever that means for them. And the root of that is to enable full personal development, full self-expression, and full authorship over one’s own life, regardless of health condition or bodily impairments.

When used effectively, AT can lower the barriers to this full self-expression, allowing us all to show up in this world as who we really are, as our true selves, able to give our gifts freely to others. The most direct example is AT to support written and spoken communication, but all forms of AT that enable participation and self-realization are part of it. I hope this isn’t too grandiose, but it seems to me like working in assistive technology is one of Palmer’s “big jobs worth doing, jobs like the spread of love, peace, and justice.”

And with that, here’s the poem:
[8/14/2025: I’m sorry to say that due to copyright concerns, I’ve cut the whole poem and am only showing a short excerpt. But a link to the whole poem follows.]

The Poem I Would Have Writ
by Parker J. Palmer

…
Then you learn that first words aren’t
the hardest. The hardest are the last.

There’s so much you want to say,
but time keeps taking time and all your
words away. How to say — amid the
flood of grief and gratitude you feel —
“Thank you!”, or “How beautiful, how
grand!”, or “I’m so glad I survived…”,
or “I was changed forever the day
we two joined hands and lives.”
…

If you want to read more about what author Parker Palmer said about this poem, check out his On Being column from 2016. I highly recommend any of his writing for its insights on life and the human condition, written with clarity and humor.

If you liked this break from the how-to, let me know! And if not, well, let me know that, too 🙂

Take care.