App may help people with disabilities

Abuse could be reported

A group of professors and students from the University of Rhode Island and Worcester Polytechnic Institute are working with Massachusetts to develop an app that would help people with intellectual or developmental disabilities report abuse.

Assistant professor of computer science Krishna Venkatasubramanian and a group of graduate students from URI have teamed up with professor of psychology Jeanine Skorinko and some undergraduate students from WPI to develop the app in the wake of a 30% increase in reports of abuse in Massachusetts.

“We wanted to see if technology could be used to empower people with IDD to self-report abuse, because right now, if abuse is reported at all, it’s usually by someone else, like a doctor, often after the person has been abused multiple times,” Venkatasubramanian said. “No technological solution is going to be a panacea, but it’s going to give people one more avenue to report.”

The project, funded by a three-year, $380,510 contract with Massachusetts through a federal grant, comes as a law, signed last week by Gov. Charlie Baker. It is requiring the Disabled Persons Protection Commission to establish by Jan. 31, a registry listing care providers against whom the commission has made a “substantiated finding of registrable abuse.”

Both intiatives follow a 30% increase from fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2020 in cases of abuse assigned for investigation after being reported to the commission’s hotline (800-426-9009), said Nancy Alterio, the commission’s executive director. A 2018 National Public Radio investigation, citing previously unpublished U.S. Justice Department data, also found that people with intellectual disabilities are seven times more likely to be victims of sexual abuse than people without disabilities.

“If we can reach even some people, it would be better than what we have now,” Alterio said.

The team from both universities began by holding focus groups of people with IDD to find out what would be the easiest way for them to report if they were the victims of abuse, Venkatasubramanian said. What the team found was that the majority of participants didn’t know the state’s hotline number, if they knew it existed at all, he said.

The idea for an app came up because most of the people in the groups were fairly tech-savvy and had smart phones or other devices, Venkatasubramanian said.

The app would tell people what constitutes abuse and allow them to press a button that automatically would alert the Disabled Persons Protection Commission, he said.

It also would tell people how to preserve evidence, such as not taking a shower and going to the nearest hospital if possible to have a rape kit done if they’ve been sexually abused, Venkatasubramanian

said.

The goal is to have a prototype of the app ready by next summer, he said.

The team will work on the app with frequent input from three consultants who have IDD, Venkatasubramanian said.

“We are designing it with the IDD community,” he said, “not imposing it on them.”

One of the consultants, Pauline Bosma, said the app has the potential to be a game-changer for people with IDD.

“I think it’s going to be a big help for people with disabilities,” Bosma said. “It’s going to give us the ability to not be abused again.”