Occupational Therapist

An occupational therapist is a licensed healthcare professional who helps people participate in the 'occupations' of daily life — self-care, work, school, leisure, and community roles — through therapeutic activity, environmental modification, and assistive technology. In accessibility contexts, OTs often serve as formal gatekeepers for assistive-technology procurement: assessing needs, recommending and customizing devices (wheelchairs, adaptive eating utensils, environmental control units, computer access solutions), training users, and writing the clinical justification required by insurers. OTs apply frameworks such as HAAT (Human Activity Assistive Technology), SETT (Student-Environment-Tasks-Tools), and PEO (Person-Environment-Occupation) to match technology to context. Users often describe OT recommendations as indispensable for bureaucratic access but sometimes misaligned with the lived realities of their daily routines.