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Paola Esquivel

  • PhD student [RERC]

Paola Esquivel, OT, MS, is pursuing a PhD in Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and is a Fulbright Scholar. She graduated as an occupational therapist from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and completed a master's degree in Rehabilitation Science at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. During her master's degree, she was part of a research project about the use of Lego robots and computer programs to improve the academic performance of children with physical disabilities. After graduating, she went to Italy, where she worked with children with disabilities in community and school settings.

Paola's research project is to develop and online smart speaker training intervention for people with physical or visual disabilities. She is working to help create an online course to support technology adoption and the functional performance of people with disabilities using smart speakers.  She is creating learning activities that are specific to people with disabilities and an online portal that condenses the information in one place to make it easier to find and access.

Representative Publications

Esquivel, P., Gill, K., Goldberg, M., Sundaram, S. A., Morris, L., & Ding, D. (2024). Voice Assistant Utilization among the Disability Community for Independent Living: A Rapid Review of Recent Evidence. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies2024(1), 6494944.

Esquivel, P., McGarvey, L., Phelan, S., & Adams, K. (2024). Exploring environmental factors affecting assistive technology strategies in mathematics learning for students with physical disabilities. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology19(1), 66-77.

Velasco Forero, S. E., Arias Becerra, N. J., Torres Narváez, M. R., Mondragón Barrera, M. A., Munera Orozco, S., Goldberg, M., ... & Esquivel Ortiz, P. R. (2024). Training physiotherapy students in basic wheelchair provision. Experiences at two universities in Colombia. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 1-7.