Parent Perspective: Creating Function out of Dysfunction.

The ability to use private and public bathroom facilities as needed is something that able bodied people take for granted in our society. The necessity to attend to these functions in a discrete and private fashion is something deeply impressed on us from earliest childhood and something that is foundational to our sense of human dignity. But this option is not open to those with severe impairments who are unable to sit independently and unable to express their needs through any formalized communication system. They may have the cognitive capacity to formulate basic cause-effect relationships and the will to exercise the necessary degree of self-control that makes conventional bathroom behavior possible but huge barriers currently exist to prevent them from exercising this ability and this will (Pivato, 2009). The present paper is about the various attempts to remove these barriers and the progress that has been made to date for one individual so affected, my daughter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]