Tyler Dukes shares how he uses smart-home technology to live independently with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). He highlights tools that support accessibility, comfort, and safety, offering practical tips for others navigating similar challenges.
Transcript
My name is Tyler Dukes. I have a decade of experience as a DevOps manager. I definitely leverage my professional expertise and personal experience with SMA to explore different technology potentials and how we can enhance accessibility within our homes or places of work.
What does an accessible home look like? Independence, for me, means that I am able to live in my home independently. I do have caregivers that come in and help me, but I am not living with somebody because my medical needs necessitate it.
When we’re looking at independence through my lens — and that’s going to be through access, right? — we’ve got to be able to get into whatever we’re living in at our home. Then comfort, like we all want to be comfy. We want to throw on Netflix, get some popcorn, kick your feet up. And then next, we gotta be safe about it.
With access, I have two different versions of automatic doors. I’ve had one that I’ve had for 20-plus years. That is just the typical radio frequency–controlled automatic door. And then I have another one that’s able to hook up into my Wi-Fi with some creative technology behind that.
But it does take some planning, right? So I have the great fortune to build my home, so I knew that I needed power for my doors, so I made sure I had power outlets at my doors. So I’m not having to run 50-foot extension cords to make these things work.
The other thing that we want to talk about with access — and kind of blends into safety as well — we need to make sure the doors lock. I have used smart locks for years now. They allow me easy access into my home via my phone app.
Another thing that I use for safety is indoor cameras. So I have Arlo, and having that available inside my home to where a select group of people can look into my home if need be. There is a big element of trust involved in that, but that is because, again, I stay here by myself overnight. So if somebody was trying to get ahold of me and they couldn’t, they can look in and it has the ability for two-way communication to see, like, oh, I’m just taking a nap and my phone’s on silent. They know I’m OK. It’ll be fine.
Let’s move into comfort, right? Because we all want to be comfortable in our homes. One of my favorite products and favorite brands that I’ve found so far, it’s called SwitchBot. And through SwitchBot, they have all these products for either opening your blinds or doing a light switch.
That way, I’m not having to ask somebody constantly, “Can you open blinds? Can you close the blinds?” Like, it just drives you bonkers. It sounds super simple, but that ability to have like, I just want it dark, right? Or I want to brighten up. I want to, you know, have that morning sun wake up with me.
One of the biggest things that I’ve had for a very long time, I was a very early adopter of, was smart thermostats. I know a lot of us that are in a wheelchair can get cold very easily, so being able to control our environment, I think, is paramount.
And controlling your AC — whether you’re living in an apartment or you’re living at home — those options with a smart thermostat are great, right? And being able to remove those friction points from your daily life is key, because they build up over time.
I have Samsung TVs that allow me to use the Amazon Echo products directly integrated into the TV. I can also use Samsung SmartThings as another product to be able to manipulate and use my TV as I want it.
And then third is a product from BroadLink called RM4 Pro, if my memory serves me correct, but it is an infrared repeater. There are repeaters out that you can basically program your TV’s remote into it. I just got an app and boom, there you go.
We’re now making “dumb products,” quote unquote, smart. And you can do this with many different things. I’ve actually done this with smart fans, like ceiling fans. You just have to be creative and think, what’s the mechanism that we’re trying to drive here? How do we do it?
At the end, we’re all in a big community, right? So if you got a question, reach out to somebody like me — or me. Somebody would be glad to help you and has probably figured it out before or figured out something similar.
If you can dream of a problem that, hey, I want to fix this. I truly believe with the amount of technology out there today, there is a solution. It might not always be elegant. It might not be fancy. It might not just be this cool, sleek app, but some way, somehow, we can tie enough things together to make things work.
