According to a recent report by the Royal Society, tech companies, researchers and governments should do more to remove barriers and engage disabled people in the design of digital assistive tools and services.
This, according to the society’s Disability Technology report, will maximise the transformative benefits such innovations can bring and identifies digital assistive technologies (AT) as critical tools for the 1.3 billion disabled people worldwide to live fulfilled, independent lives.
The findings were developed by a committee of international researchers and technology experts, many of whom have lived experience of disability, and draws on focus groups, surveys and research with disabled people and leading tech figures.
The report emphasises that disabled people should be included at the earliest stages of policy and technology design, and more should be done to make digital AT accessible through training, funding and infrastructure.
Dr Hamied Haroon is a research fellow in quantitative biomedical MR imaging at the University of Manchester and is also a member of the Royal Society diversity and inclusion committee’s disabled scientists subgroup. According to Haroon, disabled people should be at the forefront in the policy and development process of assistive technologies.
“We shouldn’t be developing assistive technologies or policies without disabled people being front and centre of the process,” he said.
“How do you capture the day-to-day challenges faced by disabled people, or ensure you’re offering solutions that actually work, unless you talk to disabled people?”
More than half of disabled digital AT users surveyed for the report said they could not live the way they do without such technology, however there are significant barriers to access.
The report calls for measures to address digital exclusion through training, funding and regulation.
It also recommends governments recognise smartphones as an assistive technology – in the same way as wheelchairs and hearing aids – and factor this into the provision of essential services such as health, education, and internet access.
“These assistive technologies are fundamental to the workplace and our daily tasks – but they can be prohibitively expensive or unusable in some settings,” added Dr Haroon.
“We need to look at removing these barriers, whether that’s costs, additional training, or infrastructure improvements -such as addressing patchy mobile data services that can cut off disabled people in rural and deprived areas.”
The report also proposes a rethink in the way disability data is recorded by statistics bodies to include more data on the daily challenges many people experience with their sight, mobility, and memory, rather than solely focusing on self-reported disability identity.
This, the report outlines, would support policy makers, scientists and technology companies to ensure public services, research and digital tools are responsive to disabled people’s needs.
“This report explores the central part that digital technologies and their underpinning data can play in supporting disabled people to live full, productive lives,” said Sir Bernard Silverman FRS, Emeritus Professor of statistics, at the University of Oxford and chair of the report’s steering committee.
“As a statistician, I would particularly stress that the data we record, and how we categorise it, affects everything and everyone.
“Data on the functional challenges experienced by disabled people would help researchers and providers to ensure that digital products and services, especially in the AI age, are genuinely responsive to their needs.”
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