Report from the AAATE conference in Budapest
The Association for the Advancement of Assistive technology in Europe held its bi-annual conference in Budapest on 8th-11th September in Budapest. The conference was attended by more than 350 academics, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists
The World Health Organisation’s GATE initiative hosted a stakeholders meeting on the first evening. GATE stands for Global Cooperation on Assistive Technology and has a very practical focus on improving service delivery, training and accessibility of AT. GATE’s Chapal Khashnabis has stated that that ‘AT is a global challenge for the 21st century’. DOCTRID want to ensure that Intellectual Disability and Autism Spectrum Disorder are represented within GATE’s working groups Find out more about GATE at http://www.who.int/phi/implementation/assistive_technology/phi_gate/en/
The key themes raised throughout the conference are outlined below and align with the aims and mission of DOCTRID and the ASSISTID programme. All AT researchers should be guided by these important considerations.
- Sharing of knowledge and access to information
- Co-operation: multidisciplinary, multi-sectoral collaboration
- Coordinated training and approach to AT
- Training of all users, introduction of accredited courses.
- Protocols/guidelines/standards for integrating AT into everyday life
- Educating staff and other stakeholders about AT
- Societal awareness and acceptance
- The benefit must outweigh the user cost
- How do we close the large gap between need and provision?
- The struggle between evidence gathering vs pressure to develop/market
- How to move from concept and prototype to design, testing and deployment of commercial products
- Universal design