Designing Accessible Technology
Rapid and unprecedented population ageing poses a serious social and economic challenge across the developed world. Shifts in dependency ratios point to escalating welfare and pensions costs which require radical and imaginative responses from Government
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Preface
CWUAAT’06 (incorporating the 6th Cambridge Workshop on Rehabilitation Robotics) is the third of a series of workshops that are held every two years and follows on from the highly successful CWUAAT’02 and CWUAAT’04. Reflecting the spirit of recent moves to extend the rights for universal accessibility, the new series of workshops is aimed at a broader range of interests, although still with a general focus on product and solution development. Rapid and unprecedented population ageing poses a serious social and economic challenge across the developed world. Shifts in dependency ratios point to escalating welfare and pensions costs which require radical and imaginative responses from Government and industry. The key to this is maintaining a healthy population that is able and willing to work longer before retirement and can remain independent for as long as possible afterwards. A further requirement is to bring disabled people into mainstream life and employment. The CWUAAT workshop has a general focus on product and solution development. Hence the principal requirements for the successful design of assistive and accessible technology are addressed and these range from the identification and capture of the needs of the users, through to the development and evaluation of truly usable and accessible systems for users with special needs. This book consists of papers received for CWUAAT’06; the contributors representing leading researchers in the fields of Inclusive Design, Rehabilitation Robotics, Universal Access and Assistive Technology. As is usual for CWUAAT, the nature of the contributions has been wide ranging within individual themes and also across the workshop’s scope. We believe it is exactly this juxtaposition of research from fields that would not otherwise appear on the same platform, which gives CWUAAT its unique character. It may also be significant that the format of CWUAAT, as a one stream, long presentation workshop held in a single-theatre environment, encourages considered discussion and allows the appraisal of
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Preface
research from a broad range of perspectives, which this year include: multiinstitution funded programs into provision for older people; assistive and rehabilitation technology; computer science approaches to inclusive design and rehabilitation; housing design; engineering design of robotic assistance; product design, and social anthropology. All these are united in the common endeavour of improving the design of accessible technology. The philosophy underlying inclusive design specifically extends the definition of users to include people who are excluded by rapidly changing technology, especially the elderly and ageing, and prioritises the role and value of extreme users in innovation and new product/service development. It also prioritises the context of use, both physical and psychological, and the complexity of interactions between products, services and interfaces in such contexts. Universal access and assistive technology are focussing domains for these priorities
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