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![A young child holds a ball and looks up to an older child who is using a wheelchair. They are smiling at each other playfully](https://cdn.disabilityinnovation.com/uploads/images/_publicationImage/126687/publications-page-16.webp?v=1706086046)
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Themes
Ikenna D Ebueny, Emma M Smith, Catherine Holloway, Rune Jensen, Lucía D'Arino, Malcolm MacLachlan
Social empathy is ‘the ability to more deeply understand people by perceiving or experiencing their life situations and as a result gain insight into structural inequalities and disparities’. Social empathy comprises three elements: individual empathy, contextual understanding and social responsibility. COVID-19 has created a population-wide experience of exclusion that is only usually experienced by subgroups of the general population. Notably, persons with disability, in their everyday lives, commonly experience many of the phenomena that have only recently been experienced by members of the general population. COVID-19 has conferred new experiential knowledge
on all of us. We have a rare opportunity to understand and better the lives of persons with disabilities for whom some aspects of the COVID- 19 experience are enduring. This allows us greater understanding of the importance of implementing in full a social and human rights model of disability, as outlined in the UNCRPD.
BMJ Global Health; 2020
![A woman wearing a mask, testing her hearing using an app and headphones](https://cdn.disabilityinnovation.com/uploads/images/_publicationImage/126683/publications-page-15.webp?v=1706086046)
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Research Group
Emma M. Smith, Malcolm MacLachlan, Ikenna D. Ebuenyi, Catherine Holloway & Victoria Austin
While the inadequacies of our existing assistive technology systems, policies, and services have been highlighted by the acute and rapidly changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, these failures are also present and important during non-crisis times. Each of these actions, taken together, will not only address needs for more robust and resilient systems for future crises, but also the day-to-day needs of all assistive technology users. We have a responsibility as a global community, and within our respective countries, to address these inadequacies now to ensure an inclusive future.
Disability & Society; 2020
![](https://cdn.disabilityinnovation.com/uploads/images/_publicationImage/126666/publications-page-11.webp?v=1706086046)
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Research Group
This year (2022) has seen the publication of the World’s first Global Report on Assistive Technology (GReAT) [1]. This completes almost a decade of work to ensure assistive technology (AT) access is a core development issue. The lack of access to assistive products (APs), such as wheelchairs, hearing aids, and eyeglasses, as well as less well-referenced products such as incontinence pads, mobile phone applications, or walking sticks, affects as many as 2.5 billion people globally. Furthermore, the provision of APs would reap a 1:9 return on investment [2]. This could result in a family in need netting (or living without) over GBP 100,000 in their lifetime [2] or more, if we count dynamic overspills in the economy such as employment of assistive technology services and manufacturing of devices [3].
Societies; 2021
![Three young operators working for Humanity and Inclusion in Uganda assessing an elderly woman who uses a crutch](https://cdn.disabilityinnovation.com/uploads/images/_publicationImage/522/HI_picture.webp?v=1706086048)
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Research Group
Chapal Khasnabis, Catherine Holloway, Malcolm MacLachlan
We are now in an era of assistive care and assistive living—whereby many people, of all ages, in good health, and those who are more frail, or with cognitive or functional impairments, are using a broad range of technologies to assist and enhance their daily living. Assistive living1 is becoming an important part of population health and rehabilitation, which can help to maximise an individual's abilities, regardless of age or functional capacity. This encouraging shift in ethos has been strengthened by the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in which a plethora of digital and remote technologies have been used.
The Lancet; 2020
![A man is photographed trying out a new Digital Innovation, he is wearing a VR headset](https://cdn.disabilityinnovation.com/uploads/images/_publicationImage/123241/publications-page-3.webp?v=1706086046)
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Research Group
It is clear from the events of the last 18 months that while technology has a huge potential for transforming the way we live and work, the entire ecosystem—from manufacturing to the supply chain—is vulnerable to the vagaries of that ecosystem, as well as having the potential to exacerbate new and existing inequalities [1]. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the lives of people with disabilities, who make up around 15% of the world’s population and already face barriers to accessing education, employment, healthcare and other services [2]. Some of these barriers are a result of unequal access and opportunities. However, there is a growing movement to better understand how assistive technology systems and services can be designed to enable more robust and equitable access for all. As part of this growing movement, the Paralympic Games in Tokyo this autumn saw the launch of a new global campaign to transform the lives of the world’s 1.2 bn persons with disabilities: the ‘WeThe15’ campaign reached more than 4.5 billion people through its marketing and stands ready to be the biggest of its kind in history. Next year, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), AT scale and GDI Hub will publish the first World Report on Access to Assistive Technology, which will include research from the £20 million, UK Aid funded, GDI Hub-led, programme, AT2030. Ahead of that, in this Special Issue, we focus on how some events and situations—as diverse as the coronavirus pandemic and the Paralympics—can act as ‘critical junctures’ that can enable a rethink of the status quo to facilitate and promote change.
Sustainability; 2021
![Photograph of the Global Report On Assistive Technology paperback publication](https://cdn.disabilityinnovation.com/uploads/images/_publicationImage/123231/publications-page-2.webp?v=1706086048)
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Themes
Research Group
Johan Borg, Wei Zhang, Emma M. Smith, Cathy Holloway
GReAT, but do we care?
If accessible, assistive technology would be life changing for a billion people across the world today – and two billion people in 2050 (WHO, 2018). It would make the difference between independence and dependence, inclusion and exclusion, life and death. It holds the potential to improve and transform health, education, livelihood and social participation; fundamental human rights everyone is entitled to. And if we are lucky to grow old, the chances are that we all would use assistive technology by then. But do we care?
Assistive Technology, The Official Journal of RESNA; 2021
![A boy using crutches is about to kick a ball into the net](https://cdn.disabilityinnovation.com/uploads/images/_publicationImage/118886/Untitled-design-27.webp?v=1706086041)
Type
Themes
Giulia Barbareschi & Tom Shakespeare
Assistive products (APs) are broadly defined as “any product (including devices, equipment, instruments, and software), either specially designed and produced or generally available, whose primary purpose is to maintain or improve an individual’s functioning and independence and thereby promote their wellbeing” (Khasnabis et al., 2015). Although the concept of wellbeing is extremely slippery and researchers have yet to agree on a single definition for it, as individuals we instinctively develop mental models about what does, and does not, promote our happiness and wellbeing. Considerations about values, wellbeing and happiness are extremely personal and are shaped by a variety of factors ranging from our age and socio-cultural background to our life experiences (Schwartz & Bardi, 2001).
RESNA