Publications
Filter by type
- All
- PhD
- Working Paper
- Workshop
- Editorial
- Conference Paper
- Journal Paper
- Landscape review
- Toolkit
- Book
- Article
- Report
Filter by theme
- All
- Assistive & Accessible Technology
- Inclusive Design
- Culture and Participation
- Climate & Crisis Resilience
- Inclusive Educational Technology
Filter by research group
Type
Themes
Ben M. Oldfrey, Vikranth H. Nagaraja, Eleanor Crommentuijn-Marsha, Laurence P.J. Kenney
Our recent one-day workshop brought together a diverse group of stakeholders to examine the challenges and opportunities in wheelchair repair services. By engaging multiple perspectives, we gained valuable insights into how improved repair processes can enhance service delivery, empower users, and support sustainability efforts.
Key discussions focused on the urgent need to address data gaps in repair practices, promote user involvement, and shift towards systems that prioritise repair and maintenance. Innovative ideas, such as creating digital profiles for wheelchairs and using AI to predict breakdowns, were explored as ways to streamline repair services and improve user autonomy.
Going forward, collaboration between manufacturers, healthcare providers, and users will be essential to building a more sustainable, user-centred approach to wheelchair repairs.
Read the full report to learn more about the ideas and strategies shared during the workshop.
Type
Themes
Ben M. Oldfrey a, Vikranth H. Nagaraja b, Arhym Hoonchamlong a, Laurence P.J. Kenney
Our recent one-day workshop brought together a diverse group of stakeholders to explore the critical role of repair in the assistive technology sector. Through a range of perspectives, we uncovered valuable insights into how repair can drive sustainability, improve service delivery, and empower users.
Key discussions centered on the urgent need for a systemic shift toward more repairable and modular designs alongside regulatory changes and innovative frameworks that support efficient repair services. We also highlighted the importance of better data on repair practices and the need for transparency and user engagement.
As we look ahead, the conversation must include all stakeholders, particularly the users themselves. This collaborative approach will be vital to building a more sustainable and repairable future for assistive technology.
Read the full report to learn more about the insights and strategies shared during the workshop.
Type
Themes
Emma M. Smith, Catherine Holloway
The objective of this research was to describe the assistive technology ecosystem in Kenya through descriptive information about key stakeholder organizations, and a network analysis demonstrating the nature and strength of relationships between organizations. An assistive technology ecosystem is an interconnected community of actors, including government, civil society, and the private sector who work together or in parallel to deliver assistive products and services to the people who need them. Using the network analysis, we aimed to demonstrate the degree to which key stakeholder organizations within the ecosystem did (or did not) interact, which will provide policy makers with data from which to further develop collaborations within the ecosystem
Taylor & Francis Online; 2024
Type
Themes
Research Group
Ben Oldfrey, Cathy Holloway, Julian Walker, Steven McCormack, Bernadette Deere, Laurence Kenney, Robert Ssekitoleko, Helen Ackers & Mark Miodownik
This paper focuses on the local repair of assistive products in low resource environments. We review the existing literature on the repair of assistive products in low resource settings, and briefly discuss the “Right to Repair” movement.
Disability and Rehabilitation; 2023
Type
Themes
Research Group
Jamie Danemayer & Myung-Joon Lim
Korea is a rapidly ageing country, with its population over 65 years old increasing from 5% in 1990 to 17% in 2021. Comparatively, the global population over 65 has increased from 6% in 1990 to 9% in 2019 ]. As populations age and functional difficulties become more prevalent, the importance of assistive technology (AT) provision becomes more pronounced. Disparities in access to AT within a population can indicate inequities in healthy aging trajectories that will widen as the overall population ages, if clusters of limited access are not identified and addressed.
Taylor & Francis Online; 2023
Type
Themes
Vicki Austin, Dilisha Patel, Jamie Danemayer, Kate Mattick, Anna Landre, Marketa Smitova, Maryam Bandukda, Aoife Healy, Nachiappan Chockalingam, Diane Bell, Cathy Holloway
This report was prepared by Global Disability Innovation (GDI) Hub for the Disability Unit in the Cabinet Office His Majesty’s Government (HMG). The report presents findings from a Country Capacity Assessment (CCA) of AT access in England. Findings illustrate a complex state of AT in England. While delivery systems tend to provide quality products that have a strong, positive impact on people’s lives, processes are often slow and stressful for users and providers alike. Startlingly, there is also an AT access gap of 31% of disabled people not having the assistive products they need to flourish, thrive, or even participate in daily life.
The Cabinet Office; 2023
Type
Themes
Jamie Danemayer, Cathy Holloway, Youngjun Cho, Nadia Berthouze, Aneesha Singh, William Bhot, Ollie Dixon, Marko Grobelnik, John Shawe-Taylor
Paper highlights: Assistive technology (AT) information networks are insular among stakeholder groups, causing unequal access to information. Participants often cited fragmented international marketplaces as a barrier and valued info-sharing across industries. Current searches produce biased results in marketplaces influenced by commercial interests and high-income contexts. Smart features could facilitate searching, update centralised data sources, and disseminate information more inclusively.
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies; 2023
Type
Themes
Giulia Barbareschi, Wesley Teerlink, Josepg Gakunga Njuguna, Purity Musungu, Mary Dama Kirino, and Catherine Holloway
According to estimates from the World Health Organization, in 2010, there were more than 30 million people in need of prosthetic and orthotic devices across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.1 This number is likely to have grown significantly in the past decade, in line with trends recorded for the general need of assistive technology.2 For many people who undergo a lower limb amputation, access to an appropriate prosthesis is essential to restore functional mobility and ensure good quality of life.3 Ultimately, an appropriate lower-limb prosthesis (LLP) can enable people with amputation to fulfill their desired role in their family, work, and community life.4
Prosthetic and Orthotics International; 2022
Type
Themes
Jamie Danemayer, Andrew Young, Siobhan Green, Lydia Ezenwa, Michael Klein
This study synthesizes learnings from three distinct datasets: innovator applications to the COVIDaction data challenges, surveys from organizers from similarly-aimed data challenges, and a focus group discussion with professionals who work with COVID-19 data. Thematic and topic analyses were used to analyze these datasets with the aim to identify gaps and barriers to effective data use in responding to the pandemic.
Data & Policy; 2023
Type
Themes
Giulia Barbareschi, Catherine Holloway, Katherine Arnold, Grace Magomere, Wycliffe Ambeyi Wetende, Gabriel Ngare, Joyce Olenja
We present the findings of a case study of mobile technology use by People with Visual Impairment (VIPs) in Kibera, an informal settlement in Nairobi. We used contextual interviews, ethnographic observations and a co-design workshop to explore how VIPs use mobile phones in their daily lives, and how this use influences the social infrastructure of VIPs. Our findings suggest that mobile technology supports and shapes the creation of social infrastructure. However, this is only made possible through the existing support networks of the VIPs, which are mediated through four types of interaction: direct, supported, dependent and restricted.
CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference; 2020
Type
Themes
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
Type
Themes
Emma M Smith, Maria Luisa Toro Hernandez, Ikenna D Ebuenyi, Elena V Syurina, Giulia Barbareschi, Krista L Best, Jamie Danemayer, Ben Oldfrey, Nuha Ibrahim, Catherine Holloway, Malcolm MacLachlan
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted all segments of society, but it has posed particular challenges for the inclusion of persons with disabilities, those with chronic illness and older people regarding their participation in daily life. These groups often benefit from assistive technology (AT) and so it is important to understand how use of AT may be affected by or may help to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19. Objective: The objectives of this study were to explore the how AT use and provision have been affected during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how AT policies and systems may be made more resilient based on lessons learned during this global crisis.
International Journal of Health Policy and Management; 2020
Type
Themes
Margaret Savage, Sarah Albala, Frederic Seghers, Rainer Katte, Cynthia Liao, Mathilde Chaudron, Novia Afdhila
Development outcomes are inextricably linked to the health of the marketplace that delivers products and services to people in low- and middle- income countries (LMIC). Shortcomings in the market for assistive technology (AT) contribute to low access in LMIC. Market shaping is aimed at improving a market’s specific outcomes, such as access to high quality, affordable AT, by targeting the root causes of these shortcomings. The paper summarizes the findings of a market and sector analysis that was conducted under the UK aid funded AT2030 programme and aims to discuss how market shaping can help more people gain access to the AT that they need and what are the best mechanisms to unlock markets and commercial opportunity in LMICs.
Assistive Technology The Official Journal of RESNA; 2021
Type
Themes
Jamie Danemayer, Sophie Mitra, Cathy Holloway, Shereen Hussein
A person’s access to assistive products such as hearing aids, wheelchairs, and glasses, is an essential part of their ability to age in a healthy way. But, according to the World Health Organization, a staggering 90% of people who need assistive products worldwide, do not have access to them. In many instances access is limited or simply non-existent. This is often due to assistive products being too expensive, demand outweighing supply, not always being suitable to use in different environments, or even the lack of availability of trained providers. In such circumstances, people are more likely to age ‘unhealthily’ if they do not have access to assistive products that are designed to support their day to day functioning and independence.
International Journal of Population Data Science; 2023
Type
Themes
Jamie Danemayer, Dorothy Boggs, Vinicius Delgado Ramos, Emma M. Smith, Ariana Kular, William Bhot, Felipe Ramos Barajas, Sarah Polack, Catherine Holloway
Assistive technology (AT) includes assistive products (APs) and related services that can improve health and well-being, enable increased independence and foster participation for people with functional difficulties, including older adults and people with impairments or chronic health conditions.1 This paper uses the umbrella term ‘functional difficulty’ (FD) to refer to all of these groups. This systematic review was undertaken to identify studies presenting population-based estimates of need and coverage for five APs (hearing aids, limb prostheses, wheelchairs, glasses and personal digital assistants) grouped by four functional domains (hearing, mobility, vision and cognition).
BMJ Global Health; 2021
Type
Themes
Research Group
Sahan Bulathwela, María Pérez-Ortiz, Catherine Holloway, John Shawe-Taylor
This paper starts by synthesising how AI might change how we learn and teach, focusing specifically on the case of personalised learning companions, and then move to discuss some socio-technical features that will be crucial for avoiding the perils of these AI systems worldwide (and perhaps ensuring their success). This paper also discusses the potential of using AI together with free, participatory and democratic resources, such as Wikipedia, Open Educational Resources and open-source tools. We also emphasise the need for collectively designing human-centered, transparent, interactive and collaborative AI-based algorithms that empower and give complete agency to stakeholders, as well as support new emerging pedagogies.
Workshop on Machine Learning for the Developing World (ML4D) at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems 2021; 2021
Type
Themes
Tabish Ahmed, Sahan Bulathwela
The informational needs of people are highly contextual and can depend on many different factors such as their current knowledge state, interests and goals [1, 2, 3]. However, an effective information retrieval companion should minimise the human effort required in i) expressing a human information need and ii) navigating a lengthy result set. Using topical representations of the user history (e.g. [4]) can immensely help formulating zero shot queries and refining short user queries that enable proactive information retrieval (IR). While the world has digital textual information in abundance, it can often be noisy (e.g. extracted through Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), PDF text extraction etc.), leading to state-of-the-art neural models being highly sensitive to the noise producing sub-optimal results [5]. This demands denoising steps to refine both query and document representation. In this paper, we argue that Wikipedia, an openly available encyclopedia, can be a humanly intuitive knowledge base [6] that has the potential to provide the world view many noisy information Retrieval systems need.
Published at the First Workshop on Proactive and Agent-Supported Information Retrieval at CIKM 2022; 2022
Type
Themes
Kate Mattick, Ben Oldfrey, Maggie Donovan-Hall, Grace Magomere, Joseph Gakunga, Catherine Holloway
An estimated 1.5 million people undergo limb amputation each year [1]. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are projected to have a rapid increase in people living with an amputation in the coming years due to prevalence of non-communicable dis-ease, trauma and conflict [1–3]. This paper explores the personal and system factors that motivate and enhance outcomes for patients accessing a prosthetic service and using a lower-limb prosthesis within a low resource setting.
Disability and Rehabilitation; 2022