Research
Research funding in the Global North has become an increasingly competitive space where demonstrable real-world impact is paramount for any research proposal to have a realistic chance of being funded. As a multi-sector, multi-partner, inter-disciplinary research centre with a global focus, GDI Hub is well placed to influence the mission of research funders and to access a diverse and cross-disciplinary funding pool in order to further our mission.
We have therefore adopted four research principles that any potential activities must encompass, that are in line with our overall vision, mission, and objectives. Our research projects must:
- Have disabled people at the centre of the research project life cycle, from design to delivery.
- Be ambitious and innovative in scope.
- Be created with interdisciplinary teams, utilizing expertise from across GDI Hub partner.
- Leverage international partnerships to maximize global reach.
GDI Hub’s Academic Research Centre is led by Professor Cathy Holloway our Academic Director at University College London (UCL).

Disability Interactions in Digital Games: Workshop at CHI Play 2019
We are very keen to have a mixture of academic and non-academic papers at this workshop therefore, we would like to invite additional contributions in the format of a social paper OR a standard 4-page CHI extended abstract. Social papers are maximum one page in length and act as a CV for networking. These can be submitted by anyone interested in the area of accessibility and gaming. We have extended the deadline to the 1st of October.

Artificial Intelligence for Mental Wellbeing Monitoring
The aim of this project to build new low-cost approaches to more reliable mental wellbeing measurements using mobile sensing technology, supporting unconstrained and potentially a variety of everyday situations.

DIX
Disability Interaction (DIX) puts disability front and center in the design process, and in so doing aims to create accessible, creative new HCI solutions that will be better for everyone, including poor communities, which disabled people are more likely to be part of.

Fit-for-purpose, affordable body-powered prostheses
Fit-for-purpose, affordable body-powered prostheses is designing upper limb prostheses that are both low cost and fit for their purpose and circumstance. The project is funded through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Global Challenges Research Fund.

Powered mobility for young children everywhere
Young children everywhere need to be mobile - to be able to explore their world, make choices about what they want to do, who they want to play with, and where they want to go.

Dynamic seating for children with severe movement disorders
GDI Hub is working with Designability to evaluate a new kind of seat that moves with the child and enables them to explore movement while they are seated and well supported

AT2030 Research Sub-programme
The AT2030 Sub-Programme on “Research, evidence and impact” seeks to understand ‘what works’ and develop a framework for the innovations and policy interventions across the AT2030 programme.

Community-led Solutions: Assistive Tech in informal settlements
Researchers from the Development Planning Unit at UCL, along with Leonard Cheshire, are working with the GDI Hub to undertake an exciting programme working with communities living in conditions of informality (often referred to as slums) in Freetown, Sierra Leone and Banjarmasin, Indonesia.

Street Rehab in India
An EPSRC GCRF project the project tested a new methodology for creating accessible maps for fast changing cities like Delhi. Using embedded sensors attached to wheelchairs, we mapped accessible and difficult to access routes. Initially, the project also aimed to capture rehabilitation metrics whilst pushing a wheelchair beyond a clinical environment, but instead the community of wheelchair users we worked with preferred to use the tool as an advocacy tool.

Power-up! - Fuelling the next generation of assistive technologies
A research project to understand how and when manual wheelchair users need and use power assistance and to determine if fuel cell technology is suitable for the power requirements of assistive technology, specifically wheelchairs.

ARCCS - Accessible Routes from Crowdsourced Cloud Services
Ongoing research where we have developed a new technique for wheelchair localisation and surface determination using a fusion of GPS/IMU information and machine learning. Data captured helps wheelchair users travel in a more effective ways and share data to demonstrate accessibility issues and encourage improvements.

AT2030: Drive Availability and Affordability of Assistive Technology
To address the need gap and significantly scale up the provision of affordable and appropriate Assistive Technology, this sub-programme will test market shaping methodologies which include research, scoping, and future planning; the creation of market shaping tools; and pilot testing of market interventions. This sub-programme is led by the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI).

AT2030: Assistive Technology Scoping Exercise
Funded by UK AID this focused on mapping and analysis of the innovation landscape around Assistive Technology globally with a focus on low and middle-income countries to highlight potential market failures and to scope out possible solutions.

Inclusive Education in Uganda: The Impact of Assistive Technology
The project focuses on the impact of assistive technology and accessible learning materials in promoting participation of children with disabilities in Uganda. This project aims to provide support to overcome barriers to education through assistive technology and to develop the evidence base for how technology helps inclusion in the classroom.

PhD Research Programme
Talented students are invited to propose a PhD research project in areas related to AI powered Physiological & Affective Computing, with the aim to create novel assistive technology and boost disability innovation.

Prime-VR2
The PrimeVR2 project is a Horizon 2020 project where commercial, academic and research teams are building a virtual reality platform that will allow people with a hyperkinetic movement disorder, people who have had a stroke, and people with a sports injury to play games and interact in a virtual environment for rehabilitation.

Disability design and innovation in low resource settings. Workshop at CHI2021
More research that focus on understanding how technology is and could be used to empower people with disabilities who live in the Global South is sorely needed, but conducting and planning studies in the field is often challenging.
Our workshop will focus on identifying challenges, strategies and resources to support scholars who are interested in conducting studies with people with disabilities in the Global South. We aim to create a community of researchers and practicioners working or interested to work in the areas of technology, disability and international development.

Rethinking the Senses: A Workshop on Multisensory Embodied Experiences and Disability Interactions
The dynamic aspects of living with disability, life transitions, including ageing, psychological distress, long-term conditions such as chronic pain and new conditions such as long-COVID affect people’s abilities. Interactions with this diversity of embodiments can be enriched, empowered and augmented through using multisensory and cross-sensory modalities to create more inclusive technologies and experiences. This workshop will explore three related sub-domains: immersive multi-sensory experiences, embodied experiences, and disability interactions and design. The aim is to better understand how we can rethink the senses in technology design for disability interactions and the dynamic self, constructed through continuously changing sensing capabilities either because of changing ability or because of the empowering technology. This workshop will: (i) bring together HCI researchers from different areas, (ii) discuss tools, frameworks and methods, and (iii) form a multidisciplinary community to build synergies for further collaboration.