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What works

AUSTIN, Vicki
McKINNON, Anne
BELL, Diane
September 2023

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Presented at the Disability Innovation Summit: Inclusive Interactions conference organised by the GDI hub on 13 Sept 2023.

 

Outcomes of the first 5 years of the AT2030 project are summarised including: 15 AT country capacity surveys; 11 new assistive technologies; 31 AT ventures brought to sustainability and 70 journal papers. Funding thus far and for the future is also discussed.

Work to supply hearing aids to those with hearing loss in the global south, particularly in South Africa is outlined. Areas highlighted include: work with suppliers; work to ignite innovation and provide products at scale; work with UNICEF and the procurement catalogue; work with HEARX to provide screening and aid fine tuning via a phone app to enable community health AT service.

Questions from the audience highlight issues surrounding acquiring AT in the emergency/humanitarian setting  

Beyond Barriers: Journeying from Exclusion to Inclusion with R2D2 and NCAHT-IITM

SRINIVASAN, Sujatha
September 2023

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Presented at the Disability Innovation Summit: Inclusive Interactions conference organised by the GDI hub on 13 Sept 2023.

 

Challenges in the development and bringing to market of functional, affordable, high quality AT devices are outlined. The development of the manual standing wheelchair and the lessons learnt in taking it from prototype to market (using the GRID model) are introduced. The challenges of affordability and of awareness of AT including by professionals is highlighted. The work of the National Centre for Assistive Health Technologies (NCAHT at AIIMS, New Delhi) including experience zones of architectural barriers where people can try wheelchars on different surfaces and realise that disability is imposed by the environment is briefly described. Wheelchair skills training and community outings are part of the centre. Other topics mentioned include: the need to normalise disability; the need for collaborations; funders; scalability; fragmented markets and the need to access global markets 

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