Analysis of emerging technologies for improving social inclusion of people with disabilities

Technologies in general and their assistive capabilities in particular, play a significant role for people with disabilities and their social inclusion. It is expected that emerging technologies will contribute to assistive technologies by reducing or removing the constraints that characterize existing solutions, as well as opening up entirely new ones [1]–[6]. This report aims to explore such opportunities by investigating the potential of emerging technologies for the sake of improving social inclusion of people with disabilities. The presented research is carried out within the ERASMUS+ project entitled Innovative Solutions based on Emerging Technologies for Improving Social Inclusion of People with Disabilities (INNOSID). The INNOSID project is based on the 10-year-long operation of the ICT-AAC Competence network in Croatia1 whose members cooperate in education, research, development and innovation with the aim of developing an inclusive society. The ICT-AAC Competence network’s activities are expanded with this project through the internationalization and use of emerging technologies. The project’s consortium consists of six higher education institutions and one non-governmental organization from the domain of persons with disabilities from five European countries: Croatia, France, Hungary, Portugal and Spain. More about the INNOSID consortium partners can be found in the Appendix A of the report. The report, in whose activities all INNOSID partner countries participated, provides an analysis of emerging technologies for improving social inclusion of people with disabilities. The focus of this chapter is to introduce the topics of interest by explaining the key theoretical concepts from both technical and societal aspects. Keywords, such as people with disabilities, social inclusion and emerging technologies, are defined and introduced from a broader perspective in order to understand the connection between them. In addition, the end of this chapter will outline its significance for interested readers. As the reader of the report will be able to see, the report is designed to provide, in addition to text, numerous examples related to different statistics, infographics, various visual representations of the described, as well as examples of good practice and case studies, mostly related to partner countries. Purpose of that is to enable the reader to better understand the topics that are extremely important and should not be neglected, especially because they concern each person and because each of us can play an important role in change for the better.

Description

Project: Innovative Solutions based on Emerging Technologies for Improving Social Inclusion of People with Disabilities

Keywords

emerging technologies social inclusion people with disabilities INNOSID European Union report

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.15/3096

Citation

Barbas, M., Babic,J., Car, Z., Gace, I., Lovrek, I,. Podobnik, V., Topolovac, I., Vdovic, H., Zilak, M., Gourves, A., Sable, C., Papp, I., Zichar, M., Franco, C., Foix, F., Keselj, A., Zubrinic, K., Brnardic, T., Vukovic, D. (2020). ANALYSIS OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES FOR IMPROVING SOCIAL INCLUSION OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES