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PS11 - Inclusion 2020: Future Perspectives

Date: 01/12/2008 (14:30-15:45)

What does the future hold for us? Where is technology going? How will nano- and bio-technology influence us? Will we all simply 'plug in' in the future? Hear from leading futurologists and experts on what technology may hold for us and what that could mean for the society we live in.

Links and Documents

• Summary of the session (324 KB)
• Transcript of the session (130 KB)

EC coordinator: Rolf RIEMENSCHNEIDER (European Commission, DG INFSO H3, Belgium)

Chairperson: David BANES (AbilityNet, Development, United Kingdom)

Featuring

Gregg VANDERHEIDEN (University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States), Raising The Floor: We Now Have the Ability to Build Accessibility Directly into the Internet to Allow Access by all, Including Those With Little or No Resources

Those who cannot afford a computer can use one at a friend’s house - or use one that societies provide for free access at a public school, library, community center etc. However many individuals with disabilities, who are older, or have literacy problems are not able to access information and communication technology without expensive assistive technologies. For many these assistive technologies and, as a result, access to the Internet, are out of their reach. Some mechanism is needed to allow those with few or no resources to be able to access Internet based information and services that are increasingly becoming critical to participation and opportunity. In addition, as we move to ubiquitous and cloud computing, the current assistive technology model of ‘adapt their personal computer’ will not work. Ubiquitous accessibility will be needed.

There is now forming a collaborative international open source effort to build accessibility features directly into the Internet. The goal is to allow anyone, anywhere to invoke the access features they need “from the Internet” as needed to allow them to use any computer they encounter. Such ubiquitous accessibility is needed to address both economic and distributive justice issues around access by these populations and to allow them to participate and contribute to their societies.

• Presentation (1 MB)

Wolfgang L. ZAGLER (Vienna University of Technology, Institute "integrated study", Austria), The Name of the Future is User – No progress in e-Inclusion without Improving Pro-active User Involvement

In projects dealing with Assistive Technology (AT) and e-inclusion the EU always pointed out the importance of user involvement. Proposers were advised to include users and user representatives in their consortium in an appropriate manner. In the early days this user involvement was more or less restricted to two phases of the projects: The user needs assessment at the beginning and the evaluation at the end of a project.

In several projects dealing with e-inclusion we experienced that user involvement in projects shall not only happen at some typical points on a project’s timeline but should form a basic and continuous task. Examples will be presented.

The future in e-inclusion and in AAL (Ambient Assisted Living)-related projects will heavily depend on the successful co-operation with users in pro-active, interactive and open-minded collaborations. Key elements of such developer-user co-operations are various strategies of participatory design (like focus-groups, thinking-aloud, cultural probes, drama, scenario writing, Living-Lab settings etc.). Such approaches will include users as experts for their own case not just as respondents of questionnaires and “guinea-pig”-test-persons but as vital part of the design and development team.

Close user co-operations demand for observing a broad range of ethical issues and questions of privacy and data protection.

• Presentation (1 MB)
• The Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Joint Programme

Birgit GRAF (Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, Robot Systems, Germany), Service Robots for Home Assistance: Markets, Research and Product Visions

Service robots are a growing market and an increasing number of sales can be observed not only for professional but also for domestic applications such as vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers. More than 600.000 of these systems were sold in 2007. This increases the overall number of domestic service robots in operation to more than 3,4 million. For the next 3 years a strong growth is forecast by manufacturers worldwide.

Whereas most of the currently available systems are not very complex, new functionalities such as safe navigation in public environments, object detection and manipulation are getting developed in various research projects. Care-O-bot® 3 is the latest prototype of a complex robotic home assistant developed at Fraunhofer IPA. Equipped with the latest state-of-the-art hardware and a professional design it provides a technology platform for the development and optimization of key technologies and a vision of tomorrow’s household products. Future developments aim at improving and integrating these technologies to enable the dependable execution of complex tasks in everyday environments.

• Presentation (922 KB)

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