PRESS RELEASE

 

LIVE IT: Living Labs and Open Toolkit for the co-design of accessible IT systems and tool

 

19/10/2021

Contact Person: Prof. Panos Bamidis

Contact Details: +30 2310999237 / bamidis@auth.gr

 

The LIVE IT Project has recently completed 6 months of work since the kick-off meeting, last spring (May 2021). All project partners have closely collaborated to achieve successfully the mid-term milestones of the project. They identified the barriers in web accessibility through extended literature review, listed and benchmarked the most promising platforms and tools to support inclusive web accessibility and produced a “Baseline Catalogue” of these resources. On the same time, they conducted interviews and focus groups to collect the views and aspects of the end-users, the Persons with Cognitive Disabilities. Finally, the LIVE IT consortium has also identified a detailed list of targeted stakeholders; primary end-users including among others, Living Labs, associations, policymakers, organizations and individuals of the field.

About LIVE IT:

LIVE IT (Living Labs and Open Toolkit for the co-design of accessible IT systems and tool - Agreement number: LC-01624438 101018048 LIVE IT) is a 12-month EU-funded project (4/2021-3/2022), which aims to support accessibility of people with cognitive disabilities and engagement with digital technologies in their everyday ‘lifeworld.

One of the key barriers to inclusive web accessibility is the stereotyping of people with cognitive disabilities as “the problem”. Technology is then framed as an intervention imposed from above that will fix the problem. In this situation, the needs of people with cognitive impairments are often only superficially taken into account. There is a significant body of evidence to show that technology designers and developers have little or no knowledge of the challenges people with cognitive disabilities face when using technologies. This is related to the lack of scientific evidence on the relation between cognitive disability and technology, which is in turn linked to the fact that people with cognitive disabilities very rarely participate in research, design or development. Another related issue is that people with cognitive impairments are frequently bundled together as a homogenous group, so that designers and developers impose a “one size fits all” solution not only on a diverse spectrum of people whose digital challenges and needs stem from varied and often complex origins but on people who present with a wide spectrum – and intensity – of impairment, from very mild to very severe.

Against this background, the overarching aim of the project is to:

Aggregate and valorize the insights and findings of different “research lenses” on the relationship between cognitive disabilities and digital inclusion into actionable experimentation spaces, in order to support inclusive accessibility by tailoring design to the settings in which people with cognitive disabilities engage with digital technologies in their everyday “lifeworld”.

LIVE IT OPEN TOOLKIT is an integrated Open Toolkit with recommended tools that can be used in existing platforms and services. This Open Toolkit will include the outputs of the Hackathons and AI-driven meta environment analysis.

About the LIVE IT consortium:

An overview of the consortium partners follows:

1. AUTH (GR) – Project Coordinator: The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) is the largest University in Greece covering all disciplines. The AUTH Medical Physics & Digital Innovation Laboratory is the largest laboratory in the School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences taking into account the number of researchers, the amount of funds and the academic and research work and excellence.

2. ARC (UK): an independent research organisation based in the east end of London. It works in the following areas: technology development and evaluation; social science research; organizational development; educational research; project management. ARC will involve Pete Kercher (an expert with pluriannual experience on Design for all and strategic design method) as a sub-contractor for support on design for all activities and dissemination.

3. NUI GALWAY (IE): The National University of Ireland (NUI), Galway has an international reputation in the Applied Social Sciences and Public Policy and is committed to improving our understanding of innovation and social entrepreneurial strategies. The Centre for Pedagogy and Public Engagement Research (CoPPER) at the School of Education, NUI Galway focuses on informal learning in community settings.

4. UCP (PT): Research Centre on Peoples and Cultures is a research center of the Portuguese Catholic University, established in February 1983. CEPCEP pursues the development of culture, knowledge, advanced research, and co-operation in the intellectual, artistic, technological and scientific fields, bringing together people from different research fields and from various countries and world continents. UCP will be supported by ADFP foundation for the creation of the Lab and providing target groups.

 

*For more information, you can visit the project website: https://liveit-project.eu/

**Get in touch: FB: Live It Project, Twitter: @LiveIT_proj, LinkedIn: Live It Project