Executive summary
Disabled people face barriers in their everyday lives to work, play, rest and care. Disability is estimated to affect 1.3 billion people or 16% of the world’s population (). In the UK, there are 16 million people reporting a disability, with the prevalence increasing with age ().
Digital assistive technologies (DigAT) promise to promote independence for disabled people, potentially reducing or eliminating existing barriers. This report defines DigAT as ‘any technology that processes information to help make people’s lives easier’ (). Examples include screen-readers, speech-to-text software, or smartphone applications which support daily living. This definition does not include non-digital assistive technologies (eg white canes or sticks, manual wheelchairs, or magnifying glasses).
While this report is focused primarily on the needs of disabled people, disability access is relevant to all as everyone can experience temporary and permanent disability throughout their life. Accessibility can also benefit the whole of society as products designed for disabled people (eg automatic doors, closed captioning and voice assistants) are often valued by all.
The physical, emotional and social impact of disability, as well as attitudes towards disabled people, can affect all aspects of disabled people’s lives. This includes impacts on education, employment, wellbeing and life expectancy. DigAT will not be a standalone solution for these challenges and, in some cases, technology itself causes significant challenges for disabled people.
However, if designed and deployed appropriately, these technologies can be transformative in helping disabled people live more independent and fulfilled lives. Exemplifying this, the report highlights five case studies of how DigAT can support disabled people across work; gaming; tourism; music; and social care.
In addition to exploring the landscape of DigAT, the report is focused on various challenges within the DigAT lifecycle related to measurement, inclusive design and sustainability. Furthermore, it provides an overview of small data methods. These methods, which help researchers derive insights from limited data, present significant potential across a broad range of scientific fields, including the development of DigAT.
The nature of disability is inherently diverse and complex. To ensure a more defined focus, the report has generally explored disabilities related to hearing; cognition; mobility; self-care; built-environment; vision; and communication.
The report has been guided by an international expert steering committee, many of whom have lived experience of disability. It has been informed by a series of activities undertaken by the Royal Society. These include a survey of more than 800 UK-based disabled people; a nationally representative survey of approximately 2,000 members of the British public; focus groups with UK-based DigAT users; literature reviews on disability data and small data; a case study analysis of DigAT in the UK, US, India and Kenya; and various roundtables and workshops on inclusive design, gaming, social care and technology transience.
The key findings and recommendations of the report are intended to be useful for policymakers across the world.
The chapters cover the core foundations of DigAT: data, analytical techniques, inclusive design and sustainability. The report does not prescribe specific examples of DigAT to be developed, although the final chapter sets out potential applications as proposed by disabled people.
Key findings
- Simple, quantitative measures to approximate complex health statuses can be inconsistent and reductive. Examples include self-identification in population surveys and perceived measures from medical datasets. This can have implications for disability-related policy interventions and comparisons of their efficacy. It may also incentivise the inappropriate prioritisation of the medical model of disability (where exclusion from activities results directly from an individual’s functional challenges) over the social model (which accounts for society’s failure to meet people’s accessibility needs). Understanding the limitations of this data is essential for the responsible design of disability-related research, effective policy-making and to avoid misrepresentation.
- Digital assistive technologies can enable disabled people to engage independently in a range of activities including those related to employment, leisure and the home. According to a survey of UK-based disabled people, conducted for this report, more than half of DigAT users said they could not live their lives the way they do without DigAT. In addition, a nationally representative survey of the British public suggests there is an expectation for technologies to meet people’s needs as they grow older and a willingness to use them if they were shown to enhance their independence.
- Inclusive design (or ‘co-design’) practices are essential to the development of effective and user-friendly DigAT. There are several aspects to this including the accessibility of design software and work environments; the involvement of disabled people throughout the design process; sharing accessibility information ahead of the launch of a product; and actioning feedback from disabled users post-development. This may also require developers to unlearn exclusionary design practices and to consider long-term challenges related to a product’s sustainability (eg obsolescence and repairability).
- Big data techniques may fail to represent minority groups (eg disabled people) in the large datasets being analysed. This can lead to disabled people not being represented in patterns extracted by these techniques, reinforcing biases in favour of non-disabled people. Small data approaches, which focus on context-specific information from smaller datasets (eg personalised data gained via wearable technologies) can allow for more granular analysis of disabled people’s experiences. These approaches, however, remain at an emerging stage of development and are likely to require longer term advancements within machine learning to be most useful for DigAT.
- The development of inclusive technologies can improve the user experience for all users, disabled or non-disabled. Assistive features designed for disabled people can often produce better experiences for non-disabled people too. Examples of this include closed captioning, text-to-speech and voice assistants. As such, a sole focus on disability prevalence when making the case for investment in DigAT may lead to an underestimate of the economic opportunity.
- Accessibility training and education for users and professionals is key for DigAT adoption in work, leisure and social care settings. This can help address DigAT adoption challenges due to lack of awareness of DigAT and digital skills gaps.
- There are various ethical concerns related to the development of DigAT, including privacy; data bias; data minimisation; informed consent; equitable access; and ideological beliefs (eg discriminatory eugenics). How these concerns are addressed and balanced against the opportunities provided by DigAT will be an important influencing factor in how widely they are adopted by disabled people.
Future research questions
The following topics and issues emerged in research activities as key considerations for disability data and digital assistive technologies:
- New sensory datasets: What new sensory datasets (eg sound, smell, haptic) need to be developed or made available to enhance multi-modal analytical techniques for improving DigAT?
- Inequities in global data for DigAT: What barriers exist to the provision of DigAT that can be applied globally as widely as possible across regions and cultural contexts? This may include considerations of the quality of data on diverse languages and built environments.
- Education and training: How best can carers and general users be educated on how to use DigAT? How can DigAT enable greater access to education for disabled people and children?
- Complex disabilities and intellectual disabilities: Many applications of DigAT are focused on specific individual types of disability. How can the development of DigAT be adapted to better consider the needs of those who experience complex disabilities (where people have a combination of different disabilities)
and/or intellectual disabilities?
- Regulation of medical devices: What are the advantages and disadvantages of current regulatory approaches to medical devices if applied to DigAT?
- Funding for DigAT research and development: The nature of DigAT research is often interdisciplinary. What are the challenges in obtaining funding for research and development of DigAT? How can these be addressed by research funders?
- Personalised AI: How can AI systems which automatically adapt to individual user behaviours, preferences and needs enhance the effectiveness of DigAT?
