Professor Malcolm MacLachlan:

The distinction between universal design and reasonable accommodations is worth making. In essence, universal design is trying to design things in order that as broad a range of people can use them without adaptations, whereas reasonable accommodations, which is part of the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, requires countries to provide the technologies that are necessary to allow people to participate effectively in society.

They are actually complementary. They are things we should be doing together, and one is clearly much more broadly at the societal level. If we think of the European accessibility Act and the requirement that people from many different backgrounds can use an ATM or a voting machine, we see that they have to be designed in a universally acceptable way. However, we will always need some technologies that facilitate individuals because of their particular needs. I agree with my colleagues that there is a two-pronged approach which is, first, to do with public awareness and, second, to do with the idea of using technologies for individuals, but it must always start from the individual’s needs. A concept that people talk about, technological solutionism, is where people think technology is the solution, whereas it is the person who is the solution as it is about enabling the person to do the things they want and the technology has a secondary role in doing that.

In terms of user training, later this month the WHO is airing a massive open online course which is intended to upskill a whole range of different professions. It is called TAP, or training in assistive products, and it is also for people who are users of technologies. That will come back to the idea that there are specialist skills that are needed for different types of technologies but there are also some generic skills. That course would be encouraging a broader range of professions to feel confident in working with a different range of technologies.

On the point around assistive technology, AT, and whether there should be an assistive technology unit or something like that in some Government Department, there are advantages and disadvantages to that because, of course, the question is in which Department it is to be. As we are all aware, disability is currently on the move out of the Department of Health to a more equality-focused Department, which I believe is where disability should be but, equally, assistive technology is very important in education, employment and social justice. If it was the case that it was going to be in one particular place, we would need to be very sure there were ways of articulating across different Departments or having desk officers in different Departments feeding into a particular unit.