The Royal Society’s new report explores the potential for data-driven assistive technologies to reduce barriers that disabled people encounter in their everyday lives.
From voice assistants, speech-to-text software, and smartphone apps for daily living, the report highlights the digital assistive technologies (AT) disabled people are using in work, play, rest, and care.
The Royal Society says digital assistive technologies, if designed and deployed appropriately, can be transformative in helping disabled people live more independent and fulfilled lives.
While the ‘Disability Technology’ 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, says the Royal Society.
The report emphasises that disabled people should be included at the earliest stages of policy and technology design and that more should be done to make digital AT accessible through training, funding and infrastructure.
Dr Hamied Haroon, Research Fellow in Quantitative Biomedical MR Imaging, University of Manchester and a member of the Royal Society Diversity and Inclusion Committee’s Disabled Scientists Subgroup, said: “We shouldn’t be developing assistive technologies or policies without disabled people being front and centre of the process.
“How do you capture the day-to-day challenges faced by disabled people, or ensure you’re offering solutions that actually work, unless you talk to disabled people?”
In addition to exploring the landscape of digital AT, the report focuses on various challenges within the digital AT lifecycle related to data, inclusive design, and sustainable adoption.
In the age of AI, built on vast datasets, this report emphasises the importance of innovative research methods, such as small data, which help researchers derive insights from limited data and can be useful for development of personalised digital AT.
This report was 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 digital AT users; literature reviews on disability data and small data; a case study analysis of digital AT in the UK, US, India, and Kenya; and various roundtables and workshops on inclusive design, gaming, social care and technology transience.
This report has been guided by an international expert steering committee, many of whom have lived experience of disability.
The steering committee includes Professor Sir Bernard Silverman FRS, the chair, Dr Vint Cerf FRS, Professor Jacques Fleuriot, Dr Louise Hickman, Professor Catherine Holloway, Prateek Madhav, Professor Mike Wald, and from the Royal Society Diversity and Inclusion Committee Disabled Scientists Subgroup, Professor Paul Upchurch, Professor Seralynne Vann, and Dr Hamied Haroon.
More than half of disabled digital AT users surveyed for the report said they could not live the way they do without such technology; however there are significant barriers to access.
Disabled people in the UK are almost twice as likely as non-disabled people to be unemployed, and the report highlights the average disabled household faces over £1,000 a month in extra costs. This makes the high price of many assistive technologies needed for work or daily life prohibitive, and the report calls for measures to address digital exclusion through training, funding and regulation.
It also recommends governments recognise smartphones as an assistive technology – in the same way as wheelchairs and hearing aids – and factor this into the provision of essential services like health, education, and internet access.
“These assistive technologies are fundamental to the workplace and our daily tasks – but they can be prohibitively expensive or unusable in some settings,” said Dr Haroon.
“We need to look at removing these barriers, whether that’s costs, additional training, or infrastructure improvements – like addressing patchy mobile data services that can cut off disabled people in rural and deprived areas.”
The report also proposes a rethink in the way disability data is recorded by statistics bodies. This should include more data on the daily challenges many people experience with their sight, mobility, and memory, rather than solely focusing on self-reported disability identity.
This would support policy makers, scientists, and technology companies to ensure public services, research, and digital tools are genuinely responsive to disabled people’s needs. This will only become more important as data-driven and AI technologies continue to advance rapidly.
The Royal Society is a Fellowship of many of the world’s most eminent scientists and is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence.
Whether for work, play, rest or care, inclusively designed, sustainable digital assistive technologies can create a more accessible society for all, says the Royal Society.
Research from Citizens Advice revealed that the majority of complaints about assistive technology are about defective goods.
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