The 15th International Conference of AAATE (Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology) was held in Bologna from August 27th to 30th, 2019. The association has 250 members, including institutions, universities, public and private subjects from the world of research and industry and is the most important international group for the study, exchange and sharing of information on assistive technology issues.
What are assistive technologies? Assistive technologies are tools that can promote individual integration in the environment, in order to provide the person with disabilities with the necessary personal autonomy to exercise their everyday choices, regarding their home, their workplace, the city spaces. This definition is in line with the general principles of the 1996 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: respect for the intrinsic dignity, individual autonomy - including the freedom to make one's own choices - and independence of the person. Assistive technologies include a wide range of systems and areas of development, such as social robotics, virtual reality, home automation, brain-computer interfaces, voice recognition systems, augmentative and alternative communication, and all the telecare and digital health applications.
During the conference, organized from a partnership between the Service for students with disabilities and LDs of the University of Bologna and AIAS Bologna Onlus, the results of the WHO resolution of 26 May 2018 in favour of global accessibility to assistive technologies were presented, in order to allow a comparison between the most representative local and national realities and the most important networks at global level, in a specific high level meeting. Lepida actively participated to AAATE 2019 by taking part in the session dedicated to IoT technologies and participating in the high level meeting. All information about the conference is available at www.aaate2019.eu.
