Access For All

The ACCESS 2 ALL consortium is pleased to announce its first workshop. The ACCESS 2 ALL workshop aims to bring together all stakeholders in the area of the public transport including the special role of mobility impaired (MI) users.
The workshop’s programme will include presentations by key experts of the projects’ consortium and of external attendees, such as the European Commission and experts of the MEDIATE project as well as interactive parallel sessions involving all interested participants.
The topics of the workshop will revolve around the following thematic areas:

Moreover, open discussion and interactive sessions are foreseen.

The workshop is being organised by the High Institute for Education and Sciences ISEC (PT) in cooperation with the University of Stuttgart (DE), with the support of the coordination team of the project. The workshop will be held at Tiara Park Atlantic Hotel, in Porto (Portugal), on 29th September 2009.
Join the workshop and watch the state of the art presentations on research in accessibility of public transport, meet key stakeholders and industry’s representatives from around Europe and participate to open discussions with European Commission officers and National or European authorities. The participation is free of charge.

To register, please visit www.access-to-all.eu.

University of Surrey is carrying a research project regarding “User Requirements and Technology Acceptance of an Information Tourism System: The Disability Case”. The overall aim of the project is to investigate the content and usability needs of people with disabilities when searching information about the accessibility of tourist destinations on-line. The research will be kept on-line until end of December 2009. If you are interested in contributing, the questionnaire is completely anonymous.

The paper “A UCD approach towards the design, development and assessment of accessible applications in a large scale European Integrated project” by Karel Van Isacker (EPR), Karin Slegers (KUL), Maria Gemou (CERTH-HIT), Evangelos Bekiaris (CERTH-HIT) was presented at the HCI International 2009 on 19-24 July 2009, Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, CA, USA.
It was subsequently published in “Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Addressing Diversity: 5th International Conference, UAHCI 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009) (Paperback) by Constantine Stephanidis (Editor), pp. 184-192, 2009.

You can read it below:

The book itself is a three-volume set LNCS 5614-5616 and constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction – Addressing Diversity, UAHCI 2009, held as Part of HCI International 2009, in San Diego, CA, USA, in July 2009, jointly with 8 other thematically similar conferences.

This is a reminder for 1st International OASIS (www.oasis-project.eu) Conference that will take place on November 4-5, 2009 in Florence, Italy. It will provide a forum to present current and future work as well as to exchange ideas in the field of Independent Living and Autonomous Mobility for elderly.

OASIS is a Large Scale Integrating Project – partially funded by the European Commission (FP7-ICT 215754) – with the aim to develop an open and innovative reference architecture, based upon ontologies and semantic services, that will allow plug and play and cost-effective interconnection of existing and newly developed services in all domains required for the independent and autonomous living of older people and their enhanced Quality of Life.

Topics that will be addressed:
– How to support holistically the independent living and mobility of the elderly across Europe?
– How to connect services for the elderly in an one-stop-shop fashion and interrelate/ integrate them?
– What are the elderly and their families/carers primary needs, concerns and expectations from the technologies and services arising?

These, and much more, are to be presented in Florence, in the 1st International OASIS Conference.

Registration and full details are available at the OASIS website.

Senior (Social Ethical and Privacy Needs in ICT for Older People: a Dialogue Roadmap) project is organising its final conference on 27 November in Brussels, Belgium. This support action developed a systematic assessment of the social, ethical and privacy issues involved in ICT and ageing. This will help to understand what lessons should be learned from current technological trends and how to plan strategies for governing future developments, ensuring that new ICT meet the needs of senior citizens without compromising privacy and ethics. The main outcome is a roadmap which will be presented then as well.

Where?: Borschette Centre, Brussels, Belgium

Due to limited seating, please note that they reserve the right to limit the number of people attending the final conference. There is no fee for attendance, but all who would like to attend needs to contact Valeria Balestrieri (valeria.balestrieri@cssc.eu) at least two weeks in advance.

More information at the project website.

BCDI (Belgian Centre for Domotics and Immotics) CIB W098 workgroup and In-HAM vzw (Innovation centre in Housing for Adapted Movement) organise the International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth (ISfTeH) and the European Health Telematics Association (EHTEL) an international workshop on “Intelligence in assisted homes”. On Thursday 24th the focus will be on assistive technologies: products on the market, view into the future. On Friday 25th September, focus will be on telehealth and telecare.
To register, click here.