GAAD Special: Emerging Tech and Accessibility

20 May 2021 marks the 10th Global Accessibility Awareness Day! To celebrate this, Funka invites you to a special webinar on emerging tech and accessibility. Together with our panel of developers and experts, we’ll shine a spotlight on how technological innovation can empower and include persons with disabilities – and the accessibility hurdles that remain to be cleared. Sign up now!

The webinar will be moderated by Emil Gejrot (CPACC), researcher at Funka. Emil has carried out a number of research studies on disability rights, accessibility and technology. Recently, he completed a study of extended reality (XR) solutions for accessibility.

At the webinar, he will be joined by an international panel of practitioners and experts:

Valentin Weilun Gong is a design technologist pursuing a joint MSc and MA in Innovation Design Engineering at the Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. He will talk about the Dots project, a wearable and adaptive interface that allows persons with reduced mobility to control digital devices and mixed reality environments.

Chiara Valzolgher is a PhD student at the University of Trento, Italy and the Neuroscience Research Centre in Lyon, France. Her research explores the cognitive mechanisms involved in spatial hearing. She will present a VR approach to testing and training people's ability to localize sounds, as well as preliminary results of an ongoing project involving people with bilateral cochlear implants.

Paul de Nooij is an innovation specialist at Bartiméus, a centre of expertise that provides support to persons with low vision in the Netherlands. He develops solutions to problems experienced by people with low vision. Paul is going to talk about the future of wayfinding for persons with low vision and show an example of an indoor navigation tool that uses Augmented Reality technology.

Date and time: 20 May, 13.00 - 14.00 PM CET

Venue: Online (Zoom), you will receive an email with a link to the webinar.

A Zoom link and information about how to participate in the webinar will be sent out on the same day as the webinar, shortly after 12.00 PM CET. Please check your spam folder if you have not received the email with the link.

The webinar is free of charge, but you do need to register.

Registration is now closed.

Welcome!