AAATE Newsletter 2026#4

Our General Assembly took place, as planned on September 22. The documentation is available in the Member’s area of the website; The minutes will be available in the same place asap.

Our journal, Technology and Disability, published by SAGE, have seen the number of submissions increase considerably over the last year. One reason may be that the journal received an impact factor, and this year it grew a bit (0.8). The down side of this increase is that it gets more difficult to find reviewers. As a AAATE member, Technology and Disability is your journal. We invite members who are involved in research to participate in reviewing when a paper is within their field of expertise. Let’s remember that the quality of a scientific journal lays in the reviewer’s team’s 🙂

As you know AAATE is a member of the GAATO : the Global Alliance of Assistive Technologies Organizations. The GAATO General Assembly 2026 will take place on 19 October. It will include 2 parts. At the member only part, only representatives from each member organisation can attend. But prior to that, a public part, entitled “Assistive Technology: advancing high-quality, sustainable local production of assistive products”, will be open to all members of GAATO member organisations (from 13:00 to 14:00). 2 speakers : Shona McDonald (Founder and Director, Shonaquip Social Enterprise) and Sisary Kheng (CEO, Exceed Worldwide). Both have deep and extensive knowledge and expertise in assistive technology provision in diverse settings. Shona joins us from South Africa with a focus on wheelchairs. Sisary joins us from Cambodia with a focus on prosthetics. There will be opportunities for question and answer with our speakers.

Registration is required to obtain the link to connect : https://forms.gle/miBkizjuRZBP1erU9

AAATE has National Contact Persons in 33 countries (see https://aaate.net/about-aaate/national-contact-persons/). We aim to have NCPs in all European countries : if your country is not represented yet, don’t hesitate to contact Pedro Encarnação, our Past president, in charge of NCPs, to propose you or someone you know and who is prominent in defending Assistive Technologies development. We welcome the new NCP from Ireland, Thomas O’Shaughnessy, from the University of Limerick. We adress our deep thanks to Siobhan Long, from Enable Ireland, for her effort and long-standing services as NCP and AAATE Board Member.

Our friend conference ATAAC is getting close : Oct 21/22 in Zagreb. AAATE will be present. Wim De Backer from Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, host of our AAATE 2027 conference will present the association and the conference during a session. The programme of the conference is available : https://ataac.eu/.

We would be delighted to meet those of you interested in support of students with disabilities in Krakow, on Nov 12-13 at the international workshop “Innovative Assistive Technologies and Accessibility in Higher Education” organised by AGH University of Krakow in cooperation with AAATE. Inscriptions are open, you can find all information available here : https://dostepnosc.agh.edu.pl/en/workshop the detailed programme was just published : https://dostepnosc.agh.edu.pl/home/dd/Konferencja/Pelny_program_konferencji/Workshop_program.pdf

Last but not least, the AAATE Conference 2027 preparations are on track. Already 117 distinguished experts from Europe and beyond have accepted to become members of the Scientific committee. Their expertise will contribute highly to the quality of the conference. The Call for Paper will be released very soon. Spoiler alert : be ready to send your papers for Jan 31st, 2O27. More information : stay tuned on https://aaate2027.eu

AAATE Team

Board 2026-2027

  • Dominique Archambault, Université Paris 8-Vincennes-Saint-Denis, France, President
  • Silvio Marcello Pagliara, University of Cagliari, Italy, President-elect
  • Pedro Encarnação, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal, Past-President
  • Annalu Waller, University of Salford, Manchester, UK, Treasurer
  • Tone Øderud, SINTEF Digital, Norway, Secretary
  • Merita Hoxha, Aleksander Xhuvani University, Albania, Project Officer
  • Lorenzo Desideri, Sigmund Freud University Milano, Italy, External Communication and Information

https://aaate.net/about/board

AAATE Staff members

  • Evert-Jan Hoogerwerf,Secretary General
  • Manuela Aichinger, AAATE Office in JKU (Linz)

Contact the team : office@aaate.net

Recently published in Technology and Disability

The Volume: 38, Number 3 of Technology and Disability is available since August 1st.

Research Articles

  • Devices for foot-drop: Qualitative exploration of functional electrical stimulation, ankle-foot orthoses, foot-up braces, and footwear for foot-drop, by Cathy Bulley, Christopher James Kelly, Niamh Buchan, Niall Cowie, Sarah Hellicar, Kavi C Jagadamma, Derek Santos and Gillian Wilson
  • Use of prompt engineering in teaching students with disabilities, Zaheer Uddin
  • An ergonomic assistive device for digital handwriting and signatures: Design, development, and potential applications, by Darpan Singhal
  • Experiences of students with disabilities toward digital library resources: A case study of selected public universities in Kenya, by Stephen Maina, Proscovia Svärd and Naomi Mwai
  • Role of novel pressure sensor based alarm system in weight-shift behavior in spinal cord injury survivors – A time series, by Nayana Ramkumar, Shruti Patil and Haritha Jose
  • A preliminary survey on the use and barriers of cognitive assistive technologies among older adults with cognitive impairment, by Chizuru Kata and Yuko Nishiura
  • Cross-cultural validation of children’s psychosocial impact of assistive device scale for Spanish population, by Estíbaliz Jiménez-Arberas, Sara Menendez-Espina, Jose Antonio Prieto-Saborit and Jose Antonio Llosa
  • Learners with disabilities’ perspectives on the requirements for mHealth-based digital journaling to promote subjective well-being, by Ariné Kuyler and Ensa Johnson
  • Evaluation of wheelchair satisfaction with wheelchair initial-final sitting pressure, by Fatma Erdeo, Mehmet Korkmaz, Sami Küçükşen and Musa Çankaya
  • Digital technology access and usage among students with disability in Bangladeshi higher education, by Md Shahrier Haider

Upcoming events

2026

2027

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