Blog Posts
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Innovation Spotlight: From recovery to innovation; the journey to create a revolutionary, low cost, all-terrain wheelchair, that can be manufactured with basic tools, using locally available materials and components.
Global Disability Innovation Hub, Harrison KamauOct. 5, 2022KenyaThe Safari seat, a revolutionary, low-cost, all-terrain wheelchair, was born—an easy-to-repair, customizable solution, that can be manufactured with basic tools, using locally available materials and components.
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Innovation Spotlight: Creating universal access to safe and appropriate sanitation, through innovating accessible toilets for people with disability.
Global Disability Innovation Hub, Harrison KamauSept. 29, 2022KenyaSyna Consultancy is a social enterprise committed to delivering fair and inclusive sanitation solutions. While their mandate has transformed over the years, their major objective is to ensure universal access to safe and appropriate water and sanitation, with special emphasis paid to the needs of underprivileged communities.
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Innovation Spotlight: Completing the communication cycle – how a mentoring experience began a journey into machine learning and avatars to create a new sign language interpretation tool.
Global Disability Innovation Hub, Harrison KamauSept. 23, 2022KenyaFrom the onset, Veezaviz set out to bridge communication barriers. Savatia and his team created a new generation of technology that enables two-way communication among deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing people. They make this possible by using machine learning-based sign language interpretation and automated avatar sign language generation.
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Regulations in AT, an entrepreneurial challenge [Part of our new blog series: AT, Entrepreneurship & Finance - with GDI Hub's Assistive Tech Impact Fund]
Dr Rhys WilliamsAug. 31, 2022Regulations, standards and certifications play an important role in any tech sector and for AT are often one of the most difficult aspects of entrepreneurship, especially in LMICs. In this blog, we explore why regulations can cause headaches for AT entrepreneurs, the different types of regulatory landscapes that people come across, and what founders can do in the face of regulations.
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Changing the investment landscape for AT [Part of our new blog series: AT, Entrepreneurship & Finance - with GDI Hub's Assistive Tech Impact Fund]
Global Disability Innovation Hub, Dr Rhys WilliamsAug. 22, 2022The AT hasn’t historically received investment from angel investors, venture capitalists or impact investors, but for any sector and support ecosystem to really grow, investment capital is needed. To try to understand why investment has been low, we interviewed investment professionals who work across Africa and share their perceptions of the assistive technology sector.
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Balancing Volatility - Emerging African Ecosystems [Part of our new blog series: AT, Entrepreneurship & Finance - with GDI Hub's Assistive Tech Impact Fund]
Global Disability Innovation Hub, Dr Rhys WilliamsAug. 15, 2022Speak to any entrepreneur from Lagos to Johannesburg and you’ll hear that African emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems can be tough. In this blog, we explore some of the trademarks of these ecosystems, and what they mean for ambitious founders in AT.
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Profit for impact in the Assistive Tech space [Part of our new blog series: AT, Entrepreneurship & Finance - with Assistive Tech Impact Fund]
Dr Rhys WilliamsJuly 28, 2022AT organisations need to embrace a ‘selling’ mindset in every part of the company to become sustainable. This may involve upskilling current employees, or even involve hiring new talent from commercial backgrounds. However it is achieved, financially sustainable AT companies offset unexpected and hard to mitigate risks caused by grant and philanthropic capital instability.
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Marketing matters [New blog series: AT, Entrepreneurship & Finance - with Assistive Tech Impact Fund]
Dr Rhys WilliamsJuly 21, 2022It’s time for AT companies to take marketing seriously. Even if companies are not in a position to hire marketing professionals, the founding team can upskill in this area to get their company and AT out into the world. it’s time to take marketing seriously. As we see individual companies grow through sales, we’ll also begin to see more and more ecosystem stakeholders wake up to the opportunities that this impactful sector has to offer.
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Validate to find customers in AT ventures [New blog series: AT, Entrepreneurship & Finance - from Assistive Tech Impact Fund]
Dr Rhys WilliamsJuly 14, 2022Any company that hopes to be successful in the long-term needs to find a customer base that can reliably pay for products and services. Companies that create Assistive Technology are no different, with many companies opting for a business-to-business (B2B) model. For AT companies that are providing goods and services in LMICs, these models can be challenging, because customers could be governments, hospitals and clinicians, non-government organisations, charities, and faith-based organisations.
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Regulations in Assistive Technology
Louisa CottonJuly 6, 2022When you speak to people in entrepreneurial ecosystems, regulations are rarely at the top of peoples lists of favourite things to think about. However, regulations, standards and certifications do however play an important role in any tech sector. They ensure that the products and services are safe, of acceptable quality, and provide ways for governments to keep companies accountable. In a sector like assistive technology, given the incredible potential to impact peoples lives in profound ways, regulations, standards and certifications are a good thing. That being said, they often are one of the most difficult aspects of entrepreneurship to crack, especially in LMICs. When it comes to regulations, there’s no avoiding that they can act as a barrier to growing startups, and when we spoke to AT entrepreneurs and investors that are active in Africa, regs came up in almost every interview we conducted.
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Making the direct-to-consumer model work for AT [New blog series: AT, Entrepreneurship & Finance - from Assistive Tech Impact Fund]
Dr Rhys WilliamsJuly 6, 2022For people with disabilities to have access to high-quality assistive technology, we need a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem that can bring innovative Assistive Technology (AT) to market. For every business to become financially sustainable, a scalable customer base is essential. Many AT companies have focussed on B2B, or B2G customers, however slow and involved sales processes and constrained government budgets with competing interests are pushing many companies to explore direct to consumer (DTC) business models.
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Embedding Inclusive Design in Urban Development: GDI Hub’s Inclusive Design team at the World Urban Forum (WUF11)
Iain McKinnon, Mikaela Patrick, Annamae MuldowneyJune 30, 2022In June 2022, Global Disability Innovation (GDI) Hub’s Inclusive Design team attended the 11th session of the World Urban Forum (WUF11) in Katowice, Poland. The event provided an important opportunity to shape conversation around disability inclusion across 8 prominent sessions, while also enabling GDI Hub’s Inclusive Design team to meet up with key partners and collaborators from our AT2030 research work and our friends and colleagues from the Cities for All network.
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Celebrating the launch of the findings of AT2030’s sub-programmes in Indonesia. From Citizens to Cities: Participatory Approaches to Building Disability-Inclusive Cities
Iain McKinnon, Annamae MuldowneyJune 21, 2022The Kota Kita Foundation (Kota Kita), Global Disability Innovation Hub (GDI Hub) and University College London (UCL) held an event to launch the findings from the ‘Inclusive Infrastructure’ and ’Build Capacity and Participation‘ sub-programmes of the FCDO-funded AT2030 programme, from the AT2030 Initiatives in Surakarta and Banjarmasin, Central Java, Indonesia.
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The purely economic case for investing in Health for All
Oriol Vallès CodinaFeb. 16, 2022Vallès-Codina, O. (2022, forthcoming). “The purely economic case for investing in health for all in lower- and upper-middle income countries: input-output and network analysis of their industrial ecossytem”. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Working Paper Series (IIPP WP 2022-03)
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Gratitude, Celebration and Reflections-International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2021
Bernard ChiiraDec. 7, 2021The theme for this year’s international day for persons with disabilities is leadership and participation of persons with disabilities toward an inclusive, accessible and sustainable post-COVID-19 world! On this special day I have a lot to celebrate and many reflections to share on what this day means to me!
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What is Climate resilient inclusive design and why do we need it? GDI Hub at COP26
Iain McKinnon, Mikaela PatrickOct. 29, 2021This year, we at GDI Hub added climate and crisis resilience as a core theme in our new strategy. We strongly believe that there is no climate justice without disability justice and that the two challenges and missions are intimately connected. 80% of people with disabilities live in low-and-middle-income countries (UNHCR), with many being more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
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A World Apart: A Global Clubfoot Journey Fuelled by One Woman’s Resolve
Miracle FeetOct. 1, 2021SenegalDoctors told Aisha Mballo’s parents it was “God’s will” that she was born with clubfoot, and their attempts to find treatment all ended the same way: no answers. The article tracks her experiences through treatment.
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Can Paralympic sport break down barriers to assistive technology use in Africa?
Nyasha Mharakurwa, Stacy Konadu Mensah, Patrick Yaw ObengSept. 13, 2021GlobalIn this blog, Nyasha Mharakurwa, a wheelchair tennis player and London 2012 Paralympian from Zimbabwe, Stacy Konadu Mensah, a wheelchair tennis player from Ghana, and Patrick Yaw Obeng, a para-athlete from Ghana share their reflections and experiences of barriers to assistive technology access and how Para sports can help break down these barriers for disabled people in Africa.
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Unlocking the potential of the Paralympics: Para Sport Against Stigma
Dr. Jessica Noske Turner (LU London), Prof. Mufunanji Magalsi (UofMalawi), Sheila Mogalo (IPC Consultant)Aug. 17, 2021Malawi, GlobalCommunity engagement is indispensable to realising the potential impact of the Paralympic Games in different African contexts. The Para Sport Against Stigma project is using action research with partners to try out different approaches in practice to develop a knowledge pool for the kinds of community engagement processes that could ground the Paralympics in diverse contexts across the ‘arc’ of the Games cycle: the lead up, the main event, and the legacy of this year’s Tokyo 2021 Paralympic Games.
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The Launch of the Clubfoot Product Narrative
Miracle Feet, Clinton Health Access Initiative, Frederic SeghersJuly 29, 2021GlobalThis blog highlights the need for appropriately resourced and accessible clubfoot treatment programmes around the world. Through this story meet Quraish who shares his experience of the impact early treatment had on his life. Born with clubfoot, a birth defect in which one or both feet are turned inward and downward, it wasn’t until Quraish was four years old that his parents found treatment for his condition. “It changed my life forever,” he says. “I can wear shoes, run like any person can.” Now, with an accounting degree from Makerere University, he wants to pay it forward and help others realize their full potential.
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