Author: Ruth O’Reilly, Senior Built Environment Design Advisor, Centre for Excellence in Universal Design, National Disability Authority
Here at the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design, we often use this quotation from the designer, Victor Papanek, to explain the focus of our work:
Figure 1: Quotation from Design for the Real World by Victor Papenek (1971)
A key tenet of Universal Design is that good design works well for everyone. Sometimes however, it seems that social sustainability is the forgotten pillar of sustainable development. How can we persuade designers that taking a Universal Design approach – designing for all people, regardless of their age, size, ability or disability – is a key element of sustainable development?
Author: Ann Leahy, Post-doctoral Researcher, ERC Project DANCING, Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute, School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University. Author of, ‘Disability and Ageing: Towards a Critical Perspective’, with Policy Press.
Disability and Ageing: Towards a Critical Perspective
The celebration of the United Nations (UN) International Day of Older Persons on 1 October 2022, may make some reflections on issues relating to disability and ageing appropriate. I suggest that looking at ageing and disability together is valuable, despite the fact that the fields of ageing and of disability usually tend to remain quite separate. At a most fundamental level, understandings of what ‘disability’ is may differ depending on when disability is first experienced across the lifespan. Older people experiencing impairments are not always considered ‘disabled’ and there are a range of consequences that flow from this. Specifically, ‘disability’ is approached separately from ageing within public policies, scholarship and activism, depending on whether it is first experienced early or late in life. Despite the ageing of our populations and how some 46% of older people worldwide have an impairment, it tends to be under-recognised that older people represent the majority of the overall population of persons with disabilities. Furthermore, the strict separation between ‘ageing’ and ‘disability’ is paradoxical, given that people with disabilities age and that most people will experience disability if they live long enough.
Author: Dr Richard Vance, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Department of Psychology and Assisting Living & Learning (ALL) Institute, Maynooth University
Dr Richard Vance
“I fear the day when technology overlaps our humanity” goes a quote, which is dubiously attributed to Albert Einstein on the internet—sometimes you can trust technology, sometimes you can’t.
Last week was Social Justice Week in Maynooth, and it’s as good a time as any to reflect on whether we’re making a positive difference to the lives of others and the world around us. I want to look at how we’re approaching the design and provision of digital health technologies for older adults to promote health and well-being and reduce inequality.
Authors: Kate Rochford, 3rd Year Undergraduate Intern, Department of Psychology, Maynooth University & Mac MacLachlan, Co-Director of the Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute, Maynooth University and Clinical Lead for Disability Services, Irish Health Service (HSE).
This figure illustrates the concept of disciplinary capture whereby one way of thinking (represented by one single text here) determines how people think about an issue. Like a whirlwind, it can often powerfully funnel thinking, ignoring the range of ideas available within the group, which otherwise may provide useful alternatives or additions to proposed actions. Image by Kate Rochford
Introduction An interdisciplinary approach to research has become increasingly popular when dealing with different topics (Aboelela et al., 2007). Such an approach can offer a more comprehensive or holistic perspective and is most suited to addressing real-world complex issues (Repko et al., 2017). However, while interdisciplinary collaboration may be appealing in theory, it is often difficult in practice (Cummings and Kiesler, 2007). In that regard, we believe that the concept of ‘disciplinary capture’ can supplement an enhanced interdisciplinary approach. It can also help to transpose academic thinking into practice. Particularly, in relation to disability, and services for persons with disabilities, this concept can translate into more effective integration of services.
Disciplinary capture involves thinking about problems from only one perspective (Brister, 2016). Disciplinary capture can determine what sort of ideas, facts, interventions or causal explanations, are depicted as permissible. For instance, a disease-model approach to mental health may only accept pharmaceutical interventions as being legitimate for a range of mental health problems, while a more psychological, social or human rights approach may not accept this (MacLachlan et al, 2021). In this scenario, if proponents of the disease model are positioned in such a way that other professions are expected to be deferential towards them, then this is likely to inhibit truly interdisciplinary practice. Moreover, this can impede the empirical merit of such a position through the preclusion of an open discussion which would allow for full exploration of all the possible alternatives. The result may manifest in poorer decision-making processes and sub-optimal interventions.
Author: Matthew McKenna, PhD Researcher at Maynooth University’s Assisting Living and Learning Institute (ALL Institute)
Matthew McKenna
The European Union (EU) is arguably emerging as a global leader in the ethical and human rights-based regulation and deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare, domestic and wider societal settings in the twenty-first century. On the 8th of April 2019, the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI presented ‘Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence’. This followed the publication of the guidelines’ first draft in December 2018 on which more than five hundred comments were received through an open consultation.
According to the Guidelines, trustworthy AI should be:
(1) Lawful – Respecting all applicable laws and regulations
(2) Ethical – Respecting ethical principles and values
(3) Robust – Both from a technical perspective while taking into account its social environment
