On behalf of the Association for the Advancement of Assistive technology in Europe (AAATE) we are honoured to publish the proceedings of the 9th European Conference of the Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe.

Every two years, the AAATE conference provides a time to reflect, to review results from previous years and to plan the future of Assistive Technology field for the coming years. The exercise for the 9th edition of the conference led us to recognize, opportunity, challenges and responsibility as keywords.

In the XXIst century Assistive Technology (AT) should be defined as a scientific & technologic approach to the development of products and services oriented to support the elderly and people with disabilities in their daily activities, maximizing their personal autonomy, independence, health and quality of life. Therefore, AT should be an instrument for the improvement of the well-being, social participation, and the quality of life of people with disabilities, their families and professionals involved in their care.

The AT field, should bring this theoretical definition to reality more than ever, in order to counteract one of the main challenges that advanced societies will face during the coming years; the population ageing. There is no doubt that ageing represents one of the major topics in European policies; Europe is the most aged population in the world along with Japan. The natural association between ageing and disability is evident, and the number of people with disabilities is thus increasing as consequence of population ageing. It is estimated that the percentage of people with some kind of disability in Europe is 11%, and these numbers will presumably increase to 18% in 2020, mainly because of the mentioned population ageing.

Because of the rapid ageing of the population, new tools are required for assuring the sustainability of health-care system, and the AT field will be one of those fundamental tools. In effect, AT plays a fundamental role in equalising opportunities and in improving quality of life of people with disabilities, since it provides solutions oriented to the rehabilitation or compensation of functional abilities, helping to eliminate barriers in every kind of environment. The satisfactory use of this tool enables a greater inclusion of people with disabilities into modern society, and therefore relieves some of the strain placed on health care and other public services.

During the past few years, the AT field has developed quickly, mainly because of the technological revolution. There are better solutions now than there were 20, 10 or 5 years ago. And furthermore we foresee solutions that were unimaginable a few years ago, such as neuroprosthetics for urinary control in people with spinal cord injury or the cochlear implant for people with hearing impairments. This development is evident in “high tech” products (e-health, computer based systems…) and also in traditional products such as the wheelchair.

Despite such technological development and the opportunity it opens, the AT field is not as advanced as desired and there is still a long way to cover.

As demonstrated by the study carried out by the EU Commission “Access to Assistive Technology in the European Union”, the AT field is still an unstructured market with a lack of transparency, which derives in poor communication channels. As a consequence, the end user of AT products is dealing with a lack of information when deciding about the most suitable product to purchase. Additionally, AT assessment processes still do not integrate the required interdisciplinary vision and are carried out by single persons who, in most of the cases, do not have suitable education. This scenario leads to situations where the provided solution is not the most suitable one from the integral point of view, generating unsatisfactory and even delicate situations.

Overall, despite great technological development, AT offer has not been developed as much as it should have been during the last 30 years. The AT products are still mainly oriented to mobility, and the actual offer does not consider the epidemiologic trend, thereby missing high prevalence disabilities such as those related to neurodegenerative disorders (i.e. Alzheimer, Parkinson…). Moreover, AT does not consider at all prevention and rehabilitation stages, which are as important as compensation.

We are, therefore, in a situation of necessity but also in front of an opportunity. An opportunity to create a new economic scenario comparable to those related to main sectors; an economic scenario where AT in close link to health technologies, can become one of the engines of the new society. The early baby-boomers are already over 60 and will represent the most important social movement in advanced societies during next 20 years, gathering for example the 50% of the American purchase capacity. We need to look at AT and accessibility not just from a social point of view, but from an economic view as well. Only by making this jump will we be able to succeed and get a real market, providing solutions for real needs.

But this opportunity presents challenges; challenges that we will have to face, in order to take advantage of the situation and to achieve the objectives, in terms of market volume and in terms of quality of life. We are thus responsible for our own future, and this responsibility means that the scientific community should look strategically to AT and moreover, university system should provide appropriate AT professionals.

The 9th AAATE Conference addresses five main challenges, which have motivated most of the papers published in this proceeding book.

New Technologies: technological development is still ongoing and AT needs to be aware of all new opportunities this development raises. Besides mechanics and electronics, also ambient intelligence, smart and advance materials, nanoelectronics, biomechatronics and even bionics can offer important options for suitable solutions for people with disabilities and elderly people.

Socio-Economic Issues: making AT products affordable to end users is definitely one of the big challenges for the coming years.

Universal design and its engagement with Assistive Technology: Integrating Design for All philosophy in the development of regular products and even AT products will speed up the integration process, reducing the gap between context requirements and functional abilities of people with disability.

Evidence based Practice: business opportunities for AT will only be realized with a sound knowledge and understanding of the use of AT solutions in real practice.

Ageing and disability: Europe, as all other developed regions in the World, is facing a new social challenge: population ageing. This issue will introduce new type of needs and demands in terms of care, support and prevention, which AT will have to face.

This publication brings together the main contributions from the whole AT community, during the 9th edition of the AAATE conference, from more than 250 contributions. Unfortunately it was not possible to include all the contributions but these numbers show clearly the active role the community is taking, which created for the scientific committee a heavy but pleasured work. We would like to thank all scientific committee members and specially the support of the AAATE president Gerald Craddock. Last but not least, we want to thank sponsors and collaborators who made possible the edition of this book and the conference organization.

Gorka Eizmendi, Chairman AAATE07 Conference

Jose Miguel Azkoitia, Co-Chairman AAATE07 Conference