All Institute

“The Future of Smart & Healthy Ageing: SHAPES Results, Recommendations & Reflections for an Inclusive Europe and a Participative Civil Society”

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Symposium

Author: Tom Hall Research Assistant on the SHAPES project in ALL

SHAPES: Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in supportive Systems Logo. As European citizens’ life expectancy increases, older people (65+) account for a progressively larger percentage of the total EU population. Trends suggest this will rise from 21.2% in 2022 to 25% in 2030. Along with these demographic changes, larger numbers of people will experience health-related issues. This raises significant challenges for European healthcare systems. In light of these, the SHAPES (Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems) project led by Maynooth University aims to create an integrated IT platform which offers a wide range of digital solutions. These are focused on improving the health, well-being, and independence of people as they get older.

The DANCING Mid-Term Academic Conference: Taking Stock of the First Three Years and Reflecting on the Challenges of Interdisciplinarity

Social Lives

Author: Eva Krolla, Research Assistant in the ERC-funded DANCING Project at the School of Law and Criminology and Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute, Maynooth University

*DANCING Mid-Term Academic Conference speakers*

The European Research Council (ERC) funded research project ‘Protecting the Right to Culture of Persons with Disabilities and Enhancing Cultural Diversity in EU Law: Exploring New Paths – DANCING’ based at the ALL Institute and the School of Law and Criminology under the lead of Principal Investigator Prof. Delia Ferri marked its halfway point by hosting the DANCING Mid-Term Academic Conference on Monday, 4 September 2023 at Maynooth University.

Exploring the Impact of the EU ‘Draft AI Act’ on Democracy: A Timely Discussion with the ‘Draft Compromise Text’ of the European Parliament

Social Structures

Author: Gizem Yardimci, Early Career Researcher at ADVANCE CRT, PhD Student in Law, Maynooth University

The Draft Artificial Intelligence Act (Draft AI Act) for the European Union (EU) represents a significant milestone towards the regulation of technologies employing AI within the EU. Since the zero version of the Draft AI Act was released on 21 April 2021, it has been discussed extensively by academics, policymakers and professionals who are involved in the decision-making processes within the EU. In May of this year, the European Parliament released a Draft Compromise Text with significant amendments on the Draft AI Act. Therefore, the European Parliament is in a position to launch ‘trialogues’ with the European Commission and the Council of the European Union. Overall, this development represents a formal step towards finalising the regulation for AI systems in the EU.

The main goal of the Draft AI Act is to improve the functioning of the internal market and to advance the creation of a digital single market as indicated in the Digital Single Market Strategy.

PatentsInHumans Public Launch Event: An Overview

Social Lives

Authors: Professor Aisling McMahon, Principal Investigator (PI) & Sinéad Masterson, Project Manager, PatentsInHumans

Professor Aisling McMahon presenting to attendees — Professor Aisling McMahon

On 20^th April 2023, the PatentsInHumans team were delighted to host the public launch event for the European Research Council (ERC) funded PatentsInHumans project in Maynooth University. The event was attended by over 45 individuals, including, members of the public, students and academics working in a range of disciplines (including law, biology, political science and business), practising lawyers, and technology transfer specialists.

The PatentsInHumans project, based in the School of Law and Criminology and ALL Institute at Maynooth University, commenced on the 1^st November 2022 and is a large interdisciplinary five-year project. It is funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant and led by Professor Aisling McMahon. Alongside Professor McMahon, the PatentsInHumans team includes project manager, Sinéad Masterson, and postdoctoral researcher, Dr Opeyemi Kolawole. As the project develops, we will be recruiting more researchers to join the team in the coming months and years ahead.

From the Centre Back to the Margins: Invisibility of Persons with Disabilities in the Draft Convention on the Right to Development

Social Structures

Author: Harry Chikasamba, PhD Researcher, Assistive Living and Learning (ALL) Institute, School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University

Harry Chikasamba

Until 2006, persons with disabilities were invisible in core legally binding human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Unsurprisingly, this was the case because persons with disabilities were being considered as having a lower social status, being dependent and inferior in society. In the early and mid-2000s, persons with disabilities convened as self-advocates in the historical halls of the United Nations (UN) in New York where they exhibited an unwavering spirit of resilience and genuine pursuit of equality which shaped and brought to life the first ever legally binding international human rights treaty in the 21^st century: the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). In principle, the CRPD protects and promotes the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities, ensuring their full and equal participation in society.

Sadly, the draft Convention on the Right to Development, currently undergoing negotiations at the UN, risks undermining the feeble progress painstakingly made over the past 15 years since the CRPD came into force in 2008. Among other gains, the CRPD has served as the major global catalyst towards viewing persons with disabilities as equal members of society, positioning disability as both a matter of human rights and of development which is evident in the inclusion of disability issues in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Worth noting, disability and persons with disabilities are referred to 11 times in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that make up the 2030 Agenda. Dishearteningly, the invisibility of persons with disabilities in the draft Convention means that, at this juncture, any prospects of advancing disability-inclusive development remain bleak and devoid of hope.

An Interview with Stephanie Ortoleva, Founder of Women Enabled International (November 14^th, 2022)

Stories/Lived Experience

Symposium

Author: Dr Ana María Sánchez Rodríguez, MSCA Fellow and Adjunct Assistant Professor of the Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute

Stephanie Ortoleva and Ana Maria Sanchez Rodriguez — Stephanie Ortoleva and Ana María Sánchez Rodríguez

Stephanie Ortoleva, founder of Women Enabled International (WEI) advocates for women and girls with disabilities. She says that, “disabled women are organizing for ourselves because we have found that other movements, whether it’s the women’s rights movement or the disability rights movement, very often don’t include our issues as the key points of their advocacy. Disabled women just aren’t going to be silent anymore” (Ford Foundation, 2020).

In the summer of 2012, I started my research journey as an intern for WEI. WEI wanted to help and join the work on the revision of laws in India and globally. The central issue was violence against women and girls with disabilities. The same year, Stephanie and Hope Lewis published a seminal work on violence against women with disabilities called: Forgotten Sisters – A Report on Violence Against Women with Disabilities: An Overview of its Nature, Scope, Causes and Consequences.

Continue reading Women Enabled International (November 14^th, 2022)”

Developing a Sustainable, Needs-based Roadmap for Social and Assistive Robots for Older Care

Social Technologies

Symposium

Authors: Louise Veling is a Senior Post-Doctoral Researcher with the Horizon 2020 SHAPES Project as part of the Assisted Living and Learning (ALL) Institute / Department of Engineering at Maynooth University. Rudi Villing is a Lecturer with the School of Engineering at Maynooth University, Programme Director of the BSc in Robotics & Intelligence Devices, member of the Hamilton Institute and associate director of the Assisted Living and Learning (ALL) institute.

Left to Right Rudi Villing, Louise Veling — Rudi Villing and Louise Veling

Few people would dispute the importance of centring older people’s needs when it comes to developing assistive technologies. For assistive robots, this is even more important. As in other fields, within robotics and human-robot interaction (HRI) research, older people are often subject to stereotypical representations and ageist attitudes. Assistive robots are also still in their infancy, with few yet deployed in practice, so there is still some distance to go before robots make it out of the lab and into the real world. What they will be capable of and how they will be used is still in a process of negotiation.

Is Social Sustainability the Forgotten Pillar of Sustainable Development?

Social Structures

Symposium

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:

The only important thing about design is how it relates to people

Quotation 'The only important thing about design is how it relates to people' alongside an image of a book with the title Design for the Real Workld, by Victor Papanek. — 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?

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Author : Eamon Callan is a second-year psychological studies student (Maynooth University) and was a SPUR intern on the GoGreenRoutes project during the Summer of 2023.

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