2006 - eABILITIES (A virtual platform to enhance and organise the coordination among centres for accessibility resources and support)

Scope: eABILITIES aims at developing a framework for current and future actions in research, education and technology transfer in the field of ICT accessibility in the home, vehicle and working environments in Europe. With this purpose, eABILITIES will enable, organise and promote the share of related knowledge, communication, facilities equipment and personnel resources.

Target group: Our target group comprises:
- Social Research Centres
- National Centres for Personal Autonomy and Assistive Technologies
- Research Centres;
- Industrial Research Centres
- SMEs

Project objectives: The objectives of the project are the following:
- Review research developed by RTD projects focusing on technologies, applications and services for elderly and people with disabilities, as well as on those relevant national activities in the 25 European member states and extract the most relevant results.
- Create benchmarking methods and criteria, based guidelines and best practice references, produced by RTD projects, standardisation bodies, user organisations, etc.
- Benchmark existing products and emerging technologies that could contribute to increase the overall quality of life of elderly and disabled citizens by creating the basis of pan-European concepts of accessible environments for disabled and elderly.
- Promote the communication among users, civil servants, research organisations and SMEs by providing them with access to fora and workshops to discuss about relevant issues in the social, commercial and research dimensions of ICT Design for All and Assistive Technologies.
- Offer a collaborative environment that stimulates the active involvement of end-users in the research processes: requirement iterative evaluation activities, workshops, etc.
- Create a common research space where resources (equipment, methodologies, skilled personnel, etc.) can be exchanged by different organisations.
- Produce Recommendations and Best Practices, according to the expected knowledge to be produced within the project, to draw the envisaged picture of eAccessibility in the proposed project scopes.
- Contribute to the standardisation activities that are being undertaken by national, European and international bodies.
- Disseminate activities and plans for the deployment of strategies, creating a shared view towards a common European strategy, that will strongly include SMEs, in order to start up the research and development phases of assisting pan-European environments to enable independent living of elderly and people with disabilities at an affordable cost (to achieve and to maintain), and at best usability (for learning and long term use) for all target users.

Partners (country):This project is a European one that comprises 11 organisations from 6 different member states
- Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM) (Spain)
The LST Department is part of the Technical University of Madrid or “UPM”, one of the largest universities in Europe. The UPM conducts leading technological research in multiple fields. The department maintains partnerships with public and private sectors in its research and technological development areas.
- Center for Research & Technology Hellas / Hellenic Institute of Transport (CERTH/HIT) and Informatics and Telematics Institute (ITI) (Greece)
CERTH is the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, a leading Research Institute, supervised by the Greek Ministry of Development. HIT (Hellenic Institute of Transport) is one of the Institutes, that provides input for policy formulation, documentation of major trends and impacts in the field of Transport, formulation of operational rules and procedures, improvement of the operation and management in the various Transport modes, etc.
- SIEMENS S.A. (Spain)
- Telef

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