Event Summary: Advancing Assistive Technology in Ireland From Report to Action (GAAD 2026)
Date: Thursday, 21st May 2026
Event: CHAT on Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)
Focus: Exploring the WHO Assistive Technology Capacity Assessment (ATHC) Report for Ireland
1. Welcome and Introduction
Sarah opened the event by welcoming attendees and introducing the core mission of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). She framed GAAD as an international day focused on digital access, accessibility, and inclusion for everyone. She reminded the audience that technology can either create barriers or remove them, and that assistive technology (AT) is not a niche luxury but standard infrastructure for communication, independence, and full participation in society.
Sarah highlighted CHAT’s 12-year history as a community of practice operating under Freedom Tech. She celebrated a major milestone for the hub: securing state funding for the first time through the CREATE 3.0 Grant managed by the HSE Clinical Design and Innovation team. This funding has enabled CHAT to expand and appoint three community leaders to strengthen outreach, peer support, and accessibility leadership. Before moving to the speakers, she shared inspiring registration feedback, noting that the growing acceptance of AT and increased cross-sector collaboration are major sources of hope across Ireland.
2. User Perspectives: Lived Experience Share
Grounding the session in real-world impact, two individuals shared their lived experiences with assistive technology:
- Jade (Fighting Blindness DigiCoach & Presenter): Welcomed the WHO report and highlighted the value of digital coaching and one-to-one personalised technology training in daily life. She made an impassioned plea for sustainable, long-term funding for peer programs like the DigiCoach service to ensure the report is actively implemented rather than left unacted upon.
- Chantelle Glynn (DAT Library Assistant, Corlann): Identified a critical support gap in the current ecosystem. She observed that many people are severely restricted not by the technology itself, but by a lack of initial training and knowledge on how to use it effectively, which directly leads to device limitations and significant support gaps.
3. Interactive Slido Discussion & Audience Feedback
The meeting transitioned into a live, interactive polling and feedback session via Slido. Facilitated by Sharon Leahy segment allowed the diverse audience of CHAT leaders, practitioners, advocates, and families to share their immediate reflections on the WHO ATHC report.
The feedback gathered across the core discussion areas revealed a rich tapestry of validation, constructive critique, and a strong collective desire for immediate action:
What Was Appreciated in the Report
The audience largely welcomed the arrival of the report, expressing high praise for several key elements:
- Centring Lived Experience: Attendees strongly appreciated that the report actively prioritised and elevated the voices of AT users, centring lived experience in its core recommendations.
- Explicit Recognition of AAC: There was widespread praise for the report’s distinct and prominent recognition of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).
- Practical and Achievable Roadmap: Rather than offering vague concepts, the report was lauded for laying down practical, achievable, and highly valuable recommendations.
Personal Reflections & Gaps Identified
When asked if their personal or professional experiences of accessing assistive technology were accurately reflected within the report, the audience’s responses were notably mixed, raising critical gaps and real-world applicability concerns:
- Perceived Skew Towards Children: Multiple participants expressed a concern that parts of the report felt heavily focused on children services, developmental disabilities, or speech-language therapy, leaving some adult users or those with acquired conditions feeling less represented.
- Device Abandonment Realities: Attendees highlighted the harsh, practical barrier of device abandonment. They pointed out that people frequently abandon equipment when training, local technical assistance, and robust peer support networks are severely lacking.
Sources of Hope for Future Improvements
Despite the documented systemic flaws, the Slido interaction surfaced a powerful sense of optimism regarding what this assessment could achieve for the future of AT in Ireland:
- Moving Beyond “Niche Support”: Participants expressed immense hope because assistive technology is finally being recognized as standard infrastructure for participation rather than a niche service.
- A Lever for Policy and Investment: The fact that this was a government-commissioned report gave attendees hope that it would act as an unignorable tool to drive investment, national strategy development, and policy changes.
- User Advocacy Leadership: The community expressed great hope in seeing AT users taking an active lead in policy design, spreading awareness, and guiding system structures.
Immediate Community Actions Recommended
The final part of the discussion focused heavily on immediate, grassroots actions, emphasising that the community must use the report immediately to advocate for local funding and awareness:
- Leveraging EU Obligations: Participants urged the community to immediately begin communicating and raising awareness around upcoming EU accessibility obligations.
- Creating a Central Resource Hub: A strong recommendation was made to build a localised, central contact and resource hub where practitioners, users, and families can easily share AT knowledge, resources, and contact nodes.
- Widespread Multi-Level Education: The group called for immediate, aggressive educational outreach targeting schools, parents, frontline healthcare workers, and funders to embed AT across early care points and prevent confrontational access later on.poll-results sli.do 21 may
4. WHO Report Presentation
Emma Smith, co-author of the WHO AT Capacity Assessment report, delivered a comprehensive overview of the study’s methodology and core findings. Built on a mixed-methods approach including steering committees, stakeholder mapping, surveys, interviews, site visits, and direct stakeholder validation, the report captures the human impact of systemic gaps using the WHO GATE 5P Framework:
- People: The report highlights that current services reach only a tiny fraction of the estimated 1.1 million people with disabilities in Ireland. It underscores an urgent need for stronger user voices, peer-led support networks, and a national user panel.
- Policy: Emma documented severe systemic fragmentation across government departments. There is a distinct lack of a coordinated national strategy, and funding pathways and eligibility rules vary drastically by county, creating geographic inequities.
- Products: While high-quality specialised products are physically available in Ireland, procurement inconsistencies, funding gaps, and supply-chain monopolies heavily restrict equal and consistent access.
- Provision: Service quality is highly inconsistent across regions, resulting in long waitlists, fragmented assessment processes, and confrontational application pathways.
- Personnel: Workforce constraints and severe gaps in pre-service and continuing professional training limit capacity. However, there is an opportunity to diversify provider roles by expanding training for community staff and peers.
The Recommended National Model: To resolve these cross-cutting themes, Emma outlined the report’s vision for a hub-and-spoke national assistive technology program. This model would centralise specialised expertise while offering regional loan libraries and local access checkpoints for basic products.
5. Panel Discussion: Irish Context Response
Chaired by Alanna O’Connor, a diverse panel of sector stakeholders responded directly to the report’s recommendations, mapping their insights directly to the 5P framework:
PEOPLE – Paige Parker (Corlann)
- Paige introduced Corlann’s AT services and advocated powerfully for a truly person-centred, life-course approach. She argued that lived experience must actively guide system design, reinforcing that when people are excluded from decisions about their own technology and support, it leads directly to high device abandonment rates. Paige firmly endorsed the establishment of a national user panel, a centralised information hub, and peer support networks to ensure that user choice and self-determination are protected.
PROVISION & FUNDING – Siobhan Long (Enable Ireland)
- Siobhan grounded the discussion in delivery metrics, reiterating that current systems reach only a tiny fraction of Ireland’s 1.1 million people with disabilities. She strongly warned against premature regionalisation of services, stating that a unified national strategy must come first to prevent further regional fragmentation. Siobhan expressed grave concern over the lack of a dedicated, ring-fenced budget from the government to turn the report’s recommendations into reality, calling for explicit political will and an immediate cross-departmental coordinating body.
EMERGING TECHNOLOGY / FUTURE SYSTEMS – Stuart Lawler (Sight and Sound Technology)
- Stuart asserted that macro-level system changes and structured service pathways matter infinitely more than the physical devices themselves. He highlighted that without a coordinated national infrastructure; people face fragmented pathways that lead to wasted resources and suboptimal outcomes. Stuart strongly advocated for a centralised national procurement framework to eliminate regional disparities and proposed an “Assistive Technology Passport” system to ensure smooth service transitions across a user’s lifespan.
INNOVATION & SUSTAINABILITY – Kyran O’Mahony (Nexus Inclusion)
- Drawing on his personal experience with sight loss and his professional background as the former CTO for Vision Ireland, Kyran noted that while AT users and practitioners across different organisations largely agree on priorities, political will remains the missing ingredient to move forward. He highlighted Ireland’s unique position as a technology hub and suggested that the state must better leverage commercial innovation. Kyran pointed out that commercial software and hardware engineers generally have a strong desire to build accessible products, but they struggle because they do not understand the complex, real-world implementation needs of disabled users, necessitating better collaboration between industry and public services.
PRODUCTS / COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY – Conor Quigley (Tobii Dynavox)
- Conor provided an invaluable international perspective, noting that Ireland’s needs-based framework and its progressive willingness to officially recognise mainstream digital tools as valid AT supports have heavily influenced Tobii Dynavox’s global commercial operations. However, he noted that while physically acquiring a device is generally manageable in Ireland, the primary systemic failure is providing consistent, long-term support. He pointed out that challenges around funding subscriptions, ongoing maintenance, and lack of long-term implementation support remain significant barriers to successful, lifelong use.
PERSONNEL – Nicola Welford (Cerebral Palsy Foundation)
- Nicola brought a powerful dual perspective as both a professional and the parent of an 11-year-old child with quadriplegic cerebral palsy. She highlighted massive gaps in formal training and support for frontline staff, professionals, and families alike. Nicola argued passionately that AT should not be treated as a separate, clinical, or “special” intervention. Instead, she stressed that technology must be seamlessly integrated into a person’s everyday life, school environment, and community, utilising emerging peer learning and mentoring roles to build workforce confidence.
POLICY — Christina Cannon (SLT, Saint John of God)
- Speaking from her practical background as a Speech and Language Therapist, Christina delivered an impassioned close to the panel. She argued that assistive technology must legally, socially, and politically be framed as a fundamental human right, rather than an optional extra, a luxury, or an act of charity. Christina stressed that because the report was commissioned by the government, the community holds powerful evidence that must be aggressively leveraged. She called for an immediate cross-departmental national strategy to ensure AT services across health, education, housing, and employment are permanently funded, mandated, and coordinated.
6. Next Steps & Responsibilities
Closing the session, the team emphasised the need to move immediately from documentation to action. Siobhan Long delivered a definitive final call to action, outlining the immediate legislative and structural priorities required to maintain the momentum generated by the report:
- The Immediate 1-Year Priority: Siobhan issued an urgent call for the immediate establishment of a central National AT Coordination Office and a digital transformation hub. She emphasised that the community’s primary focus must be pushing for the execution of the report’s “1-year actions”.
- Cross-Departmental Mandate: She stressed that the state must firmly commit to developing and implementing a fully costed, cross-departmental national strategy on access to AT, as explicitly detailed in the report’s recommendations.
To back these strategic goals with immediate operational actions, the following call to action was shared:
- Committed to direct, collective advocacy with the disability unit within the Department of the Taoiseach to press the government to recognise these core policy recommendations and the funding necessary to ensure they can happen.
- Future Events: The community was warmly invited to register for the next CHAT event, taking place both in-person and online in Galway with a focus on Sport and recreation on June 3rd.