- Presentation
- General Information
- Scientific Information
- Hosts
- Committees
- Precongress
- Programme
- Exhibition
- Sponsors
- The city, San Sebastian
- Travel & Accommodation
Welcome
On behalf of the “Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology”, we are pleased to invite you to the 9th European Conference for the Advancement of Assistive Technology, AAATE 2007, which will be held on October 3rd-5th in the city of San Sebastian, located in the northern coast of Spain.
Challenges for incoming years such as New Technologies, Socio-Economic Issues, Evidence based Practice, Universal Design and Ageing will be tackled by invited expert speakers in attractive plenary sessions and contributions from the wide Assistive Technology research community will be presented in focused parallel sessions.
The conference will combine the core scientific and technological activity with market and social activities, bringing Assistive Technology research applications near to industry and end users. In parallel to the scientific conference, an industrial exhibition with last innovations in Assistive Technology will be launched and special sessions for industry and end users will be organized, including demonstrations and participative experiments.
Researchers, engineers, service providers, gerontologists, occupational therapists, manufacturers and, of course, users: all the disciplines involved in the field of Assistive Technology are invited to participate and contribute with their research results, developments, and experiences to this multidisciplinary conference.
The conference is being organized by Fatronik, in collaboration with Ingema and VICOMTech.
Challenges for Assistive Technology
In recent years Assistive Technology has been gaining importance in the scientific- technological community while institutions at every level have introduced Assistive Technology as “hot topics” in their research and social policies. In parallel, European population are ageing, thus increasing the social and institutional awareness, pushing Assistive Technology to become one of the key players to face challenges derived from this demographical revolution.
In this context, the Assistive Technology community has the opportunity and responsibility of taking a step forward to social inclusion; independence and autonomy of people with disabilities and elderly people by making their research developments become real solutions for real people in real conditions. It is therefore time to face the challenges Assistive Technology pose, and take advantage of this need: making prototypes become products, making ideas become services, making “dreams come true”.
Within this global context, the enlargement of Europe is an opportunity to establish the European Union as a world reference space, making efforts to improve social awareness and inclusion, and in the development of technology based solutions that are affordable in real markets.
The 9th European Conference for the Advancement of Assistive Technology will provide an opportunity to take a good look at these main challenges that the Assistive Technology community and society in general, will have to face in the next few years.
We look forward to seeing you in AAATE 2007.
On behalf of the Organizing Committee.
Gorka Eizmendi – 
Chairman
Dr. José Miguel Azkoitia – Co-Chairman
