Understanding the everyday and innovative uses of technology at work by people with disabilities (NewWorkTech)

The Horizon Europe project NewWorkTech aims to improve the accessibility and inclusion of the world of work and promote the rights and equality of people with disabilities.

NewWorkTech brings together expertise in the social sciences, humanities and engineering with the common goal of an equitable and efficient world of work through responsible research and innovation. NewWorkTech addresses the need to break down accessibility barriers in the labor market that affects one fourth of Europeans who have a disability (101 million people). European data show that one fifth of people with a disability in Europe are unemployed and lack financial autonomy. NewWorkTech’s will contribute with new knowledge that will inform a more inclusive future of work.

The project counts with interdisciplinary partners across Europe and is coordinated by Professor Maija Hirvonen at Tampere University. In Denmark, Professor Brian Due at the University of Copenhagen leads work package 1 (WP1) including two studies in Denmark and Italy where Postdoctoral researchers Barbara N. Carreras and Sara Merlino conduct video ethnographic research to explore how people with disabilities use technologies at work, from home or at their office. In Denmark, Carreras will study how blind people, people with low vision, wheelchair users, and neurodivergent persons use assistive technology and AI technology to work from home or at their workplaces. In Italy, Merlino will study how neurodivergent persons and people with down syndrome use assistive technology.

NewWorkTech adopts a participatory approach following the disability rights commitment to the “Nothing About Us, Without Us” agenda. In doing so NewWorkTech involves research participants and disability-led organizations in developing new understandings and innovations of technological tools as well as reflecting on the risks involved in their use.

The empirical contributions of the project will be accompanied by the development of new theory to conceptualize human-technology relationships. New knowledge gained by NewWorkTech’s partners will serve as the basis for new technological solutions, theoretical innovations, an ethical framework, policy recommendations and practical knowledge that will contribute to breaking down accessibility barriers in the world of work and shed light on innovative and responsible uses of emergent technologies.