EU project wins major grant to improve accessibility in workplaces

Coordinated by Tampere University, the NewWorkTech project aims to improve accessibility and inclusion in the world of work and promote the human rights of people with disabilities. 

“By removing barriers faced by people with disabilities in the world of work, we can expand our working-age population, grow the economy and increase well-being,” says Maija Hirvonen, a Professor at Tampere University who leads the NewWorkTech project.

The project, set to launch in December 2024, will focus on empirical research to enhance employment opportunities for people with disabilities. It will generate new insights into the world of work, such as workplace practices and interactions, identify how technologies can improve working life and job opportunities for people with disabilities, and discover new competencies for working life in general. In addition, the project seeks to define innovative practices for the use of technology for all.

Technology as human, human as technology: Critical research on access technologies

People with different disabilities and functional restrictions will participate in the project throughout the research and development phases. Based on the findings, the project will develop the use of access technologies, such as the automatic description of the surrounding environment or haptic augmentation systems. This will be achieved in collaboration with the project partners and their tech/business networks.  

The project partners also aim to shift the perception of technology from being seen as a replacement for people and a threat to jobs to a tool that supports and opens up new possibilities.

“Technologies can improve and expand human capabilities. One aspect of our project is looking at innovative practices that we could bring from the margins to the masses. For instance, the practices employed by sign language users in visual and video communication could be introduced more broadly into workplaces to support video conferencing,” says Hirvonen.

From restriction to resource: Policy recommendations and ethical guidelines for policy makers, education, rehabilitation and workplaces

By producing new knowledge based on empirical data and developing new theoretical insights, the researchers will formulate several recommendations for improving existing practices in the world of work, leveraging new technologies and enhancing employment access for people with disabilities.  

These recommendations will be made widely available and integrated into an open-access knowledge platform, which will include ethical guidelines for all relevant stakeholders, including employers, decision-makers and the scientific community. 

Four research groups participating from Tampere University

The NewWorkTech project features a strong representation of researchers from Tampere University. The project involves two research centres and four research groups from the Faculty of information Technology and Communication Sciences (The PLURAL Multidisciplinary Research Centre for Languages and Cultures: the Multimodality in Translation and Interpreting (MULTI) group and the Multimodal Interaction group; Tampere University Computer-Human Interaction Research Center (TAUCHI): the Multimodal Interaction (MMIG) group and the Pervasive Interaction (PIRG) group). In addition, the project involves one education and research unit (Tampere Accessibility Unit TACCU).

Besides developing new access technologies, the researchers at Tampere University will conduct ethnographic, ethnomethodological and experimental research to study workplace interactions.

The other project partners from Finland include the University of Oulu and Autism Foundation Finland. The researchers at the University Oulu will develop innovative theories of technology from the perspective of human-mediated experiential technologies and devise a new method for assessing user experience. In collaboration with Autism Foundation Finland, the project will examine the world of work and new technologies from the perspective of neurodiverse individuals. In addition, a company called Raami Kehittämispalvelut Oy will participate in the project, focusing on the study of interactions within a remote work environment.