China 
Africa 
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Assistive technology
Published in Alex Mihailidis, Roger Smith, Rehabilitation Engineering, 2023
L. Alvarez, A. Cook, J. Polgar
AT includes devices and strategies in the continuum of low to high complexity. Low technology is simple, often easy to obtain, like a mouth stick or head pointer. High technology is more complex and more difficult to obtain, such as an alternative and augmentative communication device. The HAAT model differentiates between hard and soft technologies. Hard technologies include the physical device, whereas soft technologies incorporate decision-making around device selection and different means of instruction on device use (Cook and Polgar 2014). The human/technology interface (HTI) is another necessary consideration in device design and selection. HTI influences how the user inputs and receives information from the device. Understanding the user's sensory, physical and cognitive abilities is important to determine what HTI they will be able to use.
A retrospective analysis of responsible innovation for low-technology innovation in the Global South
Published in Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2019
Sarah Hartley, Carmen McLeod, Mike Clifford, Sarah Jewitt, Charlotte Ray
The interdisciplinary collaboration foundation to this article began at a University of Nottingham workshop on RI where the members of the Barriers team expressed their interest in the RI framework and the values underlining it. They felt that adopting the RI framework at the outset of the project would have helped them in operationalising the project goals. Likewise, the RI researchers expressed interest in exploring the elasticity of RI in a low-technology innovation in the Global South. Social scientists (Hartley and McLeod) set up an initial meeting with UK-based members of the Barriers project team (Clifford, Jewitt and Ray) where we decided on the direction and analytical framing of the article. Information was then collected through a series of interrogative meetings with individual members of the Barriers project and one focus group with the UK investigators of the project team. The first meeting explored the Barriers project, relationships between the UK and overseas members of the research team and the successes and challenges of the project. The social scientists carried out a documentary analysis of project outputs, including papers, blogs, reports and websites. Together, we decided to apply an RI lens retroactively, and with the benefit of hindsight, to evaluate RI’s potential application to low-technology innovation projects as they design and conduct research that supports the development of low-technology innovations in the Global South in response to the global challenge of clean energy. There was agreement that a retrospective analysis could be a useful way to learn lessons quickly so that they could be applied to future projects.
Why do newly industrialized economies deter to adopt responsible research and innovation?: the case of emerging technologies in Korea
Published in Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2020
Eunok Ko, Jungsub Yoon, Yeonbae Kim
It has been argued that the cross-national context plays an important role in the application of RRI, which seems to be developing successfully because developed European countries are experienced in implementing policies relating to key RRI elements (Lukovics et al. 2017). For example, these countries have developed a variety of technology impact assessment methods, such as real-time technology assessments, and they have gained experience with ethical reflexivity systems by evaluating the effects of certain ethical, legal, and social aspects (Guston and Sarewitz 2002; Zwart, Landeweerd, and van Rooij 2014). Furthermore, since the late 1970s, European countries have made concerted efforts to consider the opinions of the public and non-governmental organizations when making decisions related to science and technology (Landeweerd et al. 2015). This policy experience is expected to have a positive impact on the use of RRI, even if it was previously considered unfamiliar or irrelevant to the RRI discourse (van Åm 2019; Glerup, Davies, and Horst 2017; Hove and Wickson 2017). However, according to the literature, even within the EU, researchers in developed countries expressed interest in the interaction between technology and society, while researchers in non-developed countries expressed the need to concentrate on securing research funds and had a low understanding of the need to consider the social context of technological development (Lukovics et al. 2017). There were marked differences in perceptions. Thus, it is necessary to consider the innovation environment of each specific country to augment the effectiveness of RRI. In addition, it has been argued that the technology level (high technology vs. low technology), culture, and material barriers to innovation affect attitudes toward RRI implementation and should be considered (Giulio et al. 2016; Hartley et al. 2019; Hoop, Pols, and Romijn 2016).
Difficulty and doability enacting responsible innovation
Published in Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2019
Hartley et al. (2019), in the second research article, also seek to disrupt traditional conceptions of technology. Noting that the potential for low-technology research and innovation ‘is often undervalued in the dominant assumption that high-technology innovation will drive economic development,’ the authors explore the role of RI in building capacities for appropriate technology responses to development challenges in the Global South. Given the paucity of studies on ‘RI in the context of low-technology alternatives to addressing global challenges outside Europe and North America,’ however, they point out that ‘there is little guidance on the practical aspects of doing so.’ In order to understand and assess the value of RI concepts (in this case, as formalized by the United Kingdom’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [cf. Owen 2014]), the authors delve deeply into interdisciplinary negotiations, stakeholder interactions and decision making in a project that examined the lack of large-scale uptake of improved cook-stoves in Southern Africa. Hartley et al. ask whether and how RI concepts were enacted throughout the stages of the scientific research. Their results suggest that ‘an RI framework can structure discussion and create space for anticipation, reflection and engagement with stakeholders’ by helping to ‘identify important socio-technical elements of innovation early on’ and ‘to steer research toward locally-defined social needs.’ Still, the authors find that efforts related to reflexivity, anticipation and engagement were ‘difficult to realize in practice’ and they uncover a number of difficulties in implementing RI. Difficulties arise from a number of sources including lack of resources, stakeholder capacities to conduct qualitative research and pervasive reliance on the ‘deficit model’ of public engagement found throughout stakeholder networks. Echoing Repo and Matschoss, they note that ‘even when researchers are committed to the idea of RI, it is difficult to enact in practice.’