Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled (SAFOD)

AT-Info-Map Partners Hold Webinar in South Africa

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20 February, 2019

On February 20, 2019, representatives of SAFOD, AfriNEAD, and University of Washington organized a webinar to provide stakeholders with updates on various Assistive Technology (AT)  issues, including the AT situation in Southern Africa; the AT-Info-Map project; and the forthcoming regional AT Expo. This two-hour webinar, which included a question-and-answer session, was hosted at Stellenbosch University., the home of AfriNEAD.

The webinar was held against the background that during the implementation of the AT-Info-Map project, SAFOD and collaborators had discussed the challenges and potential solutions to increasing AT access with public, private, NGO and DPO stakeholders across the region. These discussions highlighted the need to explore and interrogate a myriad of topics such as AT policies, regulations, and financing, in order to develop lasting solutions to the whole question of AT access. This webinar, therefore, sought to build on these AT discussions with the aim to share knowledge and identify effective strategies for increasing AT access.

The AT-Info-Map also managed to develop a mobile app that had undergone various stages of development based on the levels of feedback that was generated through the iterative processes within the first three years the project had been running. As the three-year Google funding was coming to an end on February 28th, the core project partners, therefore, felt it was pertinent that they update stakeholders regarding the new developments related the mobile app, as well as the web-based database.