GAATO Grand Challenge on AT Outcomes and Impacts

Leading up to the Global Report on Assistive Technology, the Global Alliance of Assistive Technology Organisations (GAATO) invited people across the world to share views on AT Outcomes and Impacts through a Grand Challenge process.

We aimed to identify a set of challenges which address what is needed to be able to measure assistive technology outcomes and impact at the individual, community, local, national, and global level.

Why? Because its time to raise our voices together to improve access to AT for all. Naming the top challenges in AT outcomes and impact:

Prioritises the voices from countries and regions, and raise awareness of these voices globally
Provides a focus for researchers, funders and others to prioritise efforts
Sets out baseline challenges against which we can measure change and improvement
Directs stakeholder collaboration – if there are solutions to the challenges – lets share them

What did we do?

5 GAATO AT Outcomes Working Group volunteers developed the innovative collaborative consensus method
7 regional leadership teams from all WHO Regions collaborated with the GAATO Working Group to organise, host and document Regional Consultations
7 Grand Challenge Regional Consultations (Western Pacific; Latin America; Brazil; North America; Europe; Africa; Middle East) held between August and September 2021
307 participants from 57 countries and running in 9 languages (English, Mandarin, Japanese; Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Italian, French, Arabic)
400 registrants to the Global Disability Summit (Feb 2022)
31 global stakeholders and regional leaders reviewed and refined the Grand Challenges Longlist across two Surveys in Mar/Apr 2022.
Around 400 voices contributed to the Global Grand Challenges in AT Outcomes and Impact

What are the Grand Challenges?

We are excited to release the Grand Challenges on 16 May, the same day as the launch of the WHO/ UNICEF Global Report on AT.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE