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This paper offers some reflections on key concepts to be considered when developing policies related to assistive technology provision in the light of the UN Convention. The starting point is the Position Paper issued by AAATE and EASTIN in 2012, which defines the mission of a service delivery system (SDS) as “ensuring that all people with disabilities can access appropriate assistive solutions that are able to support autonomy in their life environment”. From the organizational viewpoint, we can identify three main SDS models: the “medical model”, the “social model” and the “consumer model”. A reasonable criterion for establishing a boundary between products that require medical models and those that don’t is that of clinical risk. The more the system moves from a medical to a social or consumer model, the more should it be based on user empowerment approaches. The GATE initiative of the World Health Organization and some national policies (such as the Australian NDIS assistive technology strategy) are firmly built upon user empowerment approaches. End-users education as well as the availability of “super partes” assistive technology information (i.e. independent of commercial interest) also plays a fundamental role in user empowerment. The paper offers a quick survey of the main information systems available today worldwide, and presents the latest achievement of today’s major information resource, the European Assistive Technology Information Network.

The EASTIN Portal --- which aggregates the contents of six national databases and make it searchable in 22 European languages --- is currently the major information system on assistive technology available in Europe. Its usability has been recently improved through the use of advanced language technologies, thanks to the EU-funded project EASTIN-CL. The project developed three main components (the query processing, the machine translation, and the speech output) that have been implemented and plugged to the existing EASTIN website.

In the framework of the EU funded SRS (Multi-Role Shadow Robotic System for independent Living) project, an innovative semi autonomous service robot is under development with the aim to support frail elderly people at their home. This paper reports about the user validation of the SRS concept involving 63 potential users of the system coming from Italy, Germany and Spain: in particular they were frail elderly people, their relatives and 24 hour telecare professionals. Results confirmed that monitoring and managing emergency situations as well as helping with reaching, fetching and carrying objects that are too heavy or positioned in unreachable places are the tasks for which a robot is better accepted to address users' needs. To support the scenarios executions and operation modes, the interaction concept should provide three different interaction devices and modalities for each user group.

EASTIN (European Assistive Technology Information Network) is a trans-national information service on Assistive Technologies for people with disabilities, that aggregates the contents of six national information systems in Italy (Portale SIVA), Germany (Rehadat), Denmark (HMI Basen), the United Kingdom (DLF Data), The Netherlands (Hulpmiddelenwijzer) and Spain (Catalogo de Ayudas Tecnicas). It is the result of the EASTIN project, carried out in 2004-2005 with partial funding by the EU within the eTEN programme. In order to work as a network, the six national systems have been harmonized according to commonly agreed standards and integrated through the new EASTIN website. This is equipped with advanced search engines able to perform search and retrieval operations across all the partners' databases, in any of the partners' languages

The DAT project is a research initiative that aims at building up a smart home environment where people with disabilities can improve their abilities to cope with daily life activities by means of technologically advanced home automation solutions. The project has a threefold purpose. The smart home will be used as a physical setting, where clients with disabilities can follow individual programs aimed at improving their independence in the home environment. The smart house will also be used as a demonstration an educational laboratory where anybody interested can get knowledge of the latest advancements in the field of home automation and tele-care. Finally, the smart home will be used as research laboratory for testing and developing new clinical protocols and innovative solutions in the field of environmental control and home care. This article describes the architecture of the smart home, the design of the home automation system, and the research programs associated with the DAT project

Individually Prioritised Problem Assessment (IPPA) is an instrument to assess the effectiveness of assistive technology provision. It is a generic instrument that can be used to assess the extent to which problems identified by an individual assistive technology user have been diminished. IPPA was developed because existing instruments in the field of Health Technology Assessment are not sufficient for assessing effectiveness of assistive technology. IPPA assesses effectiveness in relation to those activities that the individual respondent considers relevant. At the start of the service delivery process, the client is asked to identify and rate the activities that he or she has problems with in everyday life. The same activities are rated again, a few months after receiving a new assistive technology. IPPA has been used in several studies and has proven to be a usable and valid instrument. 1. Purpose Individually Prioritised Problem Assessment (IPPA) was conceived as an instrument to assess the effective- ness of assistive technology provision. It assesses the extent to which problems identified by an individual assistive technology user in his or her daily activities have been diminished as a result of the provision of assistive technology (5). IPPA is primarily meant to be used in outcome stud- ies. Results can be used to support policy decisions related to provision of assistive technology. IPPA can also be used to structure and evaluate an individual service delivery process. IPPA is a generic effectiveness measure. Basically, it can be used to assess the effectiveness of any kind of assistive technology provision. So far, IPPA has been applied in outcome studies to assess the effectiveness of provision of mobility aids (2,5), transportation ser- vices (2), hearing aids (5), communication devices (5), home adaptations (5), telephone relay services (1) and a robot manipulator (8). In Norway it has been used