Successful HORIZON funded Research and Innovation Project 2024-2027

Successful HORIZON funded Research and Innovation Project 2024-2027

NewWorkTech: From the margins to the masses: Standard practices and innovative uses of technology in augmenting different abilities of people in the world of work

EPR is delighted to be a partner in a successful HORIZON project led by Tampere University, with research and policy stakeholders in Denmark, Italy, the UK and Finland. The project will start in December 2024 and last for 3 years.
NewWorkTech will bring together researchers and stakeholder organisations to deepen our understanding of how people with different abilities commonly use technologies, and to use this understanding to identify innovative uses for them – both established and new assistive and augmentative technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.
The first phase of the project will entail researching how people with disabilities, such as sensory or motor impairment or neurocognitive, linguistic or mental diversity, use technologies in their workplaces to enable adjustments and/or accommodations to support participation in work and to enhance human abilities and skills (e.g. remote work arrangements for physically disabled employee, or facilitating communication between colleagues with distinct sensory or linguistic capacities). Multi- and interdisciplinary research will be conducted in the fields of linguistics, communication, translation, literary and cultural studies, ethnomethodology, ethnography, philosophy, and human-computer interaction, and build on cross-sectoral collaboration between academic researchers, companies, and non-governmental organisations and platforms.
The project’s common approach is ‘participatory research’, which will give a strong voice to people with impairments and an active role in the studies. The scientific knowledge thus gained will then be used for developing social innovations for the world of work which may lead to new (business) models to companies and social economy and new understanding of the human resources of organisations.