“Older people become invisible to other people, or they feel that they do. They fear that their opinions are not sought anymore and no one cares what they think. The key thing about these tools is that they let older people engage with other people and enjoy it at the same time.”

“We expected to learn a lot and the event exceeded our expectations.” 

“I met lots of people, some new and some I already knew. It was so interesting to meet them in a very different set of circumstances. Very surprisingly, I found myself standing up for mobile phones and computers. Despite being mostly a very retiring and conciliatory person I found the sessions very stimulating and enjoyed discovering new things and hearing other people’s ideas.

The facilitators were inspirational. It was great to find yourself getting caught up in things I would never have expected. It was very exciting. Personally, I learned a lot about other people and also about myself in relation to tackling so many different things. At times I was well out of my comfort zone but amazingly found it was OK.”

“ It was interesting to find out different people’s opinions around Assistive Technologies from different companies/services/members of the public”

“These tools are very useful as the developers can actually talk to the customers to start with. Not to say what do you want because people can’t identify what they want, but they can identify what their needs are. And then it is up to the developers to think, OK, well there is a need here,how can we develop a solution to that? And in developing the solution, talk to the customers along the line because they can get feedback from them”

“Great and interesting workshop. For me, the most important thing was to meet representatives from government, industry and academia and to have a common dialogue on the important challenges and opportunities in developing technologies for older populations.”