Information-sharing and evidence
base within assistive technology:
some current tools
Simon Judge
Senior Clinical Scientist, Barnsley District General Hospital,
Assistive Technology Team
Assistive technology is recognised as a specialism
across the sectors (Department of Health, 2007;
Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, 2005) and to this end
it requires the acquisition and retention of specialist
knowledge within a changing and progressive
environment. A number of tools help practitioners
and researchers to maintain and share this knowledge
and these tools are growing and evolving with time.
These can be divided into traditional tools, first
generation ICT and second generation ICT.
Traditional tools include journals (such as the
one you are reading), conferences (such as the UK
RAATE conference, www.raate.org.uk), paper-based
literature searching and face-to-face meetings. First
generation ICT tools include ‘static’ web pages, email
lists and database-based literature searching. Second
generation ICT tools include Web 2.0 style user-
generated content, including blogs, dynamic web,
Wikis (peer-editable websites) and online and
collaborative literature searching and publication.
First generation ICT tools
First generation ICT tools are now well established
in the UK assistive technologies (AT) field. Assistech
(www.jiscmail.ac.uk/archives/assistech.html) and Senit
(lists.becta.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/senit) appear to be
the biggest email lists related to AT: the Assistech list
was started in 2000 and now has 223 subscribers.
Messages are posted about a wide range of AT topics,
mostly by practitioners, and most questions are
generally responded to within a working week. These
email-based lists have the advantage of being intrusive
(in the sense that the poster determines when the
message is delivered to the reader) and instantaneous.
Email lists thus allow a perception of current issues
and best practice to be built up within the community
as well as addressing direct practical questions. Email
lists also offer a way for researchers to access and
query practitioners, and although Assistech and Senit
have been used for some participant recruitment, this
is not a regular occurrence.
Second generation ICT tools
Second generation ICT tools are still emerging and
their usefulness within research and AT is beginning
to be recognised. There are a number of tools of
note and with relevance to AT. Second generation
tools are generally less intrusive: you can bring ‘feeds’
from many sources into one place to read when you
choose, for example by using a newsreader such as
Google Reader (www.google.com/reader). This is
advantageous in terms of information management
but can make things less instantaneous. Another
characteristic of Web 2.0 style tools is that they
are much more collaborative, expecting input
from readers, rather than them being passive.
Another group of second generation ICT tools are
blogs and news feeds. Blogs have the impression in
some circles of generally being written by angst-ridden
teenage techies but the reality is far from this. Many of
the big names in some areas blog and in addition you
will find blogs from a number of organisations and
companies. As well as blogs, many websites will provide
newsfeeds of new content (like a corporate blog). For
example, Steve Lee (eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog)
blogs on his development of open source AT software,
whereas Emptech (www.emptech.info/rss.php) provide
an invaluable summary of new products, services and
other AT news.
Wikis are peer-editable websites and can
be edited by anyone registered on the site. The
famous example is Wikipedia (wikipedia.org) which
an article in Nature suggested was of comparable
quality to Encyclopedia Britannica (Giles, 2005).
Journal of Assistive Technologies Volume 1 Issue 2 December 2007 © Pavilion Journals (Brighton) Ltd
Review
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However, Wikis originated as information-sharing
sites for small communities interested in a common
topic. The Assistech WIKI (www.assistech.org.uk)
was launched in 2005 and there is also an American
equivalent, the ATWiki (atwiki.assistivetech.net/
ATWiki_Home). Wikis allow knowledge to be built
up through collaborative editing of pages, providing
evolving best practice documents.
Another key tool within second generation ICT
use is online citation sharing. As well as the ability
to search for research papers online, revolutionised
by Google Scholar (scholar.google.co.uk) and
publish them, for example on CiteSeer (citeseer.
ist.psu.edu), it is also possible to store your
research library online. An example is CiteULike
(www.citeulike.org), a free service that launched in
2005 which allows users to quickly and easily store
citations from most online databases. You can see
an example at www.citeulike. org/user/simonjudge.
A user can also import/export to their‘off-line’
citation manager, ‘tag’ papers into categories
and post papers to groups. There is an assistive
technology group (www.citeulike.org/group/408/
library). This makes managing citations much easier
and also allows for easy sharing of evidence.
Summary
Hopefully this short review will have given you a
taster of how information-sharing and evidence-base
tools are evolving, and the possible benefits of this
new generation of tools. These provide a new way
of sharing information about assistive technology
and also of building up an evidence base for assistive
technology provision.
Address for correspondence
Simon Judge
Senior Clinical Scientist
Barnsley District General Hospital
Assistive Technology Team
Email: simon.judge@nhs.net
References
Department of Health (2007) Specialised Services National
Definition Set: 7 Complex specialised rehabilitation for brain
injury and complex disability (adult). London: Department of
Health. Available from: www.dh.gov.uk/en/PolicyAndGuidance/
HealthAndSocialCareTopics/SpecialisedServicesDefinition/DH_40
01834 (accessed November 2007).
Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit (2005) Improving the Life
Chances of Disabled People. London: TSO. Available from:
www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/
PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_4101751 (accessed
November 2007).
Giles J (2005) Internet encyclopaedias go head to head.
Nature 438 900–901 (15 December 2005).
Journal of Assistive Technologies Volume 1 Issue 2 December 2007 © Pavilion Journals (Brighton) Ltd
Information-sharing and evidence base within assistive technology: some current tools
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