Webinar – Accessibility to Digital Technologies

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8th
April

8th April 2025, 3.30pm – 5.00pm, GMT

Accessibility to Digital Technologies
Chair: Paul Dimitri, NIHR Children & Young People MedTech Co-operative (UK)

EPTRI is delighted to welcome you to our ninth webinar on Accessibility to Digital Technologies. Our 90 minute webinar will focus on the difficulties of the access to digital health technologies and will explore how to overcome these barriers. We will discuss about the ‘Minimum Digital Living Standard’ (MDLS) project and how different cultural backgrounds can influence the access and acceptance of digital technologies. We look forward to seeing you at our next exciting webinar event.

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Speakers

Simeon Yates, University of Liverpool, UK

Simeon Yates is the Professor of Digital Culture in the Department of Communications and Media at the University of Liverpool and Joint Director of the Digital Media and Society Research Institute. Simeon has undertaken research on the social, political, and cultural impacts of digital media for over three decades.  For the last two decades he has had a focus on projects that address issues of digital inclusion and exclusion. In this work Simeon engages with both academic, charity, and government colleagues to develop policy and interventions to support digital inclusion. This includes working with the UK’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Department of Science Innovation and Technology, the UK’s media regulator Ofcom, and the Welsh and Scottish Governments, as well as charity organisations such as the Good Things Foundation. Simeon recently completed a project exploring citizens’ data literacy and is leading the project to define a “Minimum Digital Living Standard” for UK households – both funded by the Nuffield Foundation. He is also deputy director of the DSTL Defence Data Research Centre and one of the leads for the ESRC Digital Footprints Programme Strategic Advisory. 

Prof. Patrice L. (Tamar) Weiss, the Helmsley Pediatric & Adolescent Rehabilitation Research Center (PARC) ALYN Children’s Hospital, Jerusalem (Israel)

Prof. Patrice L. (Tamar) Weiss graduated with a bachelor’s degree in occupational thera-pist (University of Western Ontario), a master’s studies in kinesiology (University of Wa-terloo) and PhD in physiology and biomedical engineering (McGill University). In 2001, she established the Laboratory for Innovations in Rehabilitation Technology at the Univer-sity of Haifa where she developed and evaluated novel virtual environments, haptic inter-faces, co-located and online technologies to explore the effect of individual, tele-rehabilitation and collaborative platforms for a range of children (e.g., autism, ADHD, DDC, ABI) and adults (e.g., SCI, ABI, ALS, stroke) with cognitive and motor impairments. Her research has been funded by many national and international agencies. She has co-edited two books, authored more than 250 peer-reviewed journal articles, proceedings and book chapters and delivered numerous keynote addresses at international confer-ences. Prof. Weiss is a founding board member of the International Society for Virtual Re-habilitation and the 2017 recipient of its Distinguished Career Award. Her major activities over the past three years have been to co-establish PARC and supports its principal inves-tigators and their research teams in her capacity as the Executive Research Advisor.

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Michelle Heys, University College London (UCL) (UK)

Prof Michelle Heys is an NIHR and UCL Professor of Global Child Health at University College London (UCL) Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and a Community Paediatrician. She specializes in caring for children and young people with cerebral palsy and learning disabilities in Newham, East London. Prof Heys’ research focuses on improving health outcomes for children in low-resource settings across the UK, Nepal, India, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Her work particularly addresses the needs of sick and small newborns, children with complex neurodisabilities and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.  

Prof Heys is a co-founder and PI of Neotree, a digital health initiative aimed at improving newborn care and survival in low-resource settings. Neotree combines data collection, clinical decision support, and education to enhance the quality of care for newborns and strengthen health systems. The platform operates in hospitals across Zimbabwe and Malawi and has the potential to save over half a million babies each year. Additionally, Prof Heys co-leads the CHATA project, which focuses on digital health solutions to improve efficiency and equity of autism assessment. Her work in digital health is driven by a commitment to global equity, ensuring that vulnerable and marginalized populations receive the care they need.