1. Facilitate the involvement of individuals with disabilities in purposeful activities and broaden their participation opportunities by creating e-learning resources on "prototyping without machines." 2. Equip organizations serving individuals with disabilities with tools to efficiently communicate their activities and knowledge, and to reach a wider audience. 3. Empower organizations serving individuals with disabilities to develop tailored e-learning for staff based on target audience needs. 4. Facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration among organizations serving individuals with disabilities at local, national, and international levels. 5. Increase the quality in the work and practices of the organisations and institutions involved. 6. Get the first KA2 Small-scale experience to broaden work horizons 7. Establish sustainable partnerships and networks that continue to support the needs of individuals with disabilities beyond the duration of the project.
We applied for the ELEVATE project because our visually impaired clients and staff reported us the same things, over and over again: “There isn’t anything that solves this problem”. Store-bought assistive tools often don’t match personal needs, or can’t evolve with personal needs over time. This leads to underuse, lowering independence and quality of life. During the annual meeting of the European Network for Vision Impairment Training Education & Research (ENVITER) we heard that a lot of organisation have an interest in solving this challenge by using rapid prototyping techniques such as 3D printing and laser cutting. These are valid techniques to create solutions for the target audience, however, they require a high investment: the machines, materials, infrastructure and the time to required to build up knowledge. This limits the staff members which can be involved. Prototyping techniques which don’t require machines, and therefor less investment, were not yet implemented. By securing funding, we allocated dedicated time and resources to further develop our expertise in prototyping and to disseminate this knowledge effectively.