Assistive tech trends: Vertere co-founder Urwah Nawaz on what to expect in 2023

Navigating the built and natural worlds, participating in the workforce, and personal expression of identity and style are profound challenges that people with disabilities have continued to face despite advances in assistive technology over the past century. This coming decade will be a watershed moment for several domains in assistive tech, including wearables, sensor tech, AI and robotics. These frontier domains present significant potential to overcome barriers and become a powerful driver of inclusion for the global community of disabled and elderly people. 

It’s a space no one can ignore. Here are my top three predictions for assistive technology and what will define the space in 2023.

1. Accessibility and inclusivity are now a priority

The pandemic-induced surge in remote work, as well as new digital collaboration technologies, have enabled more people with disabilities to participate equally in the labour force. For employers, attracting and retaining talent is now an equation of how usable their workforce productivity stack can be, with more employers choosing to prioritize accessibility and usability in their vendor selection processes. 

Consider Focus, a tool that removes visual clutter on screens, or live-captioning on Teams, both products tailor-made by Microsoft to meet the needs of people with disabilities; reducing sensory overload for people with ADHD in the case of the former, and affording communication for the deaf in the case of the latter. 

And it’s not just visible in workplaces. We see this trend in recreational scenarios, too. Apps like Spix aim to provide people with impaired speech a platform to game online. And God of War Ragnarök by Santa Monica Studio is paving the way for accessible design in AAA gaming, with over 70 accessibility features targeting vision, hearing, motion, motor impairment and more.

2. There’s no place like home

Everyone’s spending more time at home. Building meaningful home experiences for people with disabilities can be challenging, but we’re starting to see more movement in the space as the pandemic of recent years has given rise to a new hospital-to-home phenomenon.

Ambient computing through lighting, speakers, HVAC and other home devices can be leveraged to enable new ways for people with disabilities to interact and communicate with the domestic world around them, both built and natural. These smart home devices are no longer a novelty, and they’re reducing digital exclusion for the disabled and elderly quickly. Take it from Apple to show you that it’s already happening. 

A 2021 report by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute concluded that smart home technology is capable of making daily tasks more manageable for disabled people, allowing them to enjoy a greater degree of independence. And this technology is only becoming easier to adopt; a new interoperability standard by the Connectivity Standards Alliance, dubbed Matter, will make it easier to indulge in this revolution without the stress of technical overhead and platform lock-in.

3. Individuality and expression

For a long time, assistive technology has not been the most beautiful category of products. This broad label, covering everything from wheelchairs to prosthetics, has been dominated by an industrial design ethos of function over form, with many products featuring bulky housing, clunky operating instructions, and a clinical feel. Several studies point to the heightened ask by the community for products, particularly those used at home and on our bodies, that are capable of expressing personality and reflecting choice and independence. 

More and more companies building accessible tech are embracing this idea of celebrating individuality, difference and expression in product development. That’s exactly what my team and I are aiming for at Vertere. Stay tuned! 

Beyond these three points above, there is a more significant message to share with you all. Accessibility and inclusion are not solely technical challenges. After all, not every problem is a problem that can only be solved by Silicon Valley. Nor should they be. Building an inclusive and accessible society requires public and private investment in new infrastructure and education, changes in policy, and a fostering of empathy amongst the community at large. We need to do more to make sure the right tools are available to those who need them most while being both affordable and accessible. 

And these innovations will benefit all of us, too. Technologies that were founded with the mission of empowering those who couldn’t have been abstracted to developments and revolutions with substantial consequences. Consider keyboards, straws, audiobooks, common kitchen utensils and more. 

These are just my thoughts for 2023. There’s so much more to be excited about over the coming decade in this space, including advancements in brain-machine interface (see Synchron) and non-invasive diagnostics (see Seer or Nuroflux), but I’ll keep those for another time!

Urwah Nawaz is the co-founder of Vertere.