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Robots have the potential to support care and independence of older adults. The ENRICHME project is developing an integrated system composed of a robot, sensors and a networking care platform, aiming at assisting older adults with MCI in their home environment. This paper reports findings of the tests performed on a sample of MCI users and their caregivers, with the first version of the ENRICHME system, in a controlled environment.

The market of mobile technologies has considerably increased in the past few years and the costs have consequently decreased. This rapid technological evolution can be seen in two different ways from the perspective of people with disability: on the one side it represents a great opportunity to create new solutions for improving independence; on the other it may represent a source of social exclusion if appropriate assistive solutions are not available to make technology usable by people with disability. This paper describe three case studies of persons with disabilities that have undergone an Assistive Technology assessment at the DAT service of Fondazione Don Gnocchi (Milan, Italy) involving the use of mobile ICT based Assistive Technologies. In all the three cases the appropriate solution for performing the desired activities is represented by a combination of mainstream products and assistive products. The three use cases described support the idea that mobile technologies can be powerful and versatile instruments to create assistive solutions for improving independence in daily life.

The European Assistive Technology Information Network (EASTIN), launched in 2005 as the result of a collaborative EU project, provides information on Assistive Technology products and related material through the website www.eastin.eu. In the past few years several advancements have been implemented on the EASTIN website thanks to the contribution of EU funded projects, including a multilingual query processing component for supporting non expert users, a user rating and comment facility, and a detailed taxonomy for the description of ICT based assistive products. Recently, within the framework of the EU funded project Cloud4All, the EASTIN information system has also been federated with the Unified Listing of assistive products, one of the building blocks of the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure initiative.