Facilitating the Implementation of AI-Based Assistive Technologies for Persons with Disabilities in Vocational Rehabilitation: A Practical Design Thinking Approach

Digital and AI-based assistive technologies (AI-AT) are becoming more important for the inclusion of persons with disabilities (PWD). One challenge in providing PWD with AI-AT is to meet their requirements and needs. At the same time, they are often embedded in organizational contexts and thus need to be cost-effective and easy to learn and handle. This short paper introduces a systematic approach to match the individual needs and organizational context with AI-AT that support working and learning of PWD. The approach combines Design Thinking (DT) methods, participatory elements, and online collaboration tools in a cycle of three workshops. The aim is to understand the target group better, identify, evaluate and choose appropriate AI-AT and develop innovation spaces that help introduce and test AI-AT. The approach was developed for a vocational rehabilitation setting but can also be easily adapted for various settings (e.g., educational technology or corporate AI projects).