Congratulations to David Hobbs and Martin Henschke who co-presented their paper at the Australian Rehabilitation & Assistive Technology Association (ARATA) Conference 2012 and won 1st prize in the ‘Soft Technology Awards’.  Their paper, “Game on! Accessible gaming for children with disabilities” was authored by David Hobbs, Martin Henschke, Brett Wilkinson and Karen Reynolds.

The ARATA Conference is the premier assistive technology and rehabilitation engineering conference in Australia. It’s the one place where clinicians, end-users, engineers and policy developers gather to talk about issues relating to assistive technology and it’s use.

“Winning the Soft Technology Award is significant because it brings peer recognition and validation to the work we’re doing at Flinders.  This acknowledgement is very affirming and puts a spring in our step to continue on with what we’re doing”, said David.

Fellow MDRI member, Pammi Raghavendra’s paper took out second prize in the awards.  Emma Grace presented the paper “Internet for social inclusion of children with disabilities” on behalf of the authors which include Pammi, Denise Wood (UniSA), Lareen Newman (Southgate, Flinders University) and Tim Connell (Disability Services, SA).  The results of the study were very positive, with the participant’s and their families reporting how much they benefited from the home support and the individualised training and use of appropriate assistive technology.