IBM, Universities Collaborate On Technologies for the Aging Workforce

IBM, Universities Collaborate On Technologies for the Aging Workforce

The University of Dundee has formed a collaboration with IBM and the
University of Miami to develop new software technology tools to
accommodate the needs of older workers and help them adapt to and remain
productive in the changing workplace of the 21st century.

Workforces in developed countries are ageing and the available pool of
younger workers is shrinking at a fast rate. High percentages of skilled
workers are approaching or reaching retirement age by the end of the
decade. And as these workers retire, they take with them valuable
skills, experience, training and knowledge.

As this trend continues, companies can use this opportunity to
innovate-and even gain competitive advantage-by ensuring skilled older
workers have the tools they need to be effective and by offering
advantages to promote retention. One way to support maturing workers who
have age-related disabilities is to find new ways to increase their
comfort level and ability to use technology.

For many organizations, the answer is accessibility - the development
and integration of structures, systems, tools, and processes that
facilitate the inclusion of more people - irrespective of their age,
abilities or personal challenges.

The collaboration between the School of Computing at Dundee, IBM and
the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami will focus on
issues related to training and worker communication, especially in
environments where there is a multigenerational workforce.

"IBM strives to aid companies in developing solutions to accommodate
the maturing workforce, as well as prolong and increase productivity,
said Vicki Hanson, Manager, Accessibility Research for IBM and
Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Dundee.

The aim is to develop `open source' software tools that can be shared
easily among developers and the people who need them most.

"This collaboration is a superb opportunity for our group in Dundee
to apply our wide experience of research with older people, and of
developing better ways of accessing technology, in an exciting new
transatlantic partnership with IBM and the Miller Medical School in
Miami," said Professor Peter Gregor, Head of the School of Computing
at the University of Dundee.

"The open source focus makes the challenges particularly rewarding
because it means that knowledge gained and systems developed will be
available freely to the people who need them and to other
developers."

The collaboration team is comprised of researchers from the IBM T.J.
Watson Research Center, Professor Gregor and colleagues at the
University of Dundee, and Professor Sara Czaja from the University of
Miami Miller School of Medicine. The project will target both training
and collaboration technologies, with an eye to the unique needs of older
workers.

The IBM Research team, lead by Dr Hanson, has worked for the past
several years on website usability for older adults. Through Corporate
Citizenship partnerships with key organizations serving older adults,
the IBM researchers have created software deployed worldwide that
addresses many needs of older users. (For more information on the
available solutions, please visit:
http://www3.ibm.com/able/solution_offerings/research.html)

At the University of Dundee, within the Assistive and Healthcare
Technologies Group, there are eight faculty, including three full
Professors and Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellow, Dr Anna Dickinson, who
have a focus on older people and assistive technologies. The university
take a multidisciplinary approach to the problem with researchers not
only from the School of Computing, but also from Psychology, and from
the Schools of Media Arts & Imaging and Design in producing
visualizations and interaction scenarios.

At the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, the collaboration
will build on research conducted at
The Center for Research and
Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) and the Center on
Aging. CREATE is a multidisciplinary, cohesive Center of research and
education on aging and technology funded by the National Institutes on
Aging. The team at Miami, led by Dr. Sara Czaja involves researchers
from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Industrial
Engineering and the Center on Aging. An emphasis of the research
program at Miami is on technology in work/employment settings.

"Older workers represent an extremely valuable resource," said
Professor Czaja. "However they need to have tools available to them to
be able to compete in today's technology-driven workplace. We are
excited about the opportunity to collaborate with IBM and Dundee as it
provides us with a unique opportunity to have the results of our
research efforts translated into actual products and tools. It also
provides a wonderful opportunity for our students."

NOTES TO EDITORS

About IBM

The work is part of IBM's Open Collaborative Research (OCR) program -
an initiative designed to foster research connections between IBM and
universities. OCR projects are designed to focus on topics that are
deemed especially important or difficult and where open collaboration
would benefit the academic and industrial research partners involved and
the world at large.

By design, the IBM OCR program accelerates the innovation and
development of open software across a breadth of areas, thus enabling
the development of related industry standards and greater
interoperability, while managing intellectual property in a manner that
enhances these goals.

Under IBM's OCR program, results developed between IBM Research and
top university faculty and their students for specific projects will be
made available as open source software code and all additional
intellectual property developed based on those results will be openly
published or made available royalty-free.

To remain competitive, businesses and governments worldwide must evolve
and adapt by creating strategies that maximize the potential of every
worker, regardless of their age or physical abilities. IBM believes that
accessibility can play a critical role in helping companies maximize the
skills and knowledge of maturing employees, while creating a meaningful
connection to younger generations of workers.

For more information about IBM, please visit www.ibm.com.
For more information about IBM's Open Collaboration Program, please
visit XX

Press contact:

Steven Tomasco, IBM Media Relations, 914.945.1655, stomasc@us.ibm.com

UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE & THE OCR PROJECT

Dundee's role in the project
We will develop a series of software tools specifically designed to
improve the ability of older people to continue to continue to take
part
fully in employment and make a unique contribution to the workforce.
The development process will rely on substantial user involvement
throughout along with support from our partners in Miami and at IBM.

Relevant work already done at Dundee in this area
We have developed software tools for people with cognitive
difficulties
to improve communication and allow better access to information,
simplified interfaces for training purposes for older first-time
computer users, and explored innovative techniques for requirements
gathering about the use of technology by older people.

Advantage of working with IBM
Working with IBM will assist in the immediate transfer of our ideas to
those who can benefit from them, particularly with the open source
approach. It will also provide us with access to the thinking and
innovative ideas of people working within IBM. IBM has also brought
us together with expertise from the University of Miami Miller School
of Medicine.