Digitization – Atelier Inclusion Techno (Fondation de France)
Entity which complete it
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Why is it a good practice of the Person-Centered Model?
Participatory workshops promoted by the Fondation de France in which people with disabilities collaborate in the design, testing and adaptation of accessible digital solutions. These actions are carried out in technological co-creation environments that promote active inclusion in the digital world.
Person-centered approach: Co-design and direct evaluation of technological tools by people with disabilities themselves, ensuring that solutions respond to their real and daily needs.
Integrated Assessment (Person, Family, Housing) and Life History
The Fondation de France recognises that people with disabilities often face not only functional limitations but also social, economic and environmental barriers. Their approach implies considering the full context of each person — not only their disability, but also their environment, access to digital tools, social support, and living conditions. By supporting projects that adapt technology to real needs, they implicitly value a holistic view of each person’s life situation.
Personalised Care and Support Plan for the Life Project
Rather than offering a fixed “one-size-fits-all” solution, Fondation de France supports initiatives that design assistive technologies together with people with disabilities themselves. This co-design process enables the creation of tools that genuinely respond to individual needs and life contexts. The idea is that technology becomes part of a personalised support framework: a means for people to gain independence, communicate, move or work — depending on their life project — rather than just a standard aid.
Support groups
Through its disability programme, Fondation de France fosters collaboration among nonprofits, users, designers and specialists. For example, the project My Human Kit is supported: a fab-lab where people with disabilities themselves participate in designing and building their own assistive devices. This kind of initiative creates a community of peers, shared learning, exchange of experiences and empowerment, more than a purely clinical or assistive relationship. Such communities can play a role similar to support groups, allowing individuals to connect, reflect, share needs and innovations.
Case Management and Resource Coordinator
Because the foundation backs multiple organisations and projects addressing different aspects — technology, inclusion, design, social insertion — there is a coordination role behind the scenes: identifying promising initiatives, funding them, connecting them to relevant actors (users, nonprofits, designers), and promoting best practices. This coordination helps ensure that assistive technologies are not isolated solutions, but part of a broader ecosystem of support, inclusion and empowerment.
Highlined results
Increased digital autonomy, better technological adaptation to personal and social environments, and empowerment of participants in their role as developers of inclusive innovation.
Inspiring ideas for other enviorments. It can works! 😉
This model shows that digital inclusion and assistive technology — if developed with users, designed around their real needs, and embedded in social support — can significantly improve autonomy and inclusion for people with disabilities. Instead of passively giving standard aids, enabling people to participate in design empowers them, and builds devices that fit their life and context. It demonstrates that combining philanthropy, technology, user-centred design and social support can produce innovative, scalable solutions to disability and inclusion.
Other observations
Fondation de France