TAD ACT wins at the 2019 Chief Minister's Inclusion Awards!

Technology for Ageing and Disability ACT (TAD ACT) jointly won the Excellence in Innovation, Design and Access award at the 2019 ACT Chief Minister’s Inclusion Awards!

This award recognises an organisation, team or individual who has demonstrated outstanding commitment to accessibility or innovation in design to create greater inclusion for people with disability.

Technology for Ageing and Disability ACT (TADACT) has operated in Canberra for 40 years. What started as a volunteer organisation, TADACT now has three paid, part-time staff and a team of 69 active, highly skilled volunteers, who donate their time and expertise to make their work possible. TADACT’s core business is to design solutions and make customised assistive equipment, which is otherwise unavailable, to meet the needs of and assist people with disability or who are ageing.

The volunteers design and build a wide range of equipment for various aspects of living, from smaller projects such as customised cutlery right through to bespoke climbing equipment for a child with Down syndrome; cot and pram adaptations to accommodate a soon-to-be mum’s wheelchair; one-handed knitting aid; and one-handed walking frame bar. The high quality and performance of any item which TADACT delivers is ensured by their volunteer engineer, who oversees the specifications, design, production and modification processes. The judges were impressed with the level of commitment of the 69 volunteers and recognise the work that TADACT do is, by its very nature, is always innovative and achieving inclusion, dignity and independence.

In awarding the joint winners of this category, the judges considered the variety of contexts and ways inclusion can be progressed in community. The judges recognise that some initiatives are designed for universal benefit where the outcomes are broad reaching to many people across community; and others are designed to meet specific needs with the outcome having a deep impact at an individual level in enabling people to be able to go about their daily lives as independently as possible.