Sophia Borovick Past research participant and wheelchair user

Video 12/20 in our Inclusive Research Guidance for Early Career Researchers

Sophia Borovick has many chronic health conditions and is a manual wheelchair user.

Sophia chose to participate in this study because she wanted to help researchers understand how their practices could be more inclusive when carrying out research.

Sophia hopes that, by providing this information, her taking part in this project will also contribute to at least some participants feeling like their accessibility needs have been thought about.

Having more inclusive research practices, such as including scheduled rest breaks and a separate quiet room to rest in and not making participants write down on paper their thoughts, ideas and answers, will enable more disabled people to participate in research.

Funding information:

The TIDAL Network+ is a collaboration between UCL, Strathclyde, Salford and Loughborough Universities, led by Prof Cathy Holloway, Academic Director of Global Disability Innovation Hub and Professor at UCL. The research team includes Prof Laurence Kenney (Salford University), Prof Richard Bibb (Nottingham Trent University), Prof Mikko Koria (Loughborough University) and Dr Arjan Buis (Strathclyde University). We are funded from 1st September 2021 to 31st December 2024 by the EPSRC as a Healthcare Technologies New Challenges Network Plus (EP/W000717/1).

TIDAL stands for, ‘Transformative Innovation in the Delivery of Assisted Living Products and Services’. Our purpose is to improve the quality of Assistive Technologies (AT) and hence the lives of the people who use them, their families and carers.