evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

Sri Lanka's National Assistive Technology Assessment — A 6,100-Person Survey That Already Shaped Policy

Sri Lanka · Colombo · See the Sri Lanka profile · See the Colombo profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 24% 92/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Sri Lanka combined WHO's rapid Assistive Technology Assessment survey (6,100 people, 93.6% response) with 26 interviews and 6 focus groups to map AT need nationally. Two of ten recommendations — duty exemptions and expanded AT budgets — were adopted within a year.

35.2 %
Respondents reporting a functional difficulty
18.1 %
Respondents reporting AT use
16.4 %
Respondents reporting unmet AT need
73.7 %
Functional difficulty among adults over 65
44.7 %
AT use among adults over 65
93.6 %
Survey response rate
Sri Lanka's National Assistive Technology Assessment — A 6,100-Person Survey That Already Shaped Policy

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Ministry of Health, Government of Sri Lanka, with the UCL Global Disability Innovation Hub (AT2030 programme)
Period
2024-2025
Keywords
assistive technology, disability policy, public health, ICT accessibility

Context

In 2024, Sri Lanka's Ministry of Health, with the UCL Global Disability Innovation Hub (AT2030 programme), carried out a national Assistive Technology Assessment combining WHO's country-capacity (ATA-C) and rapid household (rATA) methodologies to measure assistive-technology (AT) need, access and unmet need.

Activities

The quantitative arm surveyed 6,100 individuals across 1,820 households in 25 districts; the qualitative arm added 26 key informant interviews and 6 focus groups with 87 participants. In February 2025, a two-day workshop with more than 30 stakeholders validated the findings and agreed ten policy recommendations.

Results

35.2% of respondents reported a functional difficulty, 18.1% reported using AT, and 16.4% reported an unmet AT need — rising to 73.7% functional difficulty and 44.7% AT use among adults over 65. Two of the ten recommendations — customs duty exemptions on imported AT, and expanded individual AT budgets — were adopted at policy level within the same year.

Conclusions

The published study itself cautions that services remain fragmented and underfunded and that most of the other recommendations await implementation.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — A nationally representative household survey (6,100 respondents, 25 districts) plus qualitative fieldwork and a multi-stakeholder validation workshop implies a moderate, one-off research budget rather than major infrastructure spend.
Time to results
Short (< 1 year) — The assessment and its validation workshop were completed within a single year (2024-2025); policy follow-through is ongoing but the underlying study itself was a short, bounded exercise.
Staffing & skills
Ministry of Health, Government of Sri Lanka, UCL Global Disability Innovation Hub (AT2030 programme)

Conditions for success

  • WHO standardised rATA/ATA-C methodology
  • stratified national sampling across urban, rural and estate settings
  • multi-stakeholder validation workshop to agree recommendations

Common failure modes

  • services remain fragmented and underfunded
  • most of the ten recommendations have not yet been implemented

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Replication kit

Reusable artefacts from this practice — as published by their sources.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

Similar practices you may find useful