The benefits and barriers of researching through virtual environments for participants with lived experience of intellectual disability [ID]

The ‘RED Framework - Cocreating Rights Enabled by Design [RED] for IoT in Intellectual Disability’ project, is a participatory project addressing how the ‘United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ [CRPD] can be integrated into design practices and embedded into the Internet of Things (IoT), focusing specifically on applications in intellectual disability [ID]. Researchers require new knowledge and skillsets to understand the lived experiences of ID, facilitate participation of persons with lived experience of ID in design processes, and effectively integrate the CRPD into IoT solutions. As part of this research, a series of co-creation workshops are being held with participants with lived experience of ID, who will have an option to participate in the study either in-person or online. To help maximise the project’s potential in cocreating research outputs with participants with lived experience of ID that align with the CRPD principles, the opportunities and barriers of researching through virtual environments must also be considered. This poster details key challenges hindering, and enablers promoting, research supported through virtual environments, as identified in recent literature.