Qatar Assistive Technology Centre (Mada) has worked with Ibtikar Technology Solutions to establish and launch Mada FabLab, recently certified by the Fab Foundation as part of the international network of Fab Labs that includes more than 1,900 laboratories around the world.
This is in line with Mada's strategy aimed at supporting inclusiveness and enhancing innovation in technological solutions, according to a press statement.
A centre for innovation and learning, Mada FabLab is a laboratory for digital fabrication equipped with devices and tools that allow inventors, entrepreneurs, students and artists to transform their creative ideas into actual and practical inventions by designing prototypes for their innovations, manufacturing them and sharing them with an interactive community of technologists, researchers and innovators, the statement notes.
"Mada Fab Lab is considered a qualitative achievement at the regional and global level that will have a pivotal role in achieving more inclusiveness in the field of digital accessibility by adopting an inclusive design. The centre also aims to make Mada FabLab a global reference that contributes to bridging the digital divide by adopting inclusiveness and encouraging the use of technology to support innovation and creativity," it explains.
The importance of Mada FabLab is that it will serve as an interactive, accessible and encouraging work environment for everyone, including people with disabilities, to innovate, manufacture, transform creative ideas into real effective inventions as well as develop and share knowledge and experiences, which contribute to achieving economically and socially sustainable development.
Besides, Mada FabLab will be a link and turning point between information and communication technology (ICT) and digital manufacturing, which greatly contributes to employing ICT accessibility in the field of digital manufacturing and technological innovation that drives the development of society and constitutes an indicator of the progress of societies.
"By launching Mada FabLab as the first laboratory of its kind designed to be inclusive for all, the centre seeks to bring about a comprehensive positive change and further boost innovation and production. The centre believes in the importance of adopting innovation and keeping pace with the new industrial revolution based on artificial intelligence," the statement adds.
The inclusive design of Mada FabLab is "a milestone in the field of innovation and theoretical and applied technological advancement that will lead towards the societal transformation to digital inclusion".
The term FabLab is an abbreviation for the phrase fabrication laboratory, which expresses a new concept different from traditional laboratories. FabLab was launched by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005 to promote innovation and entrepreneurship.