Swedish platform fills in digital gap for people with cognitive variations

The service was designed by the City of Malmö

The functional support administration of the City of Malmö developed a new online platform, which has the purpose of serving as a repository and catalogue of mobile apps that can be extremely useful to people with cognitive and communicative disabilities.

The platform is called Appoteket (which in Swedish means The Pharmacy) as it is a viable collection of apps that can be used to help alleviate and simplify life for anyone, regardless of their functional capacity. It is, thus, meant to be an invaluable tool in the arsenal of people working in social and support services since they can train their clients to use such apps and reap the benefits from the digital addition to their lives.

People with disabilities are often unaware of the existence of such support apps

The platform is primarily intended for use by the City’s welfare and support administration staff, however, it is free to use by anyone. The service was launched to contribute to bringing about more independence for people with functional variations and to counteract their digital exclusion.

Apps and digital support have become a matter of course in our lives and help us with tons of things. They can be used for keeping track of meetings via the calendar or the alarm clock on the mobile phone. But for people with cognitive and communicative disabilities, digital support is not always easily understood - even if the need is greater in many cases.

There are lots of useful and adapted technology that meets a wide range of needs and provides new opportunities, but such people often lack knowledge about it, which leads to a digital exclusion for many groups in society. The Appoteket service is a new way of collecting apps and digital support together with information on how the technology can be used to maximize the benefits for people with various disabilities.

To make it easy to find, the apps have been sorted into different categories, such as memory and time perception, as well as by target groups such as people with autism, disabilities or mental health issues. The range can also be filtered based on other conditions, such as operating system, language and price.