Continuity, collaboration, and culture: toward co-creating sustainable assistive technology ecosystems for inclusive higher education

Technology has the potential to transform higher education by fostering equitable access and participation for students with disabilities. Yet, institutional and systemic barriers often constrain its impact. Using Gowran’s Sustainable Community of Practice (SCOP) model as an analytical framework, this paper explores stakeholder-informed foundations for the co-creation of sustainable assistive technology (AT) ecosystems in Irish higher education. Data from a world-café Dialogue Forum with 50 participants, including students with disabilities, academic staff, institutional leaders, and sectoral stakeholders, were analyzed thematically, drawing on conversation notes, digital artefacts, and graphic recordings. The findings identify AT-specific key areas and priority actions across the four SCOP dimensions, highlighting the need to strengthen cross-sector collaboration, ensure user-centred continuity of AT support, foster equity-driven leadership and institutional culture, embed proactive and coherent policy measures, professionalise AT services, and advance the implementation of universal design approaches. Beyond identifying priorities, the paper contributes a conceptual integration of participatory, dialogic inquiry with the SCOP framework, demonstrating how stakeholder-generated insights can be systematically mapped to ecosystem-level dimensions of inclusive higher education.