The EU General Data Protection Regulation and its Effects on Designing Assistive Environments

On the 25th of May 2018 the EU will start to enforce the General Data Protection Regulation (EU-GDPR)[3]. This new regulation will replace the old Data Protection Act from 1998 and will disrupt common data processing practices. While the new regulation will make it easier to develop systems that comply with data protection laws all over Europe, it will change the way we design technology. With data protection a much more important factor and huge fines for data protection violations, technology vendors will demand systems where data protection was already considered during development. This will force the research community to broaden their perspective and consider how to develop and design systems in a way, that complies with data protection. This paper focuses on some of the more important parts of the GDPR for Assistive Environments. Reading the paper will not solve all your privacy related challenges but will help you to know which questions to ask.