http://mos.sciedupress.com Management and Organizational Studies Vol. 2, No. 1; 2015 Published by Sciedu Press 14 ISSN 2330-5495 E-ISSN 2330-5509 Management Model for Assistive Technology Development in a Brazilian Public Education Network Elton Moura Nickel 1,* , Marcelo Gitirana Gomes Ferreira 1,2 , Fernando Antônio Forcellini 2 , Vilson João Batista 2 & Vinícius Domingues Buch 1 1 Department of Design, State University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil 2 Department of Production Engineering, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil *Corresponding author: Departamento de Design, Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina. Av. Madre Benvenuta, 2007–Itacorubi, CEP: 88.035-001, Florianópolis–SC, Brazil. Tel: 55-48-3321-8000. E-mail: eltonnickel@gmail.com Received: August 25, 2014 Accepted: September 16, 2014 Online Published: October 7, 2014 doi:10.5430/mos.v2n1p14 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/mos.v2n1p14 Abstract This paper is embedded in an interdisciplinary context, with the aim of promoting an improvement to the area of product development and services with Assistive Technology (AT). It appears that aspects of managing the development of assistive technology have lagged behind rising demand for such resources, including the education sector, in which no institution of education in Brazil has the right to refuse students with disabilities. Therefore, this research aims to develop a management model for the development of technologies that promote the inclusion of students in the school systems in order to make the effort involved in providing assistive technology to the end user. The strategy chosen for this was the case study, this being on the collection of data about the current availability of AT for students with cerebral palsy. The case selected was the public education network in a Brazilian municipal city, whose data will subsidize the development of the management model to their adequacy to the education and government reality. Keywords: management model; assistive technology; inclusive education 1. Introduction To design any product, produce it properly and still meet all the needs of their customers is not something simple. It requires organization, insight and commitment on the part of the development team. Therefore, much more careful should be the work of who develops products and services to meet permanent special needs, that is, the development of Assistive Technology (AT) which, by definition, aims to assist - help, support, give support - to the disabilities of their end-user (Cook & Hussey, 2002). In recent years, the issue of AT has been supported by a growing number of events including those organized by International Association for Universal Design, who performed their third international conference in 2010, in Hamamatsu, Japan, and the Institute for Human Centered Design, with its initiative for the conference Desingning for the 21st Century in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As a result, there was a call for papers in early 2008 and 14 papers were subsequently accepted for publication. These were grouped in issue 2 and 3 of volume 21 of Journal of Engineering Design, April 2010, in four subjects of active research in the inclusive design area. The papers published under the theme 'design tools', such as Marshall et al. (2010), Johnson, Clarkson & Huppert (2010), Carse, Thomson & Stansfield (2010), Gyi, Cain & Campbell (2010), Afacan & Demirkan (2010) and Goodman-Deane, Langdon & Clarkson (2010), are more directly related to the theme of AT covered in this work (Clarkson & Coleman, 2010). In this context, education is a social activity in which there is a major development need of assistive technology. In Brazil, the Federal Law 7.853/1989 ensures that no educational institution has the right to refuse students with disabilities. So it is up to the school to adapt its physical and pedagogical structure to receive all students without distinction. However, even the best initiatives have bogged down in issues that delay or limit their actions, as the difficulty in capturing financial resources, the long delays involved in meeting the specific demands and lack of