25 years ! A quarter of a century already !

On 16 December 1982, under the auspices of the Berne Swiss Foundation for Children with Cerebral Palsy, the Basle Swiss Paraplegic Foundation, and with the support of the Federation of Migros Cooperatives, Mr Jean-Claude Gabus, who died in March 2003, created the Swiss Foundation for Teletheses). His skills, entrepreneurial and innovative mind helped him to make the Foundation a pioneering organisation, appreciated first and foremost by the users, but also by professionals and everyone more or less closely connected with the disability world. His work goes on, and we are proud to be part of it.

For over 25 years now, FST has now been carrying out its mission, set out in its articles of association, of making available to the disabled technologies adapted to their needs and improving their quality of life. It has meant not only developing the most efficient products and adapting them to suit each individual case as closely as possible, but also training the people concerned. These benefits may seem natural and ordinary to us today, but we must not forget the efforts, the tenacity and persuasion that all those who work at the Foundation have had to demonstrate to make sure acceptance for the new technologies by the professionals, the users themselves and their immediate family, friends and care providers.

There is even stronger encouragement for our team in the realisation that all these efforts have corresponded and still correspond to changes in our society, given the greater emphasis now placed on the need and the possibility of developing ways of communicating and promoting the right to personal autonomy for all. This trend underlines the importance of electronic aids for daily living and their continued further development. They are indispensable if we are to ensure better social integration of the disabled.

Our enthusiasm, our determination to achieve our objectives, and the realisation that the first twenty-five years certainly cannot be taken for granted, will help us to continue. We are of course extremely grateful to all those who believed and still believe in our activities and our mission, and who have never stopped supporting us through all these years. We thank particularly the members of our Committee and Board, the Swiss Paraplegic Foundation, the Cérébral Foundation and the Friends of FST Club.