The Future of Tech Design and Innovation is Accessible

[Music] well welcome everyone it's great to have those that are with us in person uh those who are joining us online as well my name is Pete Horsley I'm one of the team at remarkable we're a tech accelerator uh and we're a venture arm of cerebral palsy Alliance wanting to grow inclusive technology in Australia and around the world we are currently on a category land of the Euro nation and I want to pay my respects to Elders past present and emerging this land was sacred it's been cared for them for generations and generations they were the original innovators and we have much to learn from our Aboriginal brothers and sisters so I pay my respects to anyone who identifies as Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander here I also want to pay my respects as well to Advocates Disability Advocates who have come before us because I think that that we are where we are because of Advocates fighting for the rights of people with disability we still have a long way to ago but we have come a long way because of them so we'll we'll get to some meet our other guests panelists one who's zooming in from the other side of the world as well as the two that are here with us right now in this room um in in just a little bit but I wanted to give a little bit of a primer to kind of get our thinking kind of happening to begin with um something that uh hopefully will will kind of spark some ideas and perhaps spark some discussion a little bit later on as well so uh diversity is is the essence or disability is the essence of human diversity uh if we think about uh disability it cuts across every race every age um every sexual orientation um no matter what socioeconomic uh a status you definitely you have uh disability cuts across all of those and yet we kind of seem to be stuck in this situation where uh where it's regularly placed into this kind of category of kind of put to the side it is placed into a kind of area of Niche oftentimes when I say that I work in the space of disability people kind of metaphorically Pat you on the head and say oh that must be very inspiring work that you do um it's kind of thought of as kind of Charity and not-for-profit and a space of sympathy which I think is is actually um uh certainly something that it definitely shouldn't be uh and and I want you to do something right now so wherever you are if you're at home listening to this you're in a workplace listening to this I want you actually to pull out your phone I want you to pull out your phone and uh I want you to hold it and look at it um or feel it if you if you're not looking at it I just want you to feel it don't taste it I heard as I was as I was looking doing some research around this uh it it actually said that our mobile phones are usually uh um have more bacteria than a toilet seat so I'm just a little little kind of um a fast fact for you right there but I want you to look at your mobile phone so welcome people welcome um it's it's so good to have you here um pull out your mobile phone I want you to have a look at your mobile phone because in in that piece of technology is is some incredible technology that was first not designed for the majority of the population who are currently using it so um in your phone you I use something called a keyboard now the keyboard is different from what it was originally designed as but um but Pellegrino uh torini was one of the first inventors of the keyboard there's actually a love story at the beginning of the typewriter so he uh was speaking to Countess I want to get her name right Countess for Tori who had started to go blind and he fancied her he kind of loved her and wanted to give her a way of being able to write love letters he actually hoped that the love letters would be written to him I'm not sure how that story ended I was telling my wife about this last night she's like you can't do that story without saying what the ending is I do need to do some more research but um he developed a way of creating a keyboard so that someone who was losing their site would be able to write for legible letters that is in your phone the second thing is uh your the keyboard the phone itself um was actually first one of the first inventors of the telephone um was Ella well it's noted as Alexander Graham Bell Alexander's mother was profoundly deaf her father his father was actually an educator of of the deaf and then he also was married to someone who was hard of hearing as well and he was trying to figure out ways that we could perhaps he had a real Fascination and interest in um in Acoustics and and audio and was trying to figure out ways that he could potentially allow his um his wife to to be able to communicate or hear better um the other thing is SMS here's a fast fact for you five billion people around the world have access to SMS now that's um 65 65 of the global population have access to SMS first designed actually uh for some students who were deaf to be able to communicate with each other again this is something that's baked into this little device that you and I carry around every single day um and then the last one is is the internet um uh a man and those of you who've heard me talk a couple of times before will know that I'm a big fan of insurf who is one of The Originators of the internet uh vent uh developed profound hearing loss at about the age of 11 or 12 and then uh as a as a researcher was trying to figure out ways that he didn't have to pick up the telephone to speak to his research colleagues and also his wife who was also hard of hearing trying to work out ways that he could pass data over to her and so created some of the earliest internet protocols that are the building blocks that we have of the modern internet today all of these things as you look at that phone as you kind of gaze at this little device that we pick up somewhere between kind of 100 and 300 times to check it per day all of these things actually were originated in a space that was potentially designed for people that are outside of this that are beyond the the people in this room and so why then do we have this situation where if it's thought of as Niche it's thought of as the space of kind of Charities and not-for-profits and yet we have 1.5 billion people around the world about 20 of our global population has some form of disability and we end up with Statistics like these two-thirds of the working population uh two-thirds of working age people with disability are not employed um 1.9 trillion dollars of global GDP lost every single year and that was a start from 2009 they haven't updated it since then it is most likely a lot higher than that we have these statistics around uh kind of where um where where we're up to and 900 million people who need one or more assistive devices in the world don't have access to it why are we in this situation we've got to reframe some of our thinking about this and so that's why I'm excited to have this discussion uh today um and I'm excited to kind of think about areas of inclusive design there was a study that was done in 2000 and 11 where I was trying to look at uh at car crashes and it was looking at people who identified as female who are getting more injured in similar car accidents to people who are identifying as male now trying to figure out what was going on and they they soon figured out that it was because the the crash test dummy was actually based on a male body size and type whatever they thought that was uh and so it wasn't until just even 10 years ago that we actually started to have adjustable seat belts that allowed for different body shapes and body sizes crazy thought uh back in uh World War II uh Lieutenant Gilbert Daniels was only 23 years of age when they were trying to figure out why all the planes all these planes were crashing in in World War II and he did a measurement of literally took measurements of 4 000 pilots and can you guess how many of those 4 000 Pilots actually perfectly fit the dimensions of the plane that was designed for literally zero zero not even one literally zero um and again that um ended up being the result of having to think about designing for the edges let's think about designing for the diversity of Human Experience not just designing for kind of one particular shape or adding that as an afterthought kind of afterwards um so I guess from this we we can say there is no normal there is no average uh the end of average has already happened right we have to think about the diversity of human experience we are all shapes we are all sizes we are all socioeconomic um have socioeconomic status we are we all have different uh literacy levels we have different Tech ability and we have different disabilities as well so as we kind of enter into this it's not about one size fits all it's not about saying that you know we have to kind of create something that does one thing for everyone it's about kind of thinking literally about inclusive design that aims to create products that work for the most number of people and also that we need assistive products that are designed specifically to meet certain needs that that perhaps the whole population doesn't need to to have access to so that's all I wanted to kind of give as a bit of a primer um uh I I think that hopefully um we've got some some of the right people in this room to have this conversation um but also some of the people that are joining us online um so you will have the opportunity to kind of submit some questions as we go on but to kind of start this next section I want to introduce the amazing Mel Tran to everyone Mel's going to moderate this session and and introduce us um to the rest of the panel uh and I'll just give some some words about Mel first of all she's an incredible individual that I got to know about 2016 I think when um she was part of a startup at that time ability made she's gone on to become an incredible user experience designer and speaker and writer and doing uh further study and just found out today published author coming out next year as well so um an incredible individual and I'm so glad to know you Mel and I'm so glad that you get to moderate this session with us today so over to you thank you Jake hey I might have to buy you with a cup of coffee after that yesterday um for those of you in the room and for those of you who enjoy the house through the World Wide Web thank you for being here we really have an amazing lineup of speakers today and I'm really excited to um for you to get to know them um but we will do a short round of intro shortly but just a disclaimer for those who know me know that I never shut up and especially since I've prepared literally 10 000 questions for each of you so I'll give you the permission to shut me up so we have enough time to just audits to ask questions as well um afterwards um before we do an intro I do want to do a warm welcome to other ways to hate and dance to the beauty of Technology we have no joining us from New York hello [Music] um start off with Darvin no do you want to start us off um yeah my name is Noel Joyce I'm uh I'm a wheelchair Enthusiast um I'm the industrial designer and my background I previous to the work I've done uh that I do now and I've done previous to this work I was in the Irish military um I had my accident roughly 17 years ago t67 complete uh paralyzed from the chest down and I went back to college to study industrial design um I've had a number of startups myself which I I developed as a result of uh understanding was going to be quite difficult at work in design and maybe as a disabled person as well um and as a result of that I went on then to work at a hardware startup named hacks uh one of the probably the the first Hardware startup accelerator based in Shenzhen in China where I led the design team that that's not a grand gesture by the way I was the only person doing design for very long time so I led the design team I've worked with um I hacks maybe two to startups in on various types of Hardware anything from consumer electronics to robots to medical devices anything anything you can think of in an industry you can think of I've probably worked on a technology or a product in in that area um and I I would always specialize in trying to turn or change technologies that have never been used before in the way that we're being used our new technologies into customer facing our consumer facing objects and devices after that I went on to start to teach at NYU so that's why I'm in New York I'm teaching design and Innovation at you at New York University where I get to um sort of hand over some of that that learnings I've had over the last 13 years to the Next Generation coming up um that's me sorry for going on a bit thank you thanks Mel and you know everybody hi everyone I'm Eloise I think I was introduced to the disability diversity sector from a young age my mum is a diverse learning needs teacher so I've always been sort of exposed to diversity um starting off with neurodiverse and also an industrial designer and for my honors I was looking at co-design methodology and working with amputees to look at how we could design Prosthetics that not only considered um physical rehabilitation but also emotional Rehabilitation and I think coupling mechanical engineering alongside emotional design seemed like such a natural connection and that's something I'm really passionate about linking people to the designs that they are going to be using so that's something I've continued to work through and got great experience where I met Mel and Pete through Center for inclusive design where I got to meet many people of different abilities and diverse backgrounds where I learned that bringing people to design is the most important part of the process so now working at vert design which is industrial design consultancy I get to bring that knowledge that I have into practice through to the manufacturing stage which is really exciting last but not least um so he told us my name I'm part of the team at remarkable Philippa is also part of the team at remarkable so we're investing in and growing uh disability Tech related startups both here and in in America as well and in different parts of the world so I've been 17 years at cerebral palsy Alliance and I actually have a background in design as well so um it's great to be with you all thank you okay I think interview or being such a unique and Powerful perspective um to the topics of Design Tech and Innovation so I'm really excited to put your friends on some questions um but no the first one is for you um and as as an innovator as a educator you're fully extensive um experience in the industry but I'd be choose to know what are some of the challenges that you've experienced with um implementing inclusive design principles in your work um okay so that's that's a doozy um when I think about I think we you saw everyone in the panel sort of understands my opinion about what I think about inclusive design right but um I think about the challenges um of having a disability myself um and being involved in the design work that I've been doing uh gave me um a sort of unique prism through which a different sort of level of empathy came from right so when I think about what I'm doing the work that I'm doing I'm I'm I I think a lot about the The Human Experience whether it's for able-bodied people or not right what am I trying to what am I trying to get to what am I trying to tackle um I one of the things I think that if I was to think about the challenges I I suppose it's trying to get the message across that this is this is something that's of use to everyone right when we design for um for disability or the extreme circumstances it's going to help everyone right because again I've talked quite extensively about the idea that we all end up disabled it doesn't matter who you are you're going to end up disabled whether you like it or not so there's going to be a point in your life where you don't want to feel like that you have to change to suit the circumstances of the products and experiences and infrastructure around you and the world starts to close in right and right now uh I think we have a unique opportunity through understanding disability and utilizing disability as a means to understand our future selves so when it comes to the challenges I I I often found I was coming up against um uh not coming up against people but coming up against I suppose opinions that it was a a thing that we we will add that later we'll think of that later but when I flipped the story to being a selfish reasoning for engaging if I tell you that you're going to be disabled you're going to think differently about it right so that sort of the challenges to me were always right okay how do I change the story to how do I inflect it that it affects you as a as much as it affects me and getting around those challenges but I think Mel um I I can probably speak for you as well where we're pretty Adept at problem solving right so I think that um I've been I've utilized my disability to be able to uh be better Problem Solver be better at coming up with Solutions whether or far um just regular products are for people with disability um yeah and I could probably talk even more than you now so I'll stop now I hope that answers hey I think one of the really interesting things that you've you've just shared know when the stories that use should only appear I think there's a common ground there around our lived experiences and barriers and challenges that every individual face um is a driving force for Innovation and um that's exactly why we're here today and I think it will raise you for a certain courage a lot of experience into in the education sector but also at the desired interest um the principal values that you hold it just as a industrial design um designer I I think we're also quite familiar with the discussions around the medical and the social models of disability um I'd love to know from your perspective how can we leverage education as a platform to help create a shift and mindset from the medical model of disability to the social model thanks Mel I think that shift in met mindset is going to be where change is going to be made and implemented I think having the medical model which is looking at people with disability adapting to certain environment or a product is where the problem sort of starts if we sort of reframe to the social model where we're not getting people to adapt but we're getting environments and products to adapt there's going to be a much stronger connection I think so part of my background as well now is teaching at UTS so I get to from where I studied get to teach some of the students in product design and I think I always bring the inclusive design methodology into into their practice and I want to share as much as I can I think when it comes to situations where people it's unknown and there's always fear of unknown when you're designing for someone and their lived experiences that you can't interact with it's it's really about framing it in a different way so I think we can leverage education and framing so that there's more opportunity to ask questions and look at how we can develop products to suit more people I think the social model really allows us to people to empathize because I think the biggest barrier is not not understanding and not knowing how it can impact you to so to knowle's point if you say everyone in their future will experience a disability you know whether it be arthritis from old age or something else they can then see how they their designs will benefit everyone in the future so I think it's it's really about reframing from an ethical point of view but also an empathy point of view that's great and I think one of the things that you you both touched on is just that fear of the uncertainty of Art and the question but also and just I think the have is lived experience can shift out our individual perspectives um and I think it is safe to say that because if you're not it's easy for someone to say we're not exposed to disability and we don't know someone who has a disability so um it's easy for us to say oh that's too hard let's take a step back and just stick to the safe space um but we also know and it's one of the things that came up a lot today already is that the barriers and challenges of our energy experience can be a driving force for Innovation um and one of the unique things about our society right now is that I think every one of us right now whether we're in this room or in the online or just in a way in general we all have interactive experience of living through the pandemic and we have more experienced the challenges that come with it and we've all been forced to adapt and to embrace that uncertainty interchange um that comes with it um okay I would love to hear your thoughts on how you think we can use our collective experience of living through the pandemic um to create a more accessible future it's a it's a um amazing question I think uh you know one of the first things that comes to mind when when you pose that question was the the rate of change that we're actually able to do when the pandemic hit um my wife is a teacher and she was saying like you know they they literally had to kind of snap into action around schools and being able to educate kids online and there was a whole bunch of kind of challenges around that the there's been many within the disability Community have been asking for calling for kind of more flexible working conditions for for decades and decades and we're always told no sorry it's too hard can't happen um and then all of a sudden the pandemic hit and we could do it within the space of almost two weeks um and you think okay well that that is that is possible um we we each kind of shared in in some of um of being inhibited or being kind of um kind of Trapped in our homes and so I think that before we kind of go too much further it would almost be good for us to kind of reflect on what that experience is like um uh to be able to to kind of consider perhaps what not being able to access other locations might be like um what being told that you are kind of forced into kind of um complying to um uh kind of certain ways of doing things is having said all of that I think that none of us can ever fully understand anyone else's experience and so I think that what what we should try and do through this experience is perhaps try and build our empathy muscle get better at listening um ask people how they're going I think your point around fear before you know is a really valid one like people are scared to say the wrong thing they don't want to offend other people and and I think that's a valid fear right but um the only way that you're going to actually bring some change to that is to to chat to someone chat to James chat to Mel like chat chat to other people that have different experiences of of this of disability um it yes we might say the wrong things from time to time but I don't think that that should be a barrier to stop us in engaging in conversation so yes we have had a collective experience um yes we've got some things to learn from that but I think we've also got to continue to hear continue to listen continue to build our empathy muscles can I just add one thing now to the covered sort of isolation period and zoom sort of being utilized a lot more for meetings I think there was the visibility for more people to see accessibility considerations so things like closed captioning or just having captions in general and I think that visibility really benefited the broader community in us as a society so I think that's something if you want to look at Silver Linings I think there was more of a push towards accessibility because it became a necessity so I think it's quite interesting yeah and I think it's it's just interesting to see um how beautiful I've mentioned especially touched on just how fast where you can change and adapt when we are forced to when things that work um and I think there's initially that level of resistance I mean if you think back to pre-pandemics and you think about the concept of work from home and the remote working and or even Telehealth the resistance with policy and security and all the concerns um and yet once we're in that situation and what you've said earlier appeared around when you're forced to think about what it feels like to have these this I just autonomy removed from you then you start to then you start to think about or how do we make this work other work around it um and then we started interview like this when things don't work the way it should the way it could then how do we innovate and adapt um I think I think you're touching the really interesting point around education and how things changed so fast when you had to when you had no other choice to um so I'd be really interested and we know that there's a lot of changes in the way we work as well um to know our love to change your thoughts on how do you think we should embrace the change that has happened so far in the workplace during the pandemic um to embed the inclusive design principles in education and life in general um so the first thing I would sort of to Echo all the comments so far in 2019 before the pandemic even hit I did a talk about um how people with disabilities again I got to talk about how me and other people with disabilities are awesome because we are great problem solvers right and how technology at that point in 2019 had enabled uh surgery brain surgery to occur um with a 3 000 kilometer gap between the person performing the surgery using a robot and the patient right this is before pandemics even came in came into our lives right so the technology exists to be able to work remotely before pandemic the pandemic came along and it existed and it was able to do things like that right so I I often think about if we were to take the collective intellectual horsepower of people with disabilities as problem solvers and give them those opportunities with those Technologies before even a pandemic came along you were you're already um sort of thinking about what the future is going to be like the pandemic I suppose gave everyone a taste of it and it's we're all going to talk about how um now you know what it's like to be disabled to some degree but we shouldn't have even had to do that right we shouldn't have we shouldn't have had to do that we should be embracing uh the idea that that that there's this massive untapped resource and now we have the technological capability to release it right that it's not because of the pandemic that we should try but because we've got these two incredible resources that could be used right um so that's sort of my my thoughts on the whole pandemic thing right and I would have used a pandemic as a great way to tell that story too um but what what my biggest learning from it was the the ability to move in the built environment after things started to open up the ability to do things that you wouldn't have done before the the fact that you don't take the same risks like so going to a cafe for example the two meter distancing meant that that there was space to move around you could get into a place that you couldn't get into before and when you went to the doctor you didn't sit in a waiting room with 10 other people who were coughing and spluttering and all sorts of stuff there was a system developed that prevented you from getting any worse than you were when you went to the doctor right so all of these things that um became benefits um I I'd add a certain amount more value to our lives and the only thing I fear is that we will go a little bit backwards just because we think we need to pack more people into a space just because we want to you know make things more efficient and we could end up with with bad circumstances but I think we're going to have I think it's a little bit different for for us nowadays again because of technology that we can be constantly reminded of a situation that will occur almost instantaneously whereas I suppose in other pandemics years ago uh it would have been it would have went past and we would have sort of begin to forget it very quickly right I I'm making an assumption there but um it's not the it's not the same as the way we can get information straight away so I think we're a bit more clued in at all times a bit more aware as a result of those things so I see positives but I believe that the positives of of how we we needed to educate or talk about these things were there before the the pandemic well before because uh the the technology and and that intellectual horsepower exists and it's amazing I think that you have mentioned that all the talk of inclusive design and just in general it all should happen if it were before the pandemic and this is right now it's a genetic opportunity to change but it's also it should happen well before this and hopefully we'll also Sparkle conversation the conversation that we have today will be on this room and into your day-to-day work as well to keep that momentum moving um but I know there's a lot of conversations around why we need to be more inclusive the the power of diversity um but as always I'd love to hear your thoughts on what are the risks when uh when we don't Embrace inclusion and diversity what happens as a business as an organization as individuals what are the risks that we would um person experience I think when we're not actively including people we're invertedly we're actively excluding people and I think we've seen so many instances you know you can look at it from a humanitarian approach you can look at it from a monetary approach um you know even something as simple as having to then retrofit designs to suit people that they weren't initially designed for as you mentioned with the uh the car and the airplane sort of design they were designed around standardized anthropometric data and I think that that's where sort of the issue lies so I think designing for adaptability and flexible use is what I sort of champion and that's what I sort of um echo in in my design and discussion um but I think the risks can be excluding people and I mean when you mentioned that untapped Market that we we have when you were looking at sort of the data and the statistics in 2019 it just shows what we're missing out on as a broader Community I think the risks are you know it's partially ethical but also just I mean value to me when I look at these sort of things and I look at inclusive design I'm just like it's common sense and I think that's why like whenever I like talk to people or I start to talk about the social model they're like oh that makes so much sense like of course this you know sidewalk should be designed with a curb cut it'll benefit not only a wheelchair user but XYZ people as well so I think you know if you look at risk and then you look at Opportunity the opportunity is always going to be where you should buy responsibility can I add to that as well I I think you know we we've um kind of glanced around a couple of kind of big topics I totally agree with you Eloise that uh you know if we haven't got all the brains on some of the big challenges that we're actually dealing with then we're cutting ourselves short like if we're kind of ignoring a bunch of talent that could potentially bring some solutions to this to Noel's Point like we're still dealing with climate change we're still dealing with kind of concerns around Mass migration why we've got people kind of having to to leave their homes and move places we've got all these really really deep kind of both philosophical and physical challenges um before us and if we go well let's just put like half of the squad onto that like you kind of go like we're missing out on on the brain power who actually come with natural kind of problem-solving ability around that so I think it's it's essential for us as a society going forward that um that that we bring the full bench Squad of of everyone on this took like it's almost like untapped Innovation is the risk yeah sorry no you know I was gonna just mention like when we talk about that right um what's been left on the table right um and one of the projects I worked on in recent years you would know about was um when we looked at mapping footpaths from the Wheelchairs and Gathering the data around vibration and impact in order to be able to help create a solution that let you know local governments repair uh areas that needed to be repaired etc etc and when they take that example project and look at Ground delivery robots right those very same things those things that are going to do the the last meter delivery need that information so there's a whole like that's a good example of how and there's there's all this information that we're not utilizing based on the difficulties that people uh living in the built environment have right and by by looking at it from that perspective we're putting value on the table we're not just costing money to solve those problems we're going okay now Amazon can actually efficiently deliver stuff now they're probably going to pay higher taxes in a specific area because their robots operate there more frequently now we're employing people with disabilities to map areas uh to to help those robots understand where they can go right and that's just like a small cross-section of all of the things we could be looking at that can can help both people with disabilities but also the general public imagine the idea that someone in a wheelchair managed to help get your delivery to your house that's that's that's the kind of power that's there one of the um one of the things that stuck up to me was um untapped Innovation I think we need to hashtag that hashtag wedding face um but I think what all three of you have mentioned um is around creating opportunities for individuals to thrive and to exercise our empathy and muscle but also to bring unique and diverse voices to the center of design and developing products and services but also just in the way we've worked together and collaborate um hey this one is for you um do you change from their perspective are there any businesses or organizations that are doing well in the space of creating a platform for voices to be heard and to embed inclusive design in their work um yes and no um so that so certainly there's there's businesses that are starting in this space there's been companies like apple that have that have tried to take an approach around this um kind of for a number of years um Google and Microsoft are doing something similar more recently and certainly they wouldn't be approaching it from an altruistic perspective right like they know they're going to make some money out of this um but I I there are aspects of kind of um businesses working on this problem that um it's only kind of certain pockets of the business or at certain aspects of the business and we haven't actually seen it dive all the way into our hiring processes our HR processes our marketing messages like there are little kind of pockets of things kind of happening through some of these kind of big Enterprises but it really needs to kind of um kind of find its way all the way through businesses and I actually think that the the businesses that are doing this best is actually startups it's companies that are kind of we've got some startup Founders in the room and and I think that they're actually kind of have seen an unless understanding of this like Haley's kind of doing uh this right now in her business that she's seen kind of the untapped kind of value that can happen around that so I think that you know uh have we seen some businesses that are doing it well we've seen some businesses that are doing it partially well I think um but where my hope certainly lies is um uh the the startups that are kind of now emerging they're emerging businesses and they're going to be built with this DNA kind of embedded into them so imagine and I think that that itself is almost a whole plan of discussion that its own um I do have one last question before we hand it over to the audience um this is a question for everyone on the panel um I didn't feel kind of great that it is we're all responsible and accountable to help shape a better future that's more inclusive and diverse but what's more important is that we we all have the capability to do so no matter what industries that we're watching whether it's Tech or disability or educational communication to marketing or Finance and it just goes on but I just um and they're really I'd love to hear thoughts from the panel and what are some of the strategies that we can Implement in our day-to-day work that would help contribute to the broader vision of rebuilding a more inclusive and diverse Society yeah no I can go first yeah I think um we have to make well we don't have to make them we have to help people to understand that this is your future anyways right um the the day that you uh start to slow down the data it gets more difficult is is going to be there the problem for all of us whether we like it or not is that we don't like to believe that there's a fallible version of ourselves and it slowly creeps up on on a lot of us a lot some of us have got there well before everyone else and that's why we understand why these things are important to solve right so I think if we can think about that idea of the future self and that's one one strategy I think about a lot the second one is to to think about it from a business perspective because with the best and most altruistic reasoning for anything that you do if you do not make money from it no one who has money is going to be interested in doing anything about it right um and one of the things we just recently was uh Nike's new Fly Shoe where it became so successful it was designed for people with disabilities but became so successful that not even the people who was designed for could get a hold of it anymore right and like he didn't turn around and do that because uh they they were doing something nice they understood that there was an opportunity here um and also that the future is more difficult for a lot more people so I always think about that as an example where you know Nike owned the way you will put a shoe on in the future and these are not thinking about that if they're not thinking that far ahead and and looking at disability as a way to drive those Innovations then they're going to miss a lot of value they're going to miss a lot that they could they could realize today but also realize in a longer term a scenario and to speak to the startup idea the startups that Pete mentioned as well this idea that the startups are the ones that they're the ones that these large companies are going to be interested in right you know because they're they're lower risk opportunities to understand problems and instead of you know batting the Nike betting on on on on themselves to solve these problems they're probably looking at 20 different ideas now that our disability startups that because of the success of that single product so there is a hunger and an appetite it just might not be talked about as specifically for disability right now uh and I think if we don't talk about it that's fine but as long as we're sort of thinking about it in that way as well right that there is there is a huge business opportunity here uh to to um give long-term value to your organization as much as help people right that's that would be the way I would think about make people realize it's going to happen to them and that they must do something about it now because they can make money from it if I can build on that as well I totally think that Noel's making incredible points here around the the value of um of data around people with disability that we need to get better at at um understanding that and reporting that as well so as I kind of look at some of the world a bunch of the hypothesis that remarkable we have as a kind of program um is that that technology is one of the ways that we're actually going to see some of these barriers broken down um I think policy is obviously another area and that's a really really slow moving Beast that will still need to happen but then the the other area is this kind of area around data which I think is a really interesting one and at the moment um I don't think we've got data presented in a way that is compelling enough to enough businesses and so we need to be able to be able to serve that that data up in a way that businesses go oh my goodness so in the UK they talk about it as the purple pound there's been people that have tried to kind of put some numbers around this of the buying power of of people with disability and their close family and friends there was something that came out I think ey did the um did the report and it was about 13 trillion dollars globally um that's just too big for people to comprehend so I think we've got to bring it down to kind of some some uh kind of further levels of understanding what does that data mean for my business and we're actually working with an entrepreneur at the moment um who's blind and she's actually this is her business she wants to kind of bring the value of data to the mass kind of Enterprise kind of consumer base I guess business base to be able to report that in a way that they can then harness those insights for the betterment of their business and do the things that that Knowles just talked about to actually grow their businesses I I think um strategies can be a policy level they can also be at a really small scale individual level so something my boss Andrew says a lot usually in the context of sustainability but he says progress not Perfection and I think that's something that I keep echoing each day and I think it's the same for inclusion as yourself to be nice to yourself as a designer and say each day how can I continually include more people and and throughout methodology um so I think that idea of progress in day to day and acknowledgment of small wins is a really important um step in a broader sort of shaping a more inclusive future yeah I love that I love that you've all touched on strategies age and Implement both from their top level policy development perspective and while that's happening on what we can do in parallel with the day-to-day work that we do from the grassroot level as well um and I think there's just so much and to unpack in that um but I would love to leave this to the audience I believe we have a slider um question happening um some couple of questions from the audience got a question so no question at the back yeah hi um it's a more an observation than a question um I think the the stuff that you've touched on in the India Peter about the um the fundamental um structure of innovation and the um the the the business model that we have for dealing with innovation in in the disabled space is actually very very underdeveloped so I think we have all these really interesting Concepts between social model and medical model and all that sort of stuff but we haven't really developed a technology model to a point where we can really say look this is what this is how it works this is this is why it works and this is how you make money out of it so we're relying on Heroes and and startups and and the odd um random success here and there rather than a really systemic approach to it at a government level you look at Australia you know every week each of us put 10 of their wage in terms of into into this huge fund which then guys invest in ANZ Bank who who needs more ANZ Bank investment shares you know if they just took one percent or of that or of that whole bucket and put it into a into a fund for uh that had really good technology um based behind it really good business model we could actually transform the thing and so that's the policy level that I think we really need to be fighting it I love that and any other questions yeah we'll grab it it's for the we'll grab the microphone just so that we can um yeah it's a similar sort of theme but um it's a sort of more philosophical kind of idea I've heard these again it's sort of um these ideas where let's say for instance in some countries where you've got a high population of um of the elderly that there should be this sort of um almost like a gift of time so if people people have to go and donate hours they spend with the elderly so that you build credits so that later on in life you end up having whatever you've given back then you'll have people kind of coming and looking after you when you're old like is there it's a big question to throw at the panelists but like is there something like that within the disability realm it's not it's not it doesn't always have to be just financially driven obviously it's great if it can be but is there something like that we can kind of develop where yeah whether it's out like hours of volunteer work or or time or you know using your your specific knowledge or or experience to invest early so people have to then in a similar way invest in the overall disability world going forward yeah bizarrely I know about there was an organization I can't remember the name of it that um was trying to um and there was a number of centers around the world that were trying to do something quite similar to that where essentially you gave what you could give and and but an hour equaled an hour equaled an hour so um it didn't matter if you're an architect or if you're a um kind of collecting someone's garbage you know it was um whatever you were able to contribute you could then barter that with other kind of people within within that kind of Realm as well and it was kind of talked about as like this is kind of where the next wave of volunteering could go and I haven't heard much about it since that was probably about 10 years ago so but yeah I don't know if others have heard of other kind of similarities yeah I was going to just say um sorry jumping in there what is the thing that people with disabilities value hugely and Mel I don't know if you feel this way about it for me it's Independence right it's the means to be able to do these things or manage yourself in most circumstances uh I I don't need someone to do it for me I just need the means to be able to do it myself right and that's why like I think that invest in ideas and technology and understanding uh disabilities means that not only do you make the the capabilities available for people with disabilities but you do it for you don't have to give the hours back to people when they get old then because they're more independent for longer right we end up having solved the problems today that enable people to be more independent for longer like I am sure that a lot of us have cantankerous parents that won't accept help or they don't want this or they don't want that you know if more of the things that we have to use for our everyday lives in the future are are less have less barriers then we'll have gained those hours ourselves uh by by looking at disability today to create those uh Solutions all right any thoughts for you anyways oh I think that's a really interesting uh like sort of philosophical comment um you know my brain's sort of ticking thinking thinking it over um I think if there were to be a main benefit from that sort of transaction and interaction would be exposure and and then deeper understanding because I think deeper understanding comes from interaction so I think the main value there would be a broader understanding um in in the community yeah I think we need to find a business and have this conversation with the business and get them involved in this discussion and have them help create the solution because businesses need examples to follow from and this is such a broad topic ESG doesn't have the word disability in it but we talk about ESG every single day in corporate governance so there's a huge gap just in language alone so maybe we need to find a business who is open very proactive in various things but bring them into this conversation firstly to educate them on what we're talking about and then maybe have them help us understand what it looks like from their lens because our problem isn't necessarily their problem but unless we have that conversation it may not be able to be to be bridged so I I think that's probably something that we could work on yeah and Happy Birthday by the way Peter oh shush out there uh I think it's an interesting one because and again not the birthday bit but the uh um if you don't if you don't um yeah if you don't have an example I think that that's a really really um critical one so we do need to we need to kind of point to examples that are existing now um but we we also need that kind of Greater um I guess it needs to be built further into businesses um but also I think that uh you know we have reportables for for ESG now um and while I know that there's um there certainly is um a kind of division of thought around um you know do you have to have kind of some numbers around that we're now talking about diversity Equity inclusion but we don't talk about accessibility on top of that and I think that oftentimes when you talk about diversity Equity inclusion disability is actually forgotten about a whole lot a whole lot of the time and so we we need to include um accessibility into that into that kind of framework as well and actually if you rearrange the letters it actually becomes idea then rather than Dei so that's not mine I've got to give credit to someone in um to Jonathan Kaufman in in in the US on that one but I honestly do think that we need to kind of add that element into into this kind of Dei conversation um just to add to what you're speaking about Pete and one of the things that came up on a lot of conversations recently um that that I I've been part of was the cost of inclusion right um if you were to look at the Spectrum of what we say about inclusivity where like if you uh want to include include people of a different sexual orientation or race or or whatever it might be right how people identify themselves the cost of inclusion the barrier is less than when we think about disability in a lot of circumstances right and that's why I think the conversation around how businesses can benefit from the situation that's why I keep going on about this idea that there's this untapped potential this ability that that you're not realizing just because you're not including it right that if if you gave it a while and tried uh to include it uh maybe you're going to realize value that you that was firing away beyond what what you taught like I mean if we look back at even uh the the few months of the year where we've got different types of and and like we had disability pride month did it get anywhere close to the same level of attention as gay pride month for example right didn't was there was there the same level of interaction and um uh um we say advertisement even about how companies supported disability the same way as the month before nowhere near it right and I think that um it's the cost of inclusion and the fear of that inclusion that that slows the whole process down and I don't know if that's gonna change at a policy level or not um but it's like that's again the reason why um and I think it it it's true we need to find those examples but the examples are there to be taken advantage of I think they're already there we're we we need to build them we need to execute on them and and put them front and center and it'll take a little bit of time but it's uh I suppose it's just uh that we we need to have that belief to to go forward like I don't get to talk to you today if I didn't believe that there was opportunities and some of the things that I did uh to to even get to hear and be talking to you guys right so um I think that you know I I see a bright future for all of it I don't see the same barriers I don't think but maybe that's because I'm too ignorant to understand when I'm beaten and and we'll just keep going you know um like the positive impact to businesses I think that's what a lot of us through our day-to-day and work are trying to do is you know whether it's selling it into a corporate level it's presenting the opportunity so even if we look at the figures of unemployed people with disability who are unemployed and I think there's a direct correlation between that and then the inaccessibility of businesses and the way they function because I know Pete you mentioned before even the recruitment process not being accessible to say someone who is neurodiverse so I think there's if you it's it's about framing it in an opportunity sense I think that's a big thing that we're all trying to do and I think there needs to be more of that and it has certainly been massive themes around that came up in these conversations today and I know we haven't gotten around to all the questions but I really hope that the conversation today just is just the beginning of sparkling some credit juices and also just um to challenge everyone here today everyone virtually um around what you can do in your day-to-day work um to help bring us as a collective that just that one step closer to the vision that we're all working towards um it's a massive thank you to know to release the other ways to paint for sharing your wisdom sharing your story um for those of you online thank you so much for joining us we hope you enjoy the session um for those of you in the room we have the next half an hour to socialize to make new friends um and tip if you want an autograph or further with any of the speeches now's a chance to strike and bonus if anyone decides to do a song and dance to wish Pete a happy birthday [Applause] everyone friend of Applause for the panelists [Applause]

2022-10-25 11:01

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