The journey to Swindon started on a frosty January morning at 6am, with minimal traffic and an easy route to follow (the M4), the journey was enjoyable and the stop off in the drive-through Costa coffee was a much appreciated and exciting one.
The event was all about encouraging employers to consider disabled people in their recruitment processes, but also to create job-roles which require specific skills which certain disabilities might present such as enhanced memory and processing skills. Several business leaders who have utilised disabilities in this way spoke about their experiences and expelling the myths about disabilities.
We took our gadget show as well as several extra iPads and the widescreen TV as we knew it would be a big event. On the iPads we had presentations circulating about ‘OpenDyslexic’ a font developed to make reading on a screen easier for people with dyslexia and a dyslexic browsers which allows the user to change the colour of the background, and the text as well as the font and saturation. On the third iPad, we had put together an explanation of the accessibility options for an iPad which are quite substantial and range from colour inverting, to screen reading and assistive touch.
Excitingly, we also took our Leap Motion controlled Laptop and put the display onto our widescreen TV to allow people to interact with it using their hands. This proved a great success and people were amazed by the amount of control over the game we had setup to show people how the technology works. The basis of the game is that there are several sources of moving light on the screen and using the leap motion you can manipulate them to move just using your hands in front of the screen. Delegates who came to our stand were fascinated by how intuitive it was to use and the potential of the technology.
In between the rounds of exhibition there were several guest speakers who talked to employers about their experiences of both being disabled and employing disabled people. The main speaker was Simon Weston OBE, who spoke persuasively about what it felt like to be disabled but put your skill set to good use. He was really inspiring and I think he made a massive contribution to the event.
The day was a real eye-opening for me, especially in the respect of how disabled people’s skills can be utilised by different businesses to create a job role which really suits both the employer and employee. But it was also great to take some technology and open others’ eyes to what can be easily achieved through small changes to technology.
Blog by Alex Jackson