AXSChat Podcast

LaMondré Pough is the Chief Sustainability Officer for Ruh Global IMPACT and host of the podcast 5P with LaMondré (5Ppodcast.com) where he combines both his personal and professional missions to “create environments where all people have a sense of belonging- where their insights, experiences and perspectives are truly valued.” LaMondré began his career in Disability Inclusion as a college student in central South Carolina where he became the leading advocate at The Disability Action Center, the state’s first Independent Living Center.  He went on to launch The LaMondré Pough Show Empowerment Radio and to create the Best Buy Access Initiative for Best Buy Co. Inc., before joining TecAccess where he rose to VP of Sales and Marketing. A native of South Carolina, LaMondré was elected Chairman of the Student Advisory Board at Midlands Technical College where he studied Liberal Arts and English Literature. He was recently awarded with an Honorary Doctorate in Christian Humanities by The School of the Great Commission.

Diagnosed before his second birthday with spinal muscular atrophy, LaMondré resides in Columbia, where he serves as the Chairman of Arts Access South Carolina and is a recognized leader and voice for the community of People with Disabilities.

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As Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, Victor Calise tirelessly advocates for the disability community in all City decision-making.

Commissioner Calise chairs the Accessibility Committee of the City Building Code and leads efforts to integrate people with disabilities into the workforce through the NYC: ATWORK employment initiative. He also ensures that disability is at the forefront of technological developments including smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and digital accessibility.

Recognized as an expert on disability, the Commissioner frequently participates in national and international conferences. A dedicated public servant, Calise previously led efforts within the Department of Parks and Recreation to make the city’s park system—one of the most complex in the world—universally accessible.

Calise—an avid athlete—competed in the 1998 Paralympic Games as a member of the U.S. national sled hockey team. A native New Yorker, he is married with two daughters.

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Interview with Caroline Casey.
Last year at World Economic Forum in Davos Caroline Casey Officially launched the Valuable500. One Year on we interview her as she returns to Davos to report on the progress that she has made to get global business leaders to engage on the topic of disability. AXSChat is a Valuable500 partner and we are proud to support her work.

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Christine is co-founder and Managing Director of Open Inclusion. She ensures that the client’s business objectives are understood, managed and fully met through great collaboration, clear focus, prioritisation and an uncompromising eye for quality and practical usability of work produced.

Christine has a background of over 20 years in designing and making products, services, teams or businesses, or making them better. The last 5 years have been solely focussed on customer and workplace inclusion, digital design and inclusive brand experiences.

She loves looking for, building and empowering the best team to support clients embed inclusion so effectively we are no longer required! Then finding and engaging new clients where we can add significant value and do it again. Each time widening the circles of inclusion and deepening business and user benefits.

She works closely with the research team, regularly engaging with our panel or other user groups to better understand how diverse customers really experience brands. This informs our work with clients to improve the experiences for all: tactically through product improvements and more strategically, building role-based awareness, tools and skills. As an economist by training and human-centred designer by practice, she also leads the economic value research for Open, assisting our clients to understand the potential financial benefits of more inclusive approaches.

When not managing the growth and delivery quality of Open, she can generally be found in a café with her husband, kids or friends or on a mountain cycling, running or skiing some Alpine trail.

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Dave Steele is an award-winning poet, author, public speaker, singer, and advocate for the blind. Diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) in 2014, this genetic eye condition left Dave “severely sight impaired.” Together with his wife, Amy, the family grappled with the difficult diagnosis as RP quickly left Steele an unemployed father of four. Feeling the stressors of financial debt and the loss of his independence, Dave turned to social media for support with his RP journey. He was also struck by the numerous misconceptions and stories of injustice being experienced by so many blind/visually impaired people all over the world. When a member in one of these online groups learned of Dave’s singing background, they invited him to perform at a meeting for those living with RP and Usher Syndrome. The experience inspired Steel’s idea for his “Stand By Me RP” song. Using the classic song by Ben E. King, Dave altered the lyrics to relate to how he felt losing his own sight to Retinitis Pigmentosa. In December 2014, Dave sought permission from the band Elbow, to alter the lyrics of their song “One Day Like This.” With the band’s blessing, Steele performed his version of the song at Joanne Milne’s “Breaking the Silence” book launch.

The Blind Poet

Dave created his own “Stand By Me RP” Facebook page in 2015. Since it’s conception, the page has become one of the largest social media RP groups in the world. As his eyesight continued to decline, the words did not stop flowing. Dave began writing two to three poems per day about his struggles and experiences. Part creative genius, part therapy, Dave’s writing became a catalyst for helping others and himself through RP.

Steele’s first book, Stand By Me RP Volume I, was released in February 2016. That same day, he received the call that he had been matched with a guide dog. During its first week, Stand By Me RP Volume I went on to become the #1 poetic release in both America and Australia.

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Paul is a 56 yr old married father of four young children and an award-winning photographer, who has late-onset Full Blown Tourette Syndrome plus, which started out of the blue 10 years ago. Paul has severe motor Tic’s and vocal tic’s inc coprolalia (swearing & cursing ) accompanied with ADHD, OCD, Sensory processing disorder. He struggles to be out in a social situation, basically anywhere out in public. He has found that he gets some respite and great fulfilment through helping others from using this unique position by raising awareness, and through photography. Paul brings empathy and solidarity to many young people who are struggling with diagnosis through public speaking, TV and radio, which also raises awareness, increases acceptance and reduces discrimination. Paul’s many media projects include the National geographic Taboo series, BBC Employable Me, Swedish Kanal 5 docu outsiders Tourettes, BBC Teenage Tic’s. BBC Radio 5 live and Northeast also.

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Anna Dixon is the Chief Executive of the Centre for Ageing Better, an independent charitable foundation that brings about change for people in later life today and for future generations.

Anna joined Ageing Better from the Department of Health where she was Director of Strategy and Chief Analyst.

As Director of Policy at The King’s Fund, she led work on health system reforms, regulation, patient choice, self-management of long term conditions and the future of health and social care in England.

Anna began her career with the European Observatory on Health Care Systems.  In 2003-2004 she worked as a policy analyst in the Department of Health Strategy Unit.

Anna was previously Lecturer in European Health Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2005-6 she was awarded a Harkness Fellowship in Health Policy by the Commonwealth Fund of New York.

She has a PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Pedro Omedas studied computer engineering at Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela (2002) and moved to Barcelona, Spain in 2004 to study a Master in Digital Audiovisual Communication and Production at Universidad La Salle – Ramón Llul (2004) and a postgraduate course in Videogames creation and design at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (2006). Since 2012 is part of the SPECS research group, first in Universitat Pompeu Fabra and currently part of the Bioengineering Institute of Catalonia (IBEC), a neuroscience group dedicated to studying the mind, brain and behaviour using interactive technologies, Virtual and Augmented reality, robotics and computational and theoretical models. Pedro coordinates the development of software and hardware applications, and he is directly involved in the research areas of Neuroinformatics, Neurorehabilitation, and Education. Since 2016, he also has been supporting the activity of the spinoff company Eodyne Systems, dedicated to the commercialisation of Neuro-rehabilitation systems and education technologies using augmented and virtual reality.

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Abi James is a researcher of assistive technology and digital accessibility and senior accessibility consultant at AbilityNet.  Diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of nine, Abi has used computers and technology to help her succeed throughout her education and in employment. Her work at AbilityNet focusses on helping organisations such as schools, universities, public sector bodies and companies to create websites and apps that are accessible and inclusive for everyone. She also works closely with policymakers and researchers to understand how assistive technology can be used effectively within the education system and the role standards and regulation play in improving access to a digital society for all users. She is Chair of the British Dyslexia Association Technology Committee. She collaborates with the University of Southampton to identify best practices for supporting assistive technology and accessible content including contributing to the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative.

Transcript

 

AXSChat with Abi James 15th November 2019

NEIL:  Hello and welcome to AXSChat, and I'm delighted to welcome back Dr Abi James, Abi is a long-time friend and former colleague of mine, so we worked together for the best part of two decades. So, yeah, giving away our age there. Yes, we started at primary school, so, Abi, great to have you with us, you're now working for AbilityNet which is one of the UK's pan-disability charities, and the topic today is really we're focusing around the recent changes in legislation for Web accessibility because in the last couple of months the public sector web accessibility regulations have come into force, and this is a big change, so welcome back.

ABI:  Thank you Neil, great to see AXSChat has grown so much in the few years since I was last on, and really pleased to contribute.

NEIL:  Yes, thank you, we're five years by the way, amazingly.  Five years of doing this.  I know!  Everyone says I like the sound of my own voice; I won't lie.

ABI:  I know that!

NEIL:  Excellent.  So, the will let's stop me talking and let's talk about the web accessibility directive.

ABI:  Yeah so the EU word which is a difficult word to talk about in our UK context but essentially, now a few years ago, three years ago next month EU released the web accessibility directive which was requiring all member statements make their public sector bodies meet accessibility requirements, and also, critically publish accessibility statements on their websites and mobile applications and that is now rolling out across the EU, including the UK, because it is well into our law last year, so, there's also UK law and will remain UK law wherever we are, and also, now the EU states like Norway are also looking at moving it into their regulation, so, for Europe it is quite a big change for many countries it is the first time we've got specific accessibility regulations, although we've already had a lot of disability and equitability legislation, this is actual technical standards.  So, it is interesting to see it roll out.  There seem to be lots of countries and organisations grappling with the actual mechanisms of implementing it, both on the practical side and public sector side and Governmental side because there's a huge requirement on them to monitor it as well.

NEIL:  Yeah and I think this is something that will take a while to bed in.  Norway has a bit of head start because we've been monitoring stuff through UFIDIT for a while, but, yeah, and the different methodologies between the different European member states are swap marked.

ABI:  Yeah, so essentially, and Norway's still grappling with their changes because they are different.  All websites produced by public sector bodies will have to meet the equivalent of wick action point level AA the European standard EN 301549

But t

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Juan Rico holds a degree in Telecommunication Degree (2006) and a Master degree in Communication in Mobile Networks and ICT (2009), he started his career as a researcher at the Network Planning and Mobile Communication Laboratory at the University of Cantabria working on M2M and wireless communication. He has been working on M2M, and IoT projects applied to many different domains from avalanche rescue (awarded by European Space Agency) to Smart Cities (awarded by Eureka as best Smart City project in 2014). Last years he acted as head of the energy sector in Atos working on the integration of heterogeneous systems to improve overall energy management, and recently he joined Teka Group as Head of IoT to develop a smart home strategy for the home appliance manufacturer. He is the co-author of several book chapters and written more than 20 papers published in international journals.

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