MELBOURNE: Ten years ago, UCL’s Global Disability Innovation Hub (GDI Hub) was founded, bringing together experts behind the London Paralympic Games to ask the question, ‘What’s next for disability innovation?’
It was and remains a huge question. But in the ten years since its founding the impact of the hub is undeniable. 77 million people reached globally across 70 countries.
On Monday, this impact, and the huge community who facilitate it, were celebrated as part of London Design Week at Sadlers Wells East. The GDI Hub brought together hundreds of activists and technologists, founders, emerging disabled leaders, innovators, researchers and influential voices across disability and development to take stock of all they’ve achieved, and to plan for what’s next in the sector.
The event included panel discussions, an exhibition of novel assistive technologies, and a reception for attendees to network, build collaborations and discuss future opportunities.
Discussions on assistive technologies and the environment
The event included an incredible line up of panelists from across the sector, discussing everything from cities and climate to innovation and assistive technology.
As cities confront growing climate and development challenges, experts from the GDI Hub and their partners are exploring how inclusion can be embedded into disability-inclusive cities, and the role of climate action to build more equitable, accessible, and resilient urban futures.
With over 50% of the 1.3 billion persons with disabilities living in urban areas, panelists discussed how it is imperative that climate action incorporates a disabled perspective, resulting in more equitable, accessible, and resilient urban futures.
A separate talk brought together founders, researchers, and technologists to explore how ideas are seeded, what it takes to turn them into something useful, and the barriers which can stifle getting products to market.
The panel included Zoe Hurst from Signapse and Brian Mwenda from Hope Tech, as well as Lauren Bond, Justin Jesudas and Dr Tigmanshu Bhatnagar from GDI Accelerate.
Each affirmed the importance of asking not just what technology can do, but what it can enable people to do, in a wide-ranging discussion which also explored ambition, setbacks, collaboration and the role of inclusive innovation in creating greater choice, participation and potential.
Businesses driving innovation
The event also included an exhibition of different businesses working in the disability space, showcasing products on the front line of innovation.
A trip around the space revealed some incredible new products including Koalaa’s Soft, comfortable, low-cost, easy to fit prosthetic, which also boasts adaptable straps and community-based fitting.
GDI Hub supported Koalaa to bring their innovative product to Sierra Leone where they tested it for the first time in a low- and middle- income country. The learning from this work has enabled Koalaa to go on to provide flexible, low-cost prosthetic solutions in Gaza and Ukraine.
Hope Tech were another impressive business on display. They have developed a wearable navigational aid and app for freedom of travel for those with a visual impairment.
GDI Hub has support Hope Tech’s innovation journey from its earliest stage, as an idea within the hub’s Kenyan-based accelerator programme, Innovate Now, the first AT accelerator in Africa. Hope Tech have now raised millions and are driving products and solutions that change lives.
A particularly cool invention drawing lots of eyes on the day was the CAERUS by Diverse Made Media, the world’s first wheelchair-based camera system.
The device creates mechanically and electronically stabilised, wirelessly operated, cinema-grade imagery on wheels that move up to 20kmph. Diverse Made Media is a disabled-led production house based in East London, and the GDI Hub is proud to have them capture the stories of their projects and research using this novel technology.
On the horizon
After ten years of brilliant work, the GDI Hub shows no signs of stopping with many big initiatives coming up in the near future.
The world’s first mass-producible lab coat for wheelchair users will be available soon as a pattern for sewers anywhere. The lab coat was designed in collaboration with the Innovation Lab at UCL East, London College of Fashion, the Royal Society of Chemistry and Chamia Dewey, after years of prototyping, and will go leaps and bounds in making laboratories all over the world safer and more accessible.
The GDI Hub is also developing AI-powered assistive technologies to help those in the developing world with speech disorders. A new app, supported by Google.org will go live soon, which will transform access in this space. For more, watch this powerful video on the project.
The disability innovation space is dynamic and vibrant, full of brilliant people with big ideas and a deep passion to change the world. Here at UCL, we know this change can only happen by working together, building collaborations, and learning from one another, and that’s what was achieved on Monday.
Heres to the next 10-years, and all the challenges and opportunities they will bring.