Annie in wonderland

How Accessibility, Inclusion and Resilient Design Created the Technology We All Depend On When people hear the word accessibility, many people still picture ramps, disability parking spaces or specialised equipment. Those things are important, but accessibility is much bigger than that. Accessibility is about removing barriers so people can participate. What many people do not realise is that some of the most common technologies and features we use every day began because disabled people needed a different way to access the world. The story of accessibility is not a story about making special exceptions. It is a story about innovation. It is a story about people asking a simple question: "What if there was another way?" That question has changed the world. Accessibility Was Never Only About Disability One of the biggest misunderstandings about accessibility is the idea that it only benefits disabled people. The reality is that many accessibility features become useful to ever...

When the Digital World Goes Quiet Modern society has quietly built a world where connection is assumed. The internet is assumed. Mobile phones are assumed. Online services are assumed. Digital communication is assumed. For most people, losing internet access or mobile service is frustrating. It might mean a missed message, a delayed payment, a few hours without entertainment, or the inconvenience of waiting for a service to return. But for many people living with disability, the failure of technology can mean something much bigger. It can mean the loss of independence. The loss of communication. The loss of routine. The loss of access to work. The loss of safety systems that most people never realise exist. The recent Telstra outage highlighted a reality that modern society is still learning to address: when communication networks fail, the impact is not evenly distributed. A person who can simply wait for a service to return experiences an inconvenience. A person whose daily independe...

When the Systems Go Down: The Disability Safety Questions We Need To Ask Before an Emergency Happens When people think about emergencies, they often think about the obvious things. They think about storms, floods, fires, power outages, phone outages, or a technology failure that affects thousands of people at once. They think about charging their phone, having some food in the cupboard, and waiting until everything comes back online. For many people, that is enough. It is frustrating. It is inconvenient. It can interrupt the day. But for many disabled people, an interruption to technology, equipment, transport, support systems, or communication can have a very different impact. A phone outage is not always just a phone outage. A power failure is not always just a power failure. A broken charger is not always just a broken charger. Sometimes the things that society sees as convenience are actually the things that allow a person to communicate, move around their home, access food, mainta...