Q&A with Tiffany Yu, Founder of Diversability

Hi, everybody. How many of you have heard of Diversability before? Excellent. And how many of you have come to our events before?

Okay. Okay. So I thought what I would do is share a little bit about my why. Why I started Diversability.

And then talk a little bit about what we do and there's a reason why these two wonderful ladies are here as well. But pretty much my story begins about 20 years ago. It's Thanksgiving weekend, and my family is dropping my mom off at the airport. And on the way home, my dad has a seizure, and he loses control of the car.

And then the next thing I know I'm being, like -- I don't know he just, like, had a spasm, and we shot across the highway. And when I regained consciousness, I was in a helicopter on my way to the hospital. I ended up spending three weeks there. I broke a couple bones in my leg, so I was in a wheelchair for four months, and I stretched the nerves in my arm, which I still have to this day called brachial plexus palsy.

But the whole thing about this situation was A it's Thanksgiving weekend so we're spending this time thinking about how grateful we are. About everything in our lives. My dad's birthday is November 28th, which was that Saturday and the accident was November 29th. Which actually ended up being the day that he passed away.

So what ended up happening was I -- after this four months, I learned how to rewrite with my left hand. I went back to school, but I was in an environment where I felt so isolated and alone. Not only was I still mourning the loss of my family and my dad, but I had this whole new identity that I needed to get used to. And I was 9 years old at the time, so my peers weren't that forgiving, and I had this mandatory physical education class and nobody wanted me to be on their team.

It doesn't matter if a disability or not, but things like that have a lasting impact on how we can contribute to society. So I hid. That's the only thing I knew how to do. I wore long sleeves all the time.

And any time somebody would ask me about my arm, I would start crying and get emotional because there was so much attached to what happened behind the arm. So growing up, I felt disability was this elephant in the room. No one talked about it, no one acknowledged it and part of it was this fear of saying something wrong or saying something offensive. But in reality we just need to confront our discomfort, have a conversation about it, and, you know, ask questions.

And so my solution was to create Diversability. We're a social movement -- we're a social movement that fosters community to connect, showcase, and empower people of all abilities to do amazing things. So I'm going to go into each one of that connect showcase and empower in a little bit. But I really think the problem that we're trying to solve here isn't disability.

I think it's assumptions. I think that so much of what we think about disability is rooted in assumptions. And what we really want to do is change mind-sets about what we think disability looks like. And so our big thing and my big thing growing up was inclusion.

I really fundamentally believe that everyone matters and everyone should feel like they should belong whether you have a disability or not. So the community -- we have a robust community that exists online, but we take that offline as well and host events in-person to get connects. So connects. I think there's something really powerful that happens when you bring everyone into a room of all types of different abilities and get them to share stories and get to know one another.

And Rick who we got to spend it part of the weekend, he talks about humanity. It's not just this other that we always talk about in broad years old. In terms of showcase, I think that there are some really amazing people in the community doing really amazing things. And, you know, I have a couple of of them here with me today.

So we -- over the past year, we've been able to showcase a lot of different amazing people within the community. And then finally empower and this is probably my favorite part of what we do. Is, you know, I think that there's something to be said about just given someone the chance to do something. And oftentimes -- and I find this even with myself, like, there are things that I didn't think that I could do.

But if I just gave myself the chance, it opened up my mind into what I thought my own comfort zone was. So I just wanted to close by talking about kind of the three things that we think that we're a little bit innovative in. The first is we seek to unite the disability community. So I really appreciate this meet up in terms of trying to accomplish this goal as well.

But I think that the space is so fragmented and the spectrum of disability ranges from visible to invisible and a lot of times we're not united. The second thing is people who don't have disabilities, some people call them a11ys into the organization. I think there's a need for support groups, but the real progress happens when everybody is part of the conversation. And finally we really want to celebrate this idea of disability pride and disability empowerment.

I think, again, oftentimes when it comes to disability, it's about raising awareness or finding a cure, fixing something. When in reality the people who live with disabilities are over 1 billion people -- the population. And for some of us, why can't -- why does it need to be a pity story? And I really like this phrase empowerment without pity.

And just kind of living our lives the best ability we can. So with that, I will close my opening remarks I guess. And one of the things that we do with Diversability that's become one of our most popular events is we host an event called Diversability unplugged lightning talks. Where we give anyone in the community disability or not five minutes to either share their story, sharing something they're working on across broad themes, it could be mental health, entrepreneurship, inclusion, so I thought we would give you a little bit of a taste of what our Diversability lightning talks would look like.

So with that, I would like to introduce here our third panelist. And let's bring up a chair for you.

Does anyone have any questions? While they get set up?

So that's a great question. I think to repeat it again, I think that Thomas asked if we do any work in the political realm. And I think we -- we eventually will dabble a little bit in it. But kind of on this whole point of, you know, trying to advocate for policy or disability employment or the ADA.

I think we just wanted to celebrate the social aspect of disability. And then the last thing I'll say is that, you know, I think across social media platforms, we've reached over 100,000 people a week, and we have, like, about 5,000 followers. And we've won awards, won the national rehabilitation association bell grieve award. But I think what really matters to me are the stories coming out of Diversability and the people who have gotten to meet each other.

And in the past year, like, I didn't know any -- any of our panelists. I didn't know most of you here. And to be able to connect I think with so many of you has been really meaningful for me.

And we're just meeting, although I feel like we know each other through disability --

This is our first --

Yes. Yes. Which is crazy.

If we could just pause for one moment.

Sure.

Is the captioning -- just the stream seems fairly slow, so I'm not sure if that's anything --

So then on the lightning talks, we're going to have some inclusive design inspired by this meeting up and then we're going to open it up to Q and A. CAPTIONER: Let me fix something.

And he rocked it. And he was one of the few people that actually talked to each one of us. One-on-one. And really took us aside and said what do you need?

How can I help? So I can say for me personally that I already had my eye on him because I could see that extra love and TLC was really -- it was powerful for me to feel, like, okay. This person really cares about us. And obviously he did really awesome things.

Anyway -- so it's great to be here. But, you know, I really would love to sort of piggyback on what Tiffany was saying about the elephant in the room. Because, for me, I had the exact opposite experience of Tiffany in that I always had my CP -- or at least as far as I could remember. And my parents approach was, yes, we're going to treat it as a practically consideration but anything is possible and therefore when I wanted to be a ballerina, they just got me a ballerina costume for Halloween two years in a row.

They never said, oh, that's not you, stop dreaming. And then when I switched from -- actually I started with a walker. When I switched from walker to ski pole, my dad was carrying the walker down, like, 57th street and saw a ski shop. And there my parents were about to go skiing and they were, like, -- took the walker into this ski place and said do you think you could add skis to this?

And the guy was so touched about what my dad was doing that he actually did it for free. And as a result I remember being basically pushed down the slopes. [Laughter] Over and over. And I'm pretty sure that I fell quite a lot and enjoyed every moment of it.

But, you know, when I can look back at it now knowing maybe how other parents might have handled it, I'm very grateful that they were always supportive and yet pushed me to do more. And but always made me feel that not only was I enough, but I was special in the best possible way. And I realize that in a way, it made the elephant in the room really tiny. But to the point where I don't know that I even really in some ways -- like if it wasn't practical, like, I didn't want to really talk about it.

So I never joined disability advocacy groups because I thought that was the obvious thing to do. Here I am walking with these two -- in this case -- bright pink ski poles walking around, like, this is obvious already. We don't need to make it anymore necessary than it already is. But I didn't realize other people with disabilities were having different experiences or struggling with things like body image.

I certainly struggled as a girl and woman and someone going through puberty. But it was this ace up my sleeve. I felt that was the easy part of my life. But I don't think I realized the importance of sharing my story it happened.

So I was a writer for a theater in New York about two years after college. And six months into grant writing for them, they said, hey, by the way, would you like to write a monologue and be in our next show? And the topic was faith, which was really difficult for people. So it ended up being once a month we would submit for about two years.

But for some reason every time I would go to write, I would write about my body. And I didn't even really understand it myself until I started to write a story basically about this process of realizing that my body. And one day when I was on the stage, it's literally, like, the voice of god said this is what you're supposed to be doing. And I was, like, okay.

What am I doing? I'm talking about my life, playing myself, like, what does this mean? Does that mean, like, I don't know should I audition? So I went on a audition for ABC and shook my way through it, and I feel like the second part of that message was, like, Xian, I don't want you to play somebody else right now, I want you to be yourself.

So I ended up pitching to the dub campaign to people with disabilities. And in that two-year writing process, I met the most talented, beautiful, amazing actors, award-winning playwrights, actor -- studio actor saying and writing in their journals I hate my body, I hate my life. And there were some members -- there were about 15 members with disabilities. And that was the first moment that I realized wait not everybody think so their disability is awesome.

And why is that? And the first thing that occurred to me was that I lived in this incredibly beautiful bubble where, you know, I was told anything was possible. And I believed it. So it made me realize that having parents and supportive school system and all the supports that we can was really important in becoming the fullness of who we are.

So it's interesting in this process of realizing the importance of my story. I grew that elephant, I want that elephant as big as possible now in my life. Which is really strange if you think about how it started out. You know?

It's, like, the smaller the better in the beginning. Not because I had any shame around the disability, but, for me, it was more important as a person to show that with the disability, you can have a thriving, beautiful life. And I thought it was better to do that without necessarily being, like, you know, obviously duh. You know, here it is.

I thought it would be better to just be who I am and put it out there. And now I can be that. But know that my story has a bigger meaning. So that's really the behind my classes that are self esteem related and then signing up for the accessibility challenge.

And all of everyone here I'm the at least technologically savvy. So I'll be learning a lot from you today. But to know my story to represent other people that made their hands walking or other people that had CP in this way was really, like, an honor for me. And so my life has really expanded the bigger that I've left that elephant become -- if that makes sense.

So I think my five minutes are probably up. Thanks. [clapping]

Thanks. Getting me water. I'm having a princes moment. Anyway, hi, everyone, my name is Emily Ladau, I'm a research consultant and more recently I started working on a federal project called partnership on unemployment and accessible technology.

And I really encourage all of you for the sake of my wonderful employer to check us out. We provide tools for employers to improve the level of accessibility in all stages of the process of hiring, of recruiting, you're my new best friend. Look at this. Look at this.

I'm going to chug it, guys.

Chug it. Chug, chug, chug.

Okay. I'm done being awkward. All right. Wow.

That's so awkward. Anyway so, yeah, the project that I work on discusses and addresses all phases of the process of finding a job. So it starts out with the unfortunate incestability of a lot of E recruiting technology moves onto the application process, moves onto the actual process of becoming a new hire, getting the adaptations that you need to function in the office. But more importantly, to make that a nonissue where accessible technology is integrated into every part of the workspace so that anyone can come in and start right off the bat without needing to request certain accommodations or modifications.

So this has been a recent love of mine I would say. I'm really enjoying the work that I'm doing on it. But aside from that, I think tonight I'm going to spend a little time talking about myself from more of a personal angle just to address why accessibility is so important to me. And to put a bit of a human face behind it.

So I grew up in a household where my mother has the same disability that I do. And so in a way, disability was very much a fact of life. In another way, it was something that I rejected out of return. I hate to say this, but I used it when it was convenient for me.

I worked it. And other times I wanted nothing to do with it and the best compliment you could give me was I forgot you were in a wheelchair. Moving forward, I started to realize that I couldn't go about life ignoring the elephant in the room that seems to be the key phrase here tonight. And realized that I could embrace it rather than, you know, outright reject who I was as a person.

I mean having a wheelchair attached to your butt all the time doesn't need to be a negative thing. It's just a part of who I am. So I started exploring my options as to how I would go about accepting myself. But I realized it's really difficult to accept yourself when it seems the world around you doesn't even accept you.

And of course that has a lot to do with attitudes. It has a lot to do with the discrimination you face every day when you wake up in the morning, you roll out of bed, and people think you're amazing for doing that. When you get a job and people say wow I'm so inspired you're working. And on the flip side when they under estimate you, you know, when they say I don't think you can do that or you're incapable of doing this or you're worthless because you use a wheelchair.

So you come up against that. But more over, you also come up against the actual barriers whether it be a curve that's not cut up so my wheelchair can get over it. Or maybe people who are blind a website that's inaccessible to them. I call them microaggressions.

I hate to say anyone is being aggressive towards me. I don't think that's really the case. But it's just that reminder, hey, you don't really belong here. And so I wanted to get into the field of activism.

But I wanted to do so in a way where I wasn't alienating people while explaining my needs to them. So I come up with a bit of a motto or catch phrase that I would say explains the work that I do. And if you want the world to be accessible for people with accessibilities, then you're going to have to make accessibility accessible to the world. And this meet up is important because you're taking ideas that affect daily life for many people and giving it a voice, putting momentum behind it.

And that's where my work focuses is that I don't want you to find -- oh, my gosh. [Laughter] Whoa. [clapping] Okay. So exciting.

Thank you. Wow. My new hero. Anyway.

I'll wrap up now and chug some more water. But the long and short of it is that I believe we need to make disability something everyone can understand. It's often very jargon heavy inner circle community, and we can move beyond that. We can talk about it in ways that includes everybody and that includes accessible technology too.

Because part of the work that I do with the partnership unemployment accessible technology is focusing on how we can make everything plane language when we talk about it. Because otherwise, how is anybody going to know what we're talking about and how is anybody going to be accessible if our requests to make things accessible are not accessible? So it really becomes a circle. And I ask people to think about that circle.

To think about accessibility at all levels of project and interactions because that's really where the change starts. When you think about it from the beginning and not when it's an afterthought. And I'm going to leave you with that. Thank you, again, for all the water.

I feel spoiled. [Laughter] [clapping]

I am picking you up on the mic in the middle of the room --

You can clip it on yourself.

And then just wave this around.

What shall I do, guys? Stand or shall I sit? Please say sit. Oh, god I love you all.

So I'm a little terrified. My name is Pritha and I'm no way as well spoken as -- I don't have to hold it up? It makes me feel good, though. I'm just going to squeeze it.

I'm just crushing this. So my story in this community is one of complete gratefulness. Little back story. My mom was diagnosed with terminal disease in 2008 and then in 2013 she had a massive stroke where she fried out 77 percent of her brain.

And for the last five years and definitely for the last two and a half, I'm not even sure if I'm wearing pants or what day it is because we're so deeply embedded in primary care giving. My father and I, which is, like, basically fighting emergencies and keeping my mother alive. Now, once my mom decided that she was actually okay. And she was going to teach herself how to walk and eat again and read again, my dad and I were at a bit of a loss because we were used to putting out a fire and saving this life.

And now what were we going to do? It was easier for my dad because he retired -- oh, my god. It's good. I feel relaxed.

Locusts are going to come now. They're coming. I love your god. Mine are less friendly.

What I'm saying is that -- for me dad, he just kind of a little bit more can go with the flow given that he's been married to my mother for as many decades as he has been. But my experience with this newness, this new mother that I have is one tinged with emergency. And I realize you know what? I can't really spend the rest of our lives together in this emergency state.

That doesn't sound very healthy. So I came back to New York, and I was, like, okay. I've got to get a job in this space. By training, I am not trained to do anything useful in this space at all.

So I started to go to a lot of family care giving support groups, and they were largely terrible. And I went to a lot of events. And then I found Diversability. And it was the first place I felt remotely seen and accepted for my experience.

Which I found amazing because I didn't -- I hadn't really been thinking about myself for the last two and a half years. I wasn't really a person. I was a function. And it was such a relief for me to piece my new self together in this community because my old friends were, like, hey, how's it going?

I love your hair. And I was, like, what? You love my hair? Or, like, it's good to see you now let's go to Mexico?

Like, none of that made sense. And in this community, I started talking about some of the goals and dreams I had. And one of them was to be less embarrassed and be less ashamed about the fear and the sadness I felt -- sorry, guys, -- around what had happened to my mother and how my father and I were dealing with it. I just couldn't piece together happiness yet.

And in this community, I was allowed to just be myself. In that space of being myself, I decided to apply for a number of -- am I doing? Should I squeeze it more? Okay.

I decided to apply for a couple of fellowships, and I was lucky to receive the air new voices fellow in 2015, which is a public media, public radio fellowship. And what I wanted to explore in that space was where are these stories of family caregivers? And particularly looking at family caregivers that are sort of -- I'm south Asian, I'm not married, I'm not a lawyer, and that's really difficult for my community.

Did I say I don't have children? That's just, like, very impossible. So largely I had to Parse because my family tends to be more conventional than other families. I had to Parse in ways that were largely invisible; right?

At the same time I noticed that these other invisible caregivers were transgender people, LGBQT people and had to in their family structure and that seems unfair. They had to exchange their identity. Between the ones that they had made for themselves as they grew into the consults adults that they are and the ones that they're required to be in order to be seen. So that was troublesome.

I wrote some stories, people liked it, they gave me a fellowship. At the same time the reason my dad and I literally went crazy is because we didn't have the technology in hand to mitigate fear and hope. So what does that look like? My dad needs larger for not, guys.

He's 75 years old. You know? Our caregivers might need things that are not in just English because they speak Portuguese as their primary tongues. And I decided I could probably -- because I'm not a technologist pen and paper code this.

And I did. I made three things and they were pretty used. Like, all of my friends now with all their ill family members are using this. I don't know -- I mean I'm certainly not a programmer.

But the question I had was, like, how come things are not making -- how come people are not making things that are -- useful right away; right? So that's how I got into family care giving technology. And I can say that in the Diversability community where I've met entrepreneurial friends like Quinton, Tiffany, Xian and Emily, Christopher, a number of other people, everybody understands exactly what I'm talking about. Because what I'm talking about is accessibility.

Here I'm trying to access myself as my mother's new daughter and as my mother's new mother. And my father his whole life has always been, like, well, what are you going to do because you're not a lawyer or surgeon? And now I finally feel that my father sees me in a way that he might have been waiting a very long time, you know, to sort of lay his eyes upon something and recognize.

And I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have done it without this community. So that's my story. That's it. [clapping] Thanks.

So now that you guys all got a taste of lightning talk, what do you think? Good; right?

Terrifying. But we love the opportunity to be able to give people the opportunity to talk about whatever they would like and what you find is the diversity of stories and how rich they are and colorful they are. But that said, I thought that Pritha ended with a really good segue into my first question, which is I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you, Emily, and Xian -- you know, how you got involved with Diversability and kind of what that looks like for you now.

Well, I think it's funny because I actually met Tiffany -- at the Kerry fashion show, they were delayed so a bunch of us were outside waiting. And I was having a conversation with another couple, and she kind of joined in. And we exchanged cards, had coffee, and this was still something just on Tiffany's mind at that time. So I feel very honored that I would come in just before this incredible break through for Diversability and it has grown so fast.

And it's really inspiring to see how we're all so different, but we're all united under this incredible -- I don't know fellowship is the right word but this community, collective voice. But very individual at the same time. So she had to launch a month or so after we had our coffee. And I was actually supposed to speak with a certain lady to my right, and we had never met before.

But we met at the launch a week before we were supposed to meet. And I think that's a really great example of how these unexpected connections and -- can happen. But, for me, what's really impressed me is how the online community has just fostered this sense of we're not alone. And aggregating information.

Nice way to put it.

No. I mean -- I don't mean to sound so technical because there's the heart component. But then, you know -- and then of course, you know, having people like somebody recently said I'm not having a good day today. And then you saw the armies of people go and support him.

So it's from that personal part to I think, you know, Tiffany posted a White House employment opportunity the same day. So there's -- you know, this kind of -- there's the informational and then the personal and the heart-driven. And I love that it has all of it because that's what real life is; right? It's not just one thing.

There's a lot of aspects to this. And accessibility to me is more than just stairs, elevators, and technology, it's also emotional, spiritual, it's connecting interpersonally as well. And I think it goes back to what you were saying earlier, Emily, about this idea that -- you know, really if we don't make ourselves accessible and what we need accessible, and we don't communicate what we need, things won't happen. So I think Diversability is the perfect path for that to happen.

So that was long-winded how we met. But there you go.

Sure. Can you hear me? Because the -- or --

Yeah.

Okay. So I cannot for the life of me remember how I found out about Diversability, but I have this gut feeling that it had something to do with social media which comes to the fact that you better have accessible social media. Because if you can't read what's going on on social media, you're not going to know what's going on. So this has just been my singular focus for the last couple of months.

So anyway I think I found out about it because of a tweet. Because I've been on a personal mission for years now to find as much information about disability as I can. And Xian said we were supposed to guess speak together at a occupational therapy program, and I showed up for the night of the Diversability event, and I spoke to a stranger on the phone earlier that day, and it turned out to be her.

And it points to the fact that the disability community is small and also gigantic. So the work that people are doing in the accessibility field and the advocacy field is absolutely crucial. And having a central meeting point for that like Diversability is what drew me to it. And also we do really cool things.

I should -- I think it's really awesome. That's my personal plug. Not my preventional one. Yeah.

I think what I mentioned before that it bringing a little bit of humanity to disability, that's so important. Because I'm assuming -- I hope it's a safe assumption that most of you spend a lot of time dealing with computers and coding and programming and; right? Am I safe in that assumption? I'm sure there are many other people who are just, you know, related to the field of accessibility in another way.

But it's nice to step away from the computer and remind yourself that there's a real group of people who you're making a difference for.

Right. And I think that's what's beautiful that Diversability is an online community, but everything is about getting us together. Tiffany was posting about the photo shoot with Rick. So this weekend -- it was like this big family reunion and all of these amazing advocates in one place celebrating, you know, what we do together in this way.

And being -- you know, really connected not only technologically but then physically. And then I think you also posted about rock climbing -- so it's all ultimately about getting us closer together and expanding.

That question was kind of, like, a plant so that I could feel better about what we're building here.

So I found you through people looking into event. And the I think I went to your second event and that's when Quinton, a colleague of ours in the community who now lives on the west coast was doing one of these lightning talks. And he got up and started talking about his child Stelin who has requirements and works with a number of therapists private and federal. And, you know, how Quinton was having a really difficult time organizing that care.

And then had a space for those care providers to capitalize on knowledge and community and let's be homeys because we're in this together. So he built the thing that I built for my mom and her care providers. But I did this in Frederick, Maryland when I was living with my parents, and he did this in Brooklyn with his wife. And it was so amazing to me that, to me, right out of the bat this was, like, my -- okay.

The first three months when I returned to New York in 2015, I just drank a lot of gin and looked at the ceiling. And then I was, like, okay. I have no money for gin. I have to get a job.

And then I did some consulting work and started to go to a bunch of events -- sober. And it was amazing to me that I met Quinton. But here's where it gets much more amazing. Just about three weeks ago, the three of us -- or maybe four weeks ago, and she has had -- just I mean as I remember this.

Her very own profound experience being a primary caregiver for one of her parents. And then a primary caregiver of who has geographically removed. And if there was a continuum, she has graced her story. And she's had a ta place in my life -- are you live yet?

Can you talk like that?

Yeah. It will be live -- go for it.

Well, why don't you go for it? Just do a slide thing and then say what it is.

Does she need the microphone?

No. It's all right. Speak up.

Okay. So I'm going to be launching a service basically it's -- really a business. And it focuses and gives a space to the stories of adult child caregivers who cared for their parent or parents due to aging illness and/or disability. With my particular experience, it was all three.

It was for my father, with my father, and a primary, secondary, and long list of caregiver and that impacted on how I view the world. The length at which I see the world as well. And I wanted to create a space for this hidden population of individuals that I felt really needed a voice. Needed to be seen.

As much as the people that they were also taken care of as well. My background has to do with disability studies, my masters is in that, so it brought all of those components together, along with background and theater. So.

I don't have any of these wonderful -- I have useless backgrounds. But what I'm saying is that it's amazing -- how weird is that? The technology I'm working on I find in this group the first time I meet the group and the PR stuff I'm working on, I find this incredible story, which is also my story in this group. In this giant city.

So I think that it is really this issue that we are largely invisible to each other. Our individual experiences we lived them so individually, it's very difficult to find diversity, and acceptance. And I think Diversability is a question that frankly and a movement that should happen in every city and every town for everyone to figure out how we fit in through this lens. I mean I sort of think this is the future lens.

We're all -- we are all connected in this one place.

Five-minute warning.

Okay. So -- I just want to close with one yes. But I really like to make these a little bit more interactive. So I have one question for the audience as well.

So my question for you guys -- I did want to touch on tech a little bit because we are here -- the way that we're structured is we leverage -- I say we leverage existing technology to build our online community, et cetera. But I wanted to know at least from our panelists, like, are there any brands who have done a good job with design or any tech that you use that you really like?

Yeah. For my mom -- yeah. Lumosity is excellent.

What about it makes it great?

The tablet interface. I pushed iPad, like, pretty -- 30 days into her event. And it allowed her to capture some of her esteem and independence because she still was functional with her right hand. And the more she played games that threatenly revealed the damage her brain had sustained, I think that gaming atmosphere it was sort of like a spoonful of sugar.

It makes the process easier to digest. So while she was completely unable to hold a pen and do spelling exercises, she was able to use her pointer and be a little less afraid that she couldn't remember how to spell the word "Bird," you know? And then soon enough she was spelling ornithologist. But in the beginning, the softness of the iPad really helped my mother.

I think as a blogger, I must say -- and I would love to have suggestions about this. But I really enjoy using dictation software -- but, no, no, no. Just the idea -- I would always say I can't write as fast as life happens. But I feel like I can kind of speak almost as fast as life happens.

So that's been a real help in terms of daily e-mailing and things like that. But then I'm also an English major and there's a lot of grammar things that come up when you do it that way. I always have to go back in and I feel like a surgeon. So if anyone knows like dictation software that is also grammatically correct or ways to do that, I would love you forever.

I already do, but I would love you forever more. So for me personally, that's great. And then obviously with connectability, we have this incredible well and diversity of incredible things that were created for that. And the grand prize winner was a man who designed something that allowed you to use the computer with facial expressions.

And you could assign which expressions were for which. And, you know, for spinal cord injury, for MS, and many other disabilities, this is hugely helpful. But since we have less than five minutes --

Or two.

I love the fact that macs have dictation built into them. So, yeah, that's my answer to you. I can type pretty quickly, but I type all day every day for work and for personal reasons. And I have severe carpal tunnel.

And after a while knowing that I can just hit a button and dictation will come on, I don't have to do anything fancy is a wonderful thing.

The one thing I'll say is I really appreciate technology that is totally inclusive. So it's not meant for a specific disability or, for example -- and an example of this is this company called disabled and what they do is create this wireless charger. Anybody wants a wireless phone charger. But if you happen to have -- aren't able to use your arms, being able to push your phone close to a charger is pretty incredible.

So with that, I do -- I just want to ask one question to the audience because Xian's giving me the evil eye. If you're building something and you raise your hands -- and then can I have you guys, like, in 140 characters or less just tell me what you're building. Google docs in drive. Accessibility testing tools.

Andy? Thomas? Accessibility -- accessible design and developing guidelines.

Multimedia -- [Indiscernible]

Yeah. So you should talk to Cameron.

Yeah.

Yes?

Accessible websites and making online services accessible for cognitive disabilities.

Yeah.?

So I'm working on a thesis, and it's a tactile display for online for the visually impaired people, and it helps them understand or better comprehend --

Oh, cool.

Making toys accessible for -- also incorporating cognitive disabilities for autism.

That may have been over 140 --

I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Back there.

[Inaudible]

Making Pearson courses accessible. Wonderful.

And API with accessible information that's open data.

That's great. And I will close because we're going to get kicked out. Oh, one more. One more.

[Inaudible]

Navigate what?

The city.

Navigate the city. So as you guys build things, if we could help you showcase what you're building, let us know, we can blast it out on social or host an event.

Can I put something in unrelated?

Hypership technology would love to hear what you're doing. [clapping]