On October 11 and 12 2017, OCAD hosted it's 6th annual conference titled Designing Enabling Economies & Policies (DEEP) . The conference spanned several key areas, with a mission to explore possibilities and strategies around inclusion. Below are my notes and impressions around the sessions that I attended.
On Learning Difference and Cognitive Access
On the morning of October 11, 2017, at 9:16 am, I hurried my way into OCAD, up a winding staircase, and onto the second floor. Upon reaching the conference auditorium, Jutta Treviranus informed us all that some of the panelists needed a bit more time to arrive.
I took a moment to settle in and look around. I was in a small-ish auditorium, which was full by a third. DEEP was yet to begin, and I was grateful for a moment to catch my breath. To my right was a screen set up, waiting to transcribe each word spoken by panelists and speakers. To my left, a TV screen, and in front, a table set with chairs and mikes. The room was set.
When Michael Bach, Managing Director of the Institute for Research and Development on Inclusion and Society, kickstarted the morning panel, the whole room stood to attention. Speaking on behalf of those who live with significant intellectual and cognitive disabilities, Bach said, "We don't have any research into perception". We do not know how to interpret perception, and we do not understand how people perceive and exercise choice. This becomes very difficult when products and services are designed for those who cannot express choice in conventional ways, such as through speech and gesture.
Shea Tanis, Associate Director of the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities noted that we significantly lack meaningful feedback from those with cognitive access differences.
As I listened to the panelists, I realized that DEEP was fundamentally about thought leadership, and about changing discourses around disability. Here are some of the questions that served to re-wire my own perceptions around what it means to live differently than others:
How might we move from the test of inclusion to the experience of inclusion?
What is it that makes someone feel included?
Is it not just about who is sitting at the table. Instead, taking a step back, how is the table designed?
Choice as a theme came up frequently throughout the conference, and found its way into the breakout session following the first panel. 'Access paves the way for choice - you cannot have choice without access'.
The notion of Platforms of Economic Inclusion was also discussed at length. Uber came up as an example of a platform with incredible potential, but poor execution. The difficulty of creating platforms that are truly accessible and inclusive was also emphasized: how do you get started? How do you come to serve a critical mass, when it comes to thinking through platforms that can be inclusive of everyone?
Procurement and Innovation-Supportive Regulations
The afternoon panel on procurement was by far the best attended, and left us all wishing we could have had more time with the panelists. Some highlights include Canadian lawyer and disability advocate David Lepofsky's key question: "The core issue is what will change behaviour? Where can we get ideas that we can borrow, steal and modify?"
Nicole Cormier, Accessibility consultant with the City of Toronto, offered some excellent process-oriented strategies around intersections between access and innovation:
The key to innovation is open dialogue and breaking experiences down into stories. A meeting of minds is tremendously important.
Currently, accessibility legislation only applies to the public sector, not private. Legislation provides a starting point. Innovation can only happen with the user in mind. We have to interact with the user.
To the question - How can legislation innovate itself? - Nicole urged us to look at standards and best practices. In order to innovate well, there needs to be a process that is standardized, repeatable, measurable and trackable.
Perhaps the most insightful contribution for me came from Richard Donovan, CEO of the ROD-Group. Donovan's assertion drove the mission DEEP home:
"Standards don't regulate outcomes, they regulate process. Standards cannot give us a clue as to outcomes. We're only trying to make things accessible, but we're not actually innovating new tools. We have to trust in new creative ways to get a start.
The question is how to re-design the process"
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DEEP 2017 was insightful. Though small in numbers, the conference was very well attended by prominent disability activists and others who have generated excellent research and initiatives in the realm of cognition and disability.
I could not help but notice while DEEP was socioeconomically diverse, it was not racially diverse. Most of the panelists, if not all, where white, and I heard many more male than female voices. While the conference offered breakthrough thinking in areas that are not mainstream, I see that there is more work to be done in representing racialized and gendered lived experiences of disability. DEEP must work to become truly inclusive. All the same, DEEP's existence is revolutionary in its own way, as is its ability to attract attendees who do not identify with or work in contexts of disability, for but whom access is top of mind.