Accessibility & Inclusion

Chris and his guide dog Varley

Chris has been working for the last decade, based partly on his own lived experience as a blind person, to identify how the telecoms and related industries can build a more inclusive future by including Accessibility and Inclusive Design criteria into the product development, web and app cycle from scratch.

Chris also works with Monica Paolini on the Inclusively webinar series where industry stakeholders present how they are building a more inclusive business both internally with their workforces but also through their customer experience and product offerings for the consumer and business markets.

Insights on Accessibility

  • Kevin Lee: Helping BT Group build towards a more Inclusive future

    Kevin Lee: Helping BT Group build towards a more Inclusive future

    Kevin Lee, Chief Digital Officer, Consumer at BT, joined us on #Inclusively to talk about how the British telecoms company is building towards a more inclusive future. This is a short summary of a very wide-ranging discussion. The full video of the interview can be seen here.   Kevin’s exposure to the Inclusion topic goes…

  • Getting telecoms to think Inclusively

    Getting telecoms to think Inclusively

    The Inclusively webinar came about through many and varied discussions with @monicapaolini after recognising a major potential shift in how the industry needs to approach designing and implementing its products and services to include everyone beyond the so-called mainstream. The inaugural webinar on October 13th was aimed at getting the issue out there for everyone to discuss, interpret and…

  • Another Edge for you to think about: PWD and Omnichannel lessons for the mainstream

    Building on the report I wrote earlier in the year and the webinar we ran on People With Disability (PWD) in July, MEF CONNECTS Omnichannel presented an opportunity to take the discussion to another level. We got a lot of enthusiastic interest from telcos and suppliers alike but only Google stepped up to join me on stage to discuss…

  • Accessibility and Inclusion: a perspective from Tareq Amin of Rakuten Mobile

    We were delighted to welcome Tareq Amin, CEO of Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten Symphony to Inclusively in December. Tareq has pioneered the Rakuten Mobile business, embracing a more open network and software environment and building a mobile operator from scratch. You can see the full discussion between the three of us Senza Fili.  It is…

  • Autonomous vehicles and their unexpected consequences: an accessibility Mexican stand-off

    I recently joined an Institute of Engineering & Technology (IET) workshop looking into some of the unexpected consequences of autonomous vehicles. The IET will be producing a report shortly but I’m here to promote the accessibility design agenda. The technical capabilities of the vehicle, the compute power on board for navigation, vehicle management and entertainment…

  • The Hyper-connected individual meets the Healthcare system

    At the Great Telco Debate last year, one of the biggest laughs was when my co-host Graham Wilde was attacked for buying his wife a FitBit, implying she needed to lose weight! The success of these so-called health tracking devices, and their associated apps, is an indication of how wearables, combined with smart phones and…