[MUSIC]
Imagine, There's a mountain in front of you that you need to climb.
The ground is covered with stones and sharp rocks.
Above you can see snow.
But, you're barefoot.
And the only shoes you have are a pair of stiletoes.
That are three sizes too small.
>> [LAUGH] >> What would you do?
Would you crawl?
Ask someone to carry you?
Just give up?
That's what's like to use a wheel chair that hasn't been
customized to your body, your environment, and your lifestyle.
And that's what life is like for 52 million people every day, but
it doesn't need to be.
We're going to look at how we can disrupt assumptions, disrupt manufacturer,
and disrupt perceptions of wheel chairs and the people who use them.
So let's disrupt assumptions.
I want to start with the quick share of hands.
How many of you have ever been backpacking?
Okay this is very impressive.
It's pretty much the entire room.
And how many of you have ever bought a lonely planet travel guide?
That's actually way more impressive [LAUGH],
that is pretty much everyone, too.
Okay, so that happens to be my go to guide.
And the first one I ever bought, it was for
a sabbatical from work that I planned to spend backpacking around South East Asia.
I started with a guide to Thailand, and there were temples.
There were elephant sanctuaries.
I couldn't have been more excited, so I planned my itinerary and
I booked my tickets.
Well, it was only then that I stumbled across a chapter hidden at the back,
the accessibility section.
But the advice was unequivocal, Thailand was not a suitable destination for
a disabled traveler.
I might find wheelchair access in some of the biggest hotels in larger cities,
perhaps in some of the major resorts.
But other than that, it was no go.
But when I started to think about it, it just didn't make any sense.
Because according to the World Health Organization,
1% of the population needs to use a wheelchair.
So if my calculations in the countries I've found to visit,
there should be one wheelchair user for every 99 people I saw walking.
And if they could find a way to get around, then I could too, surely.
So I ignore the advice and I got on the plane.
It was awesome and accessible in its own way.
I strapped my wheelchair to the top of buses, to the back of motorbikes.
I climbed mountains on donkeys, I crossed rivers on kayaks.
And surprisingly, one of the most remote places I ever visited
turned out to be one of the most accessible.
A small rural village in northern Laos had dirt tracks instead of roads.
So there weren't any sidewalks for me to have to navigate.
All the houses were just built on a single floor.
So there weren't any steps for me to have to climb.
And the more I traveled, the more it started to occur to me.
But often, the places with the least infrastructure were actually
the easiest for me to get around.
But that was something really strange.
In two months of traveling, I only saw two other wheelchair users,
and neither of them were wheeling themselves.
They were both being pushed in big, heavy, clunky, hospital wheelchairs.
But you could never wheel yourself in.
So I started to investigate.
The people and organisations that I met explained that to give independence,
a wheel chair needs to be customized to the body, the lifestyle,and
the environment of its user with traditional manufacturing techniques.
The cost of this is prohibitive.
A fully customized wheel chair like mine costs about $3,000, in the country
like Laos that is six times the annual average salary.
It's just not affordable.
And according to the World Health Organization, worldwide, there are 52
million people who need a wheelchair but can't afford what they meets their needs.
It wasn't just about the disrupting assumptions.
We needed to disrupt manufacture.
I struggled with the problem for months.
Then in December 2015, I happened to visit an organization in Jordan.
They were using 3D printing to support refugees from the Syrian crisis.
They showed me a fully customized prosthetic hand that they made for
a boy who lost his fingers in the conflict.
My first question?
How much did it cost?
$39 they said.
Impossible.
They explained that 3D printing and
digital fabrication are ways to make customized products more cheaply.
Still, I wasn't convinced.
But what about the design costs?
Well, they weren't any.
They used an open source design, freely available for
anyone anywhere to access it out and use.
Had to do?
And the boy's arm measurements and press print.
Seeing the potential, I also would anything similar with wheel chairs, and
their answer is simple.
No.
I was blown away.
So I flew back to Europe and I started to organize hackathons,
bringing together wheelchair users, designers, makers, engineers,
artists, students, anyone who was interested.
During our first hackathon, we scanned one of the participants back and butt sent
the information through to a email, just like you'd send a document to a printer.
And we milled the exact contours of his body out of a piece of high density foam
to create a highly personalized seat and back rest.
We also designed a lightweight wheelchair frame,
using off the shelf pieces of carbon fiber.
That we cut to the exact leg length of the user and join together with
logs that we 3D-printed to match the exact angle of their preferred sitting position.
Total cost, $300.
Well, we had more hackathons.
We put our designs online, and our communities started to grow.
Currently, students from 84 universities across the world
are competing to design a modular system.
So wheelchair parts can be designed by different people,
made in different places, but still fit together.
But the start of focus was just on affordability.
But we learned something else from the hackathons.
Even when people can afford $3,000 for a fully customized wheelchair,
they still weren't happy.
Because $3,000 buys the ability to customize for function, but not for form.
It wasn't just about disrupting manufacture,
we needed to wait to disrupt perception.
So, I was eight years old, lying on the black of the couch.
I was doing a loss line to tiny laces, Mr Robinson got up off his chair and
he looked at me saying, Rachael, you need to wear glasses.
When I jumped off the chair, I ran into the store and
I started trying on frame after frame after frame.
I was elated and
I have never felt more glamorous than I did back then aged eight years old,
admiring my reflection with my brand new, hot pink plastic glasses.
[LAUGH] Ten years later, I was often lying down.
This time it was a hospital bed.
This time is different.
Again, a doctor got and he leaned over me.
This time he paused before saying Rachel you're going to
need to use this wheel chair, but this time there was no
choice frames coz the therapist ordered my wheel chair and
the first time I saw myself sitting in it I didn't recognize myself
But all glasses and wheelchairs really so different?
It's not just perceptions of how I look.
It's also perceptions of who I am.
I'm going to let you into a little secret.
People often tell me I am inspirational because I use a wheelchair, yet
I backpack around the world.
I use a wheelchair, yet I have a job.
I use a wheelchair, yet I drive a car.
But back when I was just a glasses wearer, no one ever told me I inspired them.
>> [LAUGH] >> But why can't we see
people who have their wheels like people who have glasses.
We've looked at how we can disrupt assumptions,
how we can disrupt manufacture, and
how we can disrupt receptions of wheel chairs and the people who use them.
Let's disrupt disability.
Imagine. There's a mountain in front of you that
you need to climb.
The ground is covered with stones and sharp rocks.
Above, you can see snow.
But, this time you put on your hiking boots or
maybe your wheels, and what do you do?
You climb.
>> [APPLAUSE]