Red Bull Basement Hatch Sheffield
Red Bull Basement Hatch brings social innovators, creatives and enthusiasts together to exchange ideas on how technology can change the world for good.
LT6, The Diamond Building, University of Sheffield
Sheffield, United Kingdom
James Lee, Urban Accessibility Consultant
James was born and raised in London by two visually impaired parents who immigrated to the UK in the 1970s. James considers himself to be a disabled person and uses a wheelchair for his everyday mobility.
He currently works as a consultant providing advice on social mobility and equalities issues to a range of public, private and voluntary sector organisations.
Outside of his work as a consultant, James is also the Chair of the Access Forum at the O2 Arena; Chair of the Grants Committee for BBC Children in Need (London & South East) and sits on advisory boards for the UK Cinema Association; Habinteg; Scope; UnLtd; Transport for London and the Greater London Authority.
Vivek Gohil, Gaming journalist and assistive technology consultant
Vivek Gohil is 29, from Leicester and lives with the muscle-wasting condition Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). He has been a blogger for 5 years and now writes for the gaming website Eurogamer focusing on disability representation.
Assistive technology and accessible gaming is his passion, as an accessibility consultant, he works with game developers to audit accessibility to ultimately improve inclusion. Recently, he has become a PlayStation game tester.
His biggest achievement was working with Microsoft to test their new Xbox Adaptive controller before launch in September 2018. He enjoys pushing the boundaries of what is achievable, and a firm believer in using his lived experiences to inspire.
Krissie Barrick, Head of Digital Influencing at Scope
Krissie is the Head of Digital Influencing at Scope. She has a background in service design and is a strong advocate in the sector for collaboration and being customer-centred.
In her previous role at Breast Cancer Care she led on the creation of the award-winning app "BECCA" which harnesses the power of AI to support women after breast cancer treatment.
She’s now running Scope's Big Hack, a programme which seeks to make the digital world more inclusive.
Collaboratively driven and with the experience of disabled customers at its core, The Big Hack runs large-scale hackathons and shares knowledge around accessibility, inclusive design and inclusive workplaces to help businesses improve their customer offer for everyone.
Simon Wheatcroft, Ultramarathon runner
Simon Wheatcroft has an appetite for the impossible. Through the use of technology Simon pushes the boundaries of possibility forward, ensuring society can follow. Simon became the first blind person to train, run, cross a desert and run the NYC marathon solo. This is all thanks to technology, when the technology didn’t exist Simon invented it along with leading technology companies.
Simon uses his technological knowledge to provide solutions within the assistive technology world. Leading to a more inclusive world and ensuring the unheard and invisible are involved within society. Simon has been involved with Hackcessible.org, a local initiative to provide technology solutions for the disabled. Simon’s other work sees him working on making data more accessible for the blind and ensuring educational resources are inclusive.
Ali Ismail, HeyCane
Ali Ismail is a blind entrepreneur and the creator of HeyCane. When Ali was born, he was diagnosed with an eye condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa. At the age of 9, he became totally blind. Becoming blind for Ali was as though the shutter of darkness had descended on him. When Ali was given his first long white cane, a stick to find obstacles in his path, he knew that the world belonged to him all over again!
In the summer of 2018, he graduated with a BA (Hons) Business Management degree from Manchester Metropolitan University. After his graduation, the future of Ali had challenged the traditional root of finding a job. Instead, he chose to set up his own limited company, RevolutionEyes Ltd.
RevolutionEyes allows Ali to research and develop technological solutions to problems that many visually impaired people encounter. As it happens, HeyCane is actually the solution to a problem. As the cane is a vital tool within a blind person’s life, it could become a great challenge if the person loses their cane. To maintain every blind cane user’s independence and confidence, HeyCane can be used. HeyCane is a uniquely developed cane finder, which allows cane users to find their cane. When a cane is misplaced, blind people are no longer going to feel the pain: HeyCane will find their cane for them!
Aejaz Zahid, co-founder of Hacksessible.org
Aejaz Zahid is the programme director for innovation at the South Yorkshire & Bassetlaw Integrated Care System, a body that brings together all the major health & social care organisations in the region.
An engineer and problem-solver at heart, Aejaz has passion for technology and a firm belief in its potential for empowering communities. For almost twenty years, he has worked directly with hundreds of individuals with wide ranging disability challenges both in the UK and abroad and his teams have won numerous awards for innovation the world over. He has helped almost two dozen assistive products go to market and supported a number of start-ups to emerge and scale up successfully.
Aejaz is co-founder of Hackcessible, a unique assistive technology make-a-thon designed to empower individuals who have a disability to collaborate with engineers, computer scientists and others to develop innovative solutions for accessibility challenges they face.