We are all at home a lot more at the moment. Conferences are postponed, meetups moved online and the proverbial water cooler conversations are socially distanced or for the majority who are not working back in their office yet, not happening. Serendipity doesn’t bring people and ideas together. We proactively need to decide to Zoom, Skype, Facetime etc. or simply pick up the phone and make a call. For some, work has quietened down or stopped all together. So we are putting together a list of best inclusive cultural goodness to keep you absorbing new ideas in fun ways, including books, music and film. So whatever your preference, we hope you find something you like.
We will keep adding to this list. Please make any recommendations you would like us to add to it.
What we’re listening to
Let’s start with something really fabulous for many, some beats that can make us feel great as we get on with whatever our day holds for us!
Open has compiled a list of 147 tracks that we like to blast in as we work on blasting out exclusion! They are all available on Spotify here.
Our song of this period is You Gotta Be by Des’ree. The key lyric that made this a winner was,
“You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm
You gotta stay together
All I know, all I know, love will save the day.”
Enjoy it! What are your favorite tunes for moving to as you get on with your day? Please send us some of yours.
Podcasts / Vlogs
There are so many brilliant podcasts I will only put a few here and apologies to the many I will miss out
Martyn Sibley’s Podcasts: The Daily Sib kept us all engaged and informed through lockdown. There is much more in this collection both pre and post the daily shows of this year also. Loads of great guests from right across the disability, accessibility and inclusive innovation sphere.
AXSChat has years of interviews with some of the leading accessibility and inclusion folk from across the planet hosted by three great anchors
Deb Ruh’s fabulous Human Potential at Work about workplace inclusion with many guests from over the years on the broadest range of topics all connected to attracting, onboarding and unleashing people’s full potential in the workplace
Accessible design is better design with Derek Featherstone from the User Defenders Podcast. This is just one episode but it has some great links and Derek is an excellent inclusive design thinker and speaker.
This is HCD Podcasts: A great very broad-ranging collection of design thinking and HCD practitioners sharing their insights. One of my go-to favourites in the broader design community. There are a number of great episodes specifically on inclusive design in the backlog, including one from me on Making Human Centred Design More Human earlier this year. A very wide range of great speakers from across the insight/research and service design community.
The Design Council, UK Podcast: I’ve linked directly to one of my favourites from the Design Council, from the CEO Sarah Weir about diversity and inclusive design. There are some other great listens here also.
Some great USA podcasts on disability and inclusion are listed on Ameridisability including an interesting range of hosts, guests and topics right across the spectrum of needs
PEAT “Workology podcasts” on inclusion and accessibility in the workplace and beyond. One of my favourite episodes is on customer experiences for all customers with Ted Drake from Intuit.
The Aperture: Steph Cutler an inclusive designer has just started a podcast musing with excellent guests on diverse insight, ongoing exclusion, design and the disability rights movement. Her first episode with Phil Friend OBE and Harry Baker a poet is fabulous.
What we’re reading
Inclusive design books
Mismatch, Kat Holmes, 2018. Just brilliant! A must read. I bought it for my whole team for Christmas 2 years ago.
Rebel Ideas, The Power of Diverse Ideas. Author Matthew Syed, 2019. The positive power of diversity exposed beautifully and powerfully.
Authentic Inclusion Drives Disruptive Innovation, Francis West, 2018
Design Meets Disability, Graham Pullin, 2011
Universal Principles of Design, William Lidwell, 2010
The Spirit Level. Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, 2011
New Old. Designing for our Future Selves, The Design Museum, Edited by Jeremy Meyerson 2017 (the book that accompanied the 2017 exhibition at The Design Museum)
Inclusive Branding, Revealing Secrets to Maximise ROI, Deborah Ruh, 2018
Inclusive Growth, Future Proof Your Business by Creating A Diverse Workforce, Toby Mildon, 2020
First-person disability experiences and disability rights movement books
Being Heumann: An Unrepenting Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, Judith Heumann and Kristen Joiner, 2020
Disability Visibility, Alice Wong, 2020. Just out and although I haven’t yet got to the end of it, a really interesting read from many perspectives as its an anthology of various stories from people with different lived experiences of disability and the disability rights movement.
Notes on Blindness, John M. Hull, 2017 (also made into a film that won a Sundance Film Festival Award on the list below. A good watch although I preferred the book)
Disability and Human Rights, Global Perspectives, Edurne Garca Iriarte, Robbie Gilligan, Roy McConkey, 2015
Everything is Possible, Martyn Sibley 2016. A great read from our very own Open Community Lead and social media manager
Face It: Facial Disfigurement and My Fight for Face Equality, James Partridge This is a book about a very interesting and often overlooked disability area, facial difference. James has written a book that is really compelling in that it includes his personal story as well as the broader issues of face equality and a strong, practical perspective on what is needed going forwards. James passed just after this book came out. RIP James. A true gentleman who was a powerful global advocate for equality for people with facial differences. We can all take up this important issue to keep it moving forwards from where he left off.
Blood and Sand, Frank Gardner, 2006. A great autobiography, well written by Frank Gardner (also known for writing explosive thriller novels) covering the period from his early interest in the Arabic world as a student, to becoming a Bahrain-based banker and then journalist and security specialist for the BBC covering the War on Terror from within the Arabic region. Then the shattering and rebuilding of his life after being shot and being permanently disabled after having been left for dead by members of al-Quaeda in Saudi Arabia in 2004.
Broader good design thinking, insight and innovation books
The classic of UX! Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug, 2013
The Jobs to be Done Playbook, by Jim Kalbach. 2020. This is my latest favourite read. I’m still halfway through but one of the team has already got to the end and loved it throughout. It is an excellent summary fo the very practical and useful JTBD framework for focusing effort and prioritising strategy around clearly expressed consumer needs.
Good Services: How to Design Services That Work, Lou Downe 2020. Another very new book that we are enjoying. 15 clearly set out and described principles to making services that are more helpful to more people to get something done as they would like. Ex UK Government Design Director. Super practical and applicable to any service designer.
100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas and Design Effective Solutions Bruce Hanington and Bella Martin, 2012
Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows, 2008 (an incredibly important read just now as our world is impacted by fast-moving systems dependency constraints and challenges!)
Design is Storytelling. Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, Ellen Lupton, 2017. There is also a good presentation by the author available as a video here.
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People 2nd Ed., Susan M. Weinschenk, 2020
This is Service Design Doing Marc Stickdorn, 2018
Innovating for People: Handbook of Human-Centred Design Methods, LUMA Institute, 2012
Design Thinking Playbook, Michael Lewrisk, Patrick Link, 2018
Value Proposition Design, Strategyzer, 2014. Strategyzer’s other books and frameworks are really good also. I use their frameworks a lot at the beginning of projects and new product concepts.
Mapping Experiences: A Complete Guide to Creating Value through Journeys, Blueprints and Diagrams Jim Kalbach, 2016.
Innovation by Design, Thomas Lockwood and Edgar Papke, 2017
Seeing What Other’s Don’t, The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insight, Gary Klein, 2014
Behavioural insights, analysis and economics books
Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, 2011 (The original tome on behavioral economics that looks at the different cognitive ways we make decisions and how these drive many behavioral biases that can distort and influence reason and rationality)
The Undoing Project, A Friendship that Changed Our Minds, Michael Lewis, (A great biography of the two leaders of the field of behavioural economics, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky written by an excellent writer. An easy introduction to Behavioural Economics, who and where it sprung from)
Misbehaving, The Making of Behavioural Economics, Richard Thaler, 2015 (Why people act in seemingly irrational ways described by Nobel laureate and Chicago based professor who took up the mantle of behavioural economics in the USA very early along with Kahneman and Tversky. A combination of history and practical stories underpinning our irrationality and why we act as we do)
Freakonomics books from Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner including Freakonomics, Superfreak, Think Like a Freak and When to Rob a Bank. These are all great books filled with stories that help us consider how and why things work the way they do (or don’t) and what it is that drives these outcomes. They are fundamentally based on incentives and behavioural economics but are very accessible to all and really entertaining storytellers. Their podcast series is also on our very regular listens list and a great way to absorb this content is small, regular updates.
Social psychology books
Malcolm Gladwell, the Canadian social psychologist gets his own section as we have enjoyed so many of his thought-provoking, well researched and engaging story-led books over time. Here are our four favourites, all with significant relevance to inclusive design, insight, and innovation.
The Tipping Point, How Little things Can Make. a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell, 2000
the Tipping Point is very relevant with a global epidemic underway right now. It can help us understand how social distancing, testing and other practices we are being asked to undertake may help us right now. Although it is about the pivotal point and requirements for social behaviours to ‘tip’ to become fast-moving phenomena, lessons come from physical as well as social environments. For inclusive design leaders, this has some great tips on what the required conditions of success are to “tip” design practices to a point where all design is considered and developed in an inclusive way by default.
Outliers, The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell, 2008
David and Goliath, Underdogs Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell, 2013 This is a fabulous read and incredibly strong concept in inclusive design. Big and many doesn’t = power. Advantage is more often provided to misfits and underdogs, the smaller in number yet mighty different thinkers and doers. A specific chapter on how the difficulties of being a child who is dyslexic can be a benefit as an adult who has learned to think about problems differently, illustrated by the high number of successful dyslexic entrepreneurs.
Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell, 2019
What You Do is Who You Are, How to Create Your Business Culture, Ben Horowitz, 2019
The Infinite Game 2019 and Start With Why, 2011 by Simon Sinek. He also has some excellent videos as TED Talks or on YouTube
21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari, 2018
We are All Wierd. The Rise of Tribes and the End of Normal, Seth Godin, 2008
Solve for Happy, Mo Gawdat, 2017
What we’re watching
Movies and TV
Crip Camp just released on Netfix starts in Camp Javel in upstate New York. In the 1970s it provided Summer camps for teenagers with various disabilities and counselors from across the States. These kids and staff ended up being some of the most influential activists in the USA’s disability rights movement ensuring Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (the first American disability rights legislation) was passed in 1973 and then signed in to be enacted in 1977. They then went on to propel forwards the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990. These laws and this ongoing movement have changed inclusion legally, and as a result allowed massive shifts practically, functionally and socially, not just in the USA but globally also.
See also the book, Being Heumann above by Judy Heumann who was one of the critical leaders in this movement and a key character in this movie. The movie was made with loads of great historic footage from the camp, the Disability Rights campaigns and various characters lives across the 20 years it spans, well stitched together with recent interviews of those involved. Powerful, important and compelling small-screen entertainment. Produced by Barrack and Michelle Obama.
Notes on Blindness A 2016 Sundance Film Festival Award-winning film based on the book of the same name by John M. Hull originally based on his audio diary as he lost his sight.
Online Conferences and webinars
There are so many amazing learning opportunities right now online. Thank you to all the organisations sharing content for free to help us use this period to improve our skills and knowledge.
The Business Disability Forum has a range of Webinars
These cover this period of COVID-19 through the perspective of better supporting disabled customers or staff members. Last week Christine, our MD spoke on the BDF Webinar with Rick Williams and Bela Gor about customer inclusion in the time of COVID-19. The week before Robin Christopherson (AbilityNet) and Ruth Fischer (BDF) joined Bela for a session on the inclusion of disabled colleagues in the workplace during the COVID-19 period. Please also check out their broader toolkit with links to additional materials along with the webinars.
A Future Date Virtual Conference
This was a 3-day virtual accessibility conference held 21 -23 April 2020 online. It is now all available on YouTube for your (and our) ongoing enjoyment. Here is the session schedule showing the fabulous range of topics covered and speakers involved. It also has a PDF transcript and slides for each session.
The whole programme is now available on YouTube,
We haven’t had a chance to see them all yet but (to now) some of our personal favourites for individual sessions are
Day 1
XR Access: Improving Accessibility for Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality by Dylan Fox and Bill Curtis-Davidson
Audio Graphs for Users with Visual Limitations by Sukriti Chadha, Yatin Kaushal and Kisiah Timmons
Day 2
Making Artificial Intelligence Inclusive for Hiring and HR by Corinne Weible, Jutta Treviranus, Nathan Cunningham (Just brilliant! Please watch/listen to this one especially if you are involved in AI and/or recruitment)
Red is Not a Signal Color to Me – From User Research to Inclusive Design by Wendy Fox and Lauriann Hebb
Day 3
Sorry – not had a chance to see any of these as yet! Come back soon and we’ll share some of our favourites.
Add to our collection!
If you would like to add to this collection of inclusive content goodness, please send your additions to us at contact@openinclusion.com.
Wishing you and your families all a healthy journey through this challenging period.
