In a world where an estimated 1.3 billion people live with some form of disability, the challenges of accessibility, inclusion and equal opportunity are pressing concerns. According to the World Health Organisation, people with disabilities die earlier, have poorer health, and experience more limitations in everyday functioning and engaging fully in society.
In Ireland about 13.5 per cent of the population reports having a disability, with the impact of these disabilities varying widely. Unfair conditions faced by people with disabilities include stigma, discrimination, poverty, exclusion from education and employment, and barriers faced within the health system itself.
Addressing these challenges requires innovative approaches that not only tackle immediate needs but also drive systemic change. Sometimes this comes from pressure groups and policymakers, but it also comes from people with acute understanding and lived experience of the issues, who have great ideas that can help to solve, or at least ease them.
For Adam Harris, founder of Autism charity AsIAm, his pivotal moment was joining a mainstream class in primary school; he firmly believes that if we’re really serious about inclusion, it means that people need to grow up in a community that understands and accepts them.
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Therese Coveney, cofounder of Together Academy, came to Social Entrepreneurs Ireland (SEI) with a social care background, but came out the other side equipped with all sorts of entrepreneurial information. Crucially, when it comes to fostering a culture of acceptance and understanding, she learned the art of storytelling, and how to bring the public on the journey with them. SEI-backed ventures are not just filling gaps in services; they are redefining how society perceives and interacts with disabled people. In Together Academy’s partnership with the Happy Out cafe in Dún Laoghaire Baths, Down syndrome employees are visible and engaged in the community. Coveney says she can feel the impact of this when she’s out and about in the area with her Down syndrome child: “I feel she’s seen differently in her community now; there is a different recognition.”
“Choice was just something that wasn’t very highly considered for this group of people. And we’re offering it to them, we’re seeing how well they’re grasping it, and how much they’re loving the opportunity to work and to be independent. My hope for my daughter is that she grows up with the expectation that she will work,” she says.
AsIAm – Adam Harris
AsIAm is Ireland’s autism charity. It provides evidence-based advice, resources and guidance that the community can trust. Alongside this, it endeavours to make Irish society a more inclusive and accepting place, where autistic people have the same chance.
Adam Harris (younger brother of Taoiseach Simon Harris) set up AsIAm based on his own experiences growing up as a young autistic person in Ireland. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome from an early age, the condition was far less understood or even known as it is today. Having spent his initial school years within the special education stream, he moved to a mainstream school in second class and was supported by an SNA. (His own mother was also an SNA.)
Today, AsIAm provides support to autistic people and their families, advocates on behalf of the community, and works to support public and private sector organisations and communities in becoming inclusive and accessible.
On a practical level, AsIAm provides a range of supports, from a legal clinic to listing autism-friendly jobs with accredited employers, including Veolia, Mr Price and Grant Thornton. It has also developed an autism ID card, which can help in situations where a carrier of the card feels overwhelmed – it contains a short description of an individual’s autistic support needs and a reminder that the person with the card may need some extra help and support.
Harris is a frequent contributor to media and conferences in Ireland and overseas. He has also sat and advised on numerous government consultative and policy committees on disability rights and inclusion. He was also appointed to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission in July 2020.
Not bad for a man who dropped out of college. After struggling through an overwhelming and difficult first year in UCD, he had a choice to sit his exams or go on a retreat for social entrepreneurs. He chose the latter, and the rest is history. Ten years on, he is running an organisation of 30 people and having a big impact on the lives of many more.
Together Academy – Therese Coveney
Together Academy is a unique college and social enterprise cafe in Dublin. It aims to provide young adults with Down syndrome specialised certified training, on-the-job experience, future work placements and a critical social and support network. Cofounder Therese Coveney has a young daughter attending the Down syndrome Centre, and when she was invited on to its board, she had one proviso – that she could set up a programme for adults. A chance discussion with a philanthropist led to funding which allowed her to devote herself full-time for a year to get things off the ground. With a background in the social care sector and fuelled by the knowledge that only 10 per cent of Down syndrome adults in Ireland are in employment, she felt it was high time she devoted her energies to a project that would create a brighter future and opportunities for her own daughter, and children like her.
Without any corporate or commercial background, getting involved with SEI gave her the language and support she needed to create and enterprise. “They advised me to put together a steering committee of people who could support us, and they helped me identify who I needed most,” she says.
“It’s a very lonely journey being a social entrepreneur,” she says, and credits the supports SEI has offered for helping solve issues blocking progress – “pretty much the list of 100 questions, any one of which might prevent you from taking the next step”.
It has become an even lonelier journey since cofounder Cathy Smith passed away this summer. Cathy and Therese had kept the idea alive together through Covid, furloughed and homeschooling their children. The SEI Action Lab, which went online during that time, kept them motivated: “If SEI had not run that Action Lab, there was a really high chance the two of us would just have returned to a different job. I think it kept us going.”
Things have grown exponentially since they burst into action after the pandemic and now Together Academy runs a two-year culinary skills programme in partnership with the Education and Training Board (ETB), a 20-week vocational programme, a pop-up cafe at Wanderers clubhouse during the week, corporate catering, diversity and inclusion training for organisations, transition year workshops, and the hugely successful partnership with Happy Out cafe at Dún Laoghaire Baths.
Coveney is constantly fielding requests from all corners of the country to replicate the model but feels stretched too thin; for now, she thinks the best way forward is to perfect the model and then allow others to replicate it in their area.
Mobility Mojo – Stephen Cluskey and Noelle Daly
In the 1990s Noelle Daly, herself a wheelchair user, cofounded Spinal Injuries Ireland. Through this she had built a large library of suitable travel and holiday destinations but was finding it difficult to add more places to her list due to a lack of specific detailed information. From there, in 2015, she decided to start her own accessible travel business, and through this met Stephen Cluskey, who had also started a business in accessible transport, to help wheelchair users find accessible taxis. Sensing a shared vision, they joined forces and applied for the Competitive Start Funding through National Digital Research Centre’s (NDRC’s) Female Founders programme.
Things took off and they were the runner-up of the ESB Spark of Genius Awards at the Web Summit in Lisbon in October 2017. Daly says that speaking to international tourism companies there was the pivot moment that brought Mobility Mojo to where it is today, so that hotels could self-audit rather than source their information from guest reviews.
Today Mobility Mojo helps all sorts of organisations to create more accessible and inclusive environments for everyone, by making it easy to capture, track, improve, promote and compare accessibility. It has developed an easy-to-use evaluation tool, which can capture all the accessibility details relating to the building or buildings used by the organisation. They can be used for any type of space, from offices, banks and hotels to retail and manufacturing.
According to the WHO, about 15 per cent of the world’s population lives with some form of disability, of whom 2-4 per cent experience significant difficulties in functioning. This alone provides a huge impetus for creating a more accessible world, but this year, Mobility Mojo has taken it even further, with new criteria added to create a 360 benchmark of inclusivity.
Its metrics cover over 300 criteria based on best global accessibility standards, including questions relating to critical facets of inclusivity, including disability and physical mobility criteria, neurodiversity, parenthood, faith, culture, age and gender expression.
Once the evaluation has taken place, Mobility Mojo provides a detailed report on the building, based on best global standards, which includes improvement suggestions, and information on how to make these improvements.