Designed for Everyone: From Accessibility to Advantage

Speakers: Jessica Lewis, Donovan Tildesley, Sandra Levy, Vinita Jajware-Beatty As artificial intelligence transforms how we work, communicate and interact with organizations, we have an opportunity to ask a fundamental question: are we designing the future for everyone? Designed for Everyone: From Accessibility to Advantage brings together perspectives from elite sport, business, insurance and leadership to explore how accessibility, inclusive design and emerging technologies such as AI can expand human potential—and what organizations risk when diverse human experiences are not considered from the outset. AI has enormous potential to remove barriers, increase independence, reshape customer and employee experiences, and enable people to participate and perform in ways that were previously difficult or impossible. But technology can also create new barriers when the people and experiences it needs to serve aren't represented in its design. Through lived experience and professional insight, our speakers will examine accessibility not simply as accommodation or compliance, but as a lens for better design and better performance. Their experiences span Olympic and Paralympic sport, executive leadership, governance and the insurance industry, offering different perspectives on adaptation, high performance, technology, leadership and belonging. Drawing lessons from both high-performance sport and the workplace, the conversation will explore what coaching, teamwork, adaptability and inclusive leadership can teach organizations about creating the conditions for people to succeed. We'll consider how those same principles should inform the development and deployment of AI as it increasingly influences workplaces, customer experiences and decision-making. There is also a compelling business opportunity. Designing for a wider range of human experiences from the outset can improve outcomes far beyond those for whom an accommodation may originally have been intended. Applied to AI and other emerging technologies, inclusive design can help organizations unlock overlooked talent, improve customer experience, strengthen innovation and build more adaptable and resilient organizations. At its heart, Designed for Everyone asks: Instead of asking people to adapt to systems that weren't designed for them, what becomes possible when we design better systems—and how can AI help us do that? This conversation invites leaders to move from accessibility to advantage: recognizing accessibility not simply as something organizations should provide, but as a source of insight for designing better technology, better experiences and better organizations for everyone.