Stephen Lloyd Awards Application: How Do I?
"Many say technologies make things easier; for people with disabilities technologies make things possible”
Knut Ellingsen, vice president of the European Federation of Hard of Hearing (EFHOH)
Swiss Cottage School Development and Research Centre is a 5-times Outstanding SEN school in North West London with a proven track record as a centre of educational excellence. Tom Casson is the Lead for Lifelong Learning at the school, and his remit includes teaching young people with learning difficulties how to complete the everyday tasks that keep us healthy, happy and safe, and to complete them as independently as they can. He is also tasked with supporting them to access a range of work experiences.
Tom knows, like most of us working or living with vulnerable people, that teaching independence skills to the young people who attend Swiss Cottage School requires a high level of understanding of their communication and support needs. He also knows that their learning does not always follow a linear pathway, and that most need varying levels of support at different points- sometimes different points in the day, sometimes different points in their lifetimes. Often, it is difficult for those of us supporting young people to teach them these skills in an independent way, and the case is very similar in their homes, if not more challenging. That said, Tom is also in the privileged position to see the difference that effective teaching of independence skills can make: confidence built, barriers brought down, expectations exceeded.
There are estimated to be c. 1.2m people in the UK with learning disabilities; of which about 189,000 adults are known to LD services. Mencap, a charitable organization devoted to furthering life outcomes for people with learning disabilities, concluded that “research shows 65% of people with a learning disability want to work, and that with the right support they make highly valued employees. However, only 1 in 10 people with a learning disability known to social services are currently in paid work.”
So adults with LD are underrepresented in the workforce, despite wanting to be in paid employment and proving themselves to be consistently effective employees. Similarly, they want to live as independently as possible, as most people would, but are often heavily supported by family or care workers to complete daily living tasks. With some revolutionary thinking around assistive technology, many of these tasks could be completed with minimal support and with a far higher degree of independence.
Tom had an idea for an assistive technology that could address the identified gap in available resources, as well as the systemic problems around supporting vulnerable people. This has developed into an app called How Do I?, an interactive learning resource linking step-by-step lifeskill task videos, produced by the highly skilled development team (Taryl Law, Lead for Family Inclusion at Swiss Cottage School Development and Research Centre; Alexandra Eavis, founder of assistive technology company, Alcove; Mike Burgess, founder of web application development firm, BAM Mobile, with high levels of consultation and support from the learners and families at Swiss Cottage School), to in-situ learning opportunities in the home. The lifeskill learning videos are presented though a well-designed and easy to use app activated by NFC tags. NFC stands for Near Field Communication and is the same technology used in contactless debit cards and TFL’s Oyster card. Tags are placed strategically around a living space (e.g. How to make a cup of tea would be placed on the kettle, How to make toast on the toaster) linking the real-life context with the related video; it's as easy as touching an NFC-enabled device to the brightly coloured How Do I? tag.
The advantage of the touchscreen is that those with a broad range of needs find mobiles and tablets very accessible. Doing a Google search, navigating through the results, and filtering out irrelevant links, or using QR scanning apps, can be very difficult. We believe NFC technology is way more accessible for people with disabilities due to the sophistication of its technology and the simplicity of its use. Combining the touch interface with NFC and similar technology allows very targeted content, instructional videos to be delivered at exactly the right moment.
How Do I? helps to embed real life skills, enabling users to do more things for themselves and be better supported. It can be used in multiple settings so learning or ongoing support can take place in school, at home, in work, in daytime or residential facilities etc. All the user needs is to bring their own NFC-enabled device – either a tablet or smartphone – the costs of which are coming down all the time. Easily recognised, pre-programmed, custom-designed NFC stickers launch video content appropriate to the object they are stuck on, when the user taps their device on them. The video is broken down into small steps to support small stages of incremental learning.
There are very few barriers to scaling as the product is so simple and accessible. The use of Android, a commonly used operating system, supports the app’s scalability and makes it as accessible as possible to a wide audience. It is important for us to make a high-performing, beautifully designed product that is as cheap as possible to users, and using existing, commonly available consumer technology does this. Our vision for our social enterprise’s distribution centre is to use it as a testing site for How Do I? in the workplace, employing young people with SEN as apprentices. Ultimately, our aim is not exclusively to produce an exceptional resource, but to change our cultural views and expectations.
We would be honoured to be considered for the Stephen Lloyd Award, and the support could help us substantially. The support from media partners would be invaluable in both marketing and promotion of our work, but also to support our video production and editing skills. The legal support would help us to lay a strong legal foundation for our work going forward; these two examples are only scratching the surface of how we would benefit from the skills and talents of the wider partner network. In addition to this, we are at a stage of requiring further financial investment to employ a full time equivalent employee to develop content, build relationships with user groups and maintain customer contact.
Further resources
Nesta’s Inclusive Technology Prize, where we were awarded a Special Recognition Award:
The How Do I? profile as developed by Nesta’s media team:
Our video, explaining our concept and impact:
Our Twitter:
Our website: