After a successful show in September 2023, the Ability Digital team will return to the Northern Education Show to be held at The Bolton Stadium on Thursday 27th June. The Northern Education Show is the must attend event for schools within the region.  It hosts a great opportunity for school leadership and management teams, and for teaching staff, to meet with a diverse range of companies who supply to educational establishments. Ability Digital will be present on stand 167, and available to help you achieve your disability and diversity responsibilities and training requirements for both staff and pupils.

Did you attend last year’s show?

Those of you who attended last year’s event will have met some of Team Ability – Karen and Vicky, who introduced you to both of the Ability companies – Ability Consultancy and Ability Digital. We may have discussed our aim of enabling a more inclusive society which is disability aware, accepting and accommodating. You may have even tried our show challenge, which was devised by Claire Buckle, the founder of Ability Consultancy and Ability Digital, to try and tie a shoelace, using only one hand. This simple yet fun challenge is effective because it gets you thinking about the everyday challenges that people with disabilities face.  Like Claire herself, who lives with cerebral palsy which impacts the use of her left side. The one-handed shoelace challenge is a piece of cake for her now, as she has learnt to do it through determination and adaptability qualities that Claire believes people with disabilities have. Claire has never let cerebral palsy and dyslexia hold her back from achieving her life goals. A former Great British para-athlete, today an International Paralympic classifier and coach, Claire founded the award-winning businesses following retirement from competitive sport.

What do the Ability Companies do for schools?

Ability Consultancy was set up in 2019 as a not-for-profit Social Enterprise to promote disability awareness training and services, with a special interest in the education sector. After all, as Claire says,

“what better way to develop a more inclusive society in the future than to start with the next generation.”

She is passionate to work with children and young people in schools, whether they have a disability or not and has created a school specific programme of tailorable services called “See Me – Not My CP”.

  • For children living with a disability or perhaps with an undiagnosed or hidden condition – Claire can uniquely connect and inspire with her personal story of how she overcame diversity and bullying in school, to become a successful sports person and entrepreneur.
  • For children without a disability – Claire is approachable and open about her disability, and she encourages curiosity to help change developing perceptions. Whilst it is taboo to touch someone’s wheelchair, Claire actively encourages it in the training, and we have yet to experience a child who hasn’t enjoyed taking a wheelchair for a (supervised) spin in down the corridor.
  • For staff, there are range of in-person and online diversity training courses, alongside specific sports related courses for PE teachers in particular. Claire uses her vast experience in para sport to encourage inclusive sport in schools. It’s the time of year when the sun is shining and its time for the annual sports day. Ability Consultancy can help ensure that your sports days are fun for all, and that the child with a disability is not left holding the clipboard as a teacher’s helper and actually participating in sport for their own mental and physical health.
  • For the school as an organisation, your establishment does not have to have a child or children with disabilities to need our services. We can help with your corporate, social, and legal responsibilities in relation to equality, diversity, and inclusion.

To find out more about our school services, please click here: 

Ability Digital was set up in 2021 and works alongside Ability Consultancy in supporting and promoting inclusion and disability awareness to all.  Ability Digital delivers disability awareness through digital platforms. Our innovative and interactive Xplore DisAbility® App enables children and young people to explore disability through experience.

The Xplore DisAbility® app aims to help non-disabled people learn and understand more about what it is like to be disabled. Simple to use, yet impactful and using the latest technology of augmented reality, Xplore DisAbility offers people the opportunity to try out some of the difficulties faced in a disabled person’s daily life, effectively “Exploring Disability Through Experience.”

To find out more about our innovative disability awareness app, please click here: 

You may have seen Ability Digital on the BBC North-West Tonight programme on Tuesday 19th March. The news piece featured an in-school demonstration of how our app can be used in schools for PSHE lessons and so much more.  Claire Buckle and the film crew visited a North-West primary school, and the children were astonished at the simple struggles in life that people with disabilities often face. One pupil used the app to see how a book would look to someone with a visual impairment. “The book looked bigger than it actually was, and I couldn’t see any of the words,” she said. “It felt like it wasn’t real, and now I feel for people who are partially blind.”

To view more about how the school children engaged with the app, please watch the full tv report at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-68581280

What is in store for 2024?

The Xplore DisAbility® app is now live, available to download on Android or iOS, and ready to take learning to a new fun and functional level.

 

Already tried, tested, and trusted by a number of progressive schools and organisations, experience for yourself how the Xplore DisAbility app prompts you think about disability and increases knowledge and understanding of different types of impairments. The app was developed to give children and young people, the opportunity to experience disability and its’ impact in their familiar school setting.

Within the school environment, it is aimed at enhancing the PSHE curriculum to incorporate and create understanding to enhance friendships, confidence, inclusion, careers, and understanding of society as a whole.

Try for yourself on our stand using different types of devices. Simply manoeuvre your chosen device either a mobile smart phone (with or without a headset) or an iPad/tablet to enable the augmented reality features to work correctly to experience:

  1. Visual Disabilities

In the Xplore DisAbility app, you can see the world (or not), through the eyes of someone with an eye condition and experience blurred vision, scattered vision or blindspots. Learning feels like play with the immersive experience.

  1. Hearing Impairment

You can learn British Sign language and learn how to sign words and phrases. Charlotte, aged 9 said:

“It’s really fun. It has lots of information and I learnt loads, and I get to play at the same time! I got all the questions right on the Sign Language quiz.”

  1. Physical impairments

Learn about different types of mobility issues in the Xplore DisAbility app and carry out challenges whilst bound by physical restrictions in various types of cartoon style locations.

We will happily talk you through our business model, which allows for the app to be purchased individually or in bulk, and supports education-based staff by providing materials to the children across school ages. There are 3 versions for more impactful learning – a primary-age, secondary-age, and a professional version.  It is a yearly licence-based app that is simply paid for and downloaded onto the appropriate device(s). Please note that Ability Digital does not provide the devices, and these must be sourced by the school.

Special Show offer

Sign-ups to the app by the end of the 2023/2024 school year will receive a free teacher resource pack.

The teacher resource pack helps the teacher get the most out of the app and includes:

  • Facts and figures about disabilities
  • Definitions of the 3 different types of disabilities: visual, hearing and physical impairments
  • User guide on how to use the different impairment sections
  • Activity suggestions for different groups
  • Print off sheets for each section including fun quizzes
  • Signposting to useful websites

If you are not quite ready to sign up, we will happily book a follow up meeting with you at a later date.

Who should visit us:

Anyone with a responsibility or interest in equality and diversity, inclusivity, accessibility, and disability, (within sport or for general disability awareness), especially but not limited to, those with disabled children in school.

  • Headteachers & Deputy Headteachers
  • Bursar/Finance Director
  • Principal
  • Director
  • School Business Manager
  • Governor / Chair of Governors
  • Senior School Leadership Teams
  • Purchasing Manager
  • Financial Director
  • Property Manager
  • Administrative Staff
  • SEN Co-ordinator (SENCO)
  • Inclusion Manager
  • ICT Director
  • School Budget holder

Put Thursday  27th June in your diary and visit Ability Digital on stand number 167 at the Bolton Stadium Hotel between 8:30am and 3:30pm.

Find out more about the show on www.northerneducationshow.uk

or register (free to attend)  by clicking here

For directions, please visit www.boltonstadiumhotel.co.uk

#Education, #NorthernEducationShow, #TraintheTrainer, #DisabilityAwareness #Inclusion