Host:Just talk a little bit about your education and sort of your origins in STEM.

Chad:Sure, yeah! I went to university—Simon Fraser University. I started in Computer Science, and I actually ended up finishing my degree in English with a minor in CS. The CS thing I was finding tough, and I was kind of wanting to be done with it all. Then I had the opportunity to do an internship at Neil Squire Society, working a summer job. And for me that was really transferable, because I could use those technical skills for social impact. So using those skills to help people. This was the early 2000s, I was helping people get their first email accounts on Yahoo and searching things up on AskJeeves and pieces like that, but really helping people make use of emerging technology to improve their quality of life.

Host:That’s awesome! And obviously you talked a little bit about Neil Squire, can you tell me a little bit about what that is and what the company’s purpose is?

Chad:Neil Squire is a registered charity. Its mission statement is ‘Use Technology, Knowledge, and Passion to Empower People with Disabilities.’ So [this is about] how technology and other supports can help people with disabilities do things that other people are doing. Like working, going back to school, just being in the community. There are a variety of programs, some around digital literacy—helping people have the skills to use technology—a lot of our programs are about helping people get back to work. Our superpower is assistive technology: so how you may use different tech or alternative technologies to communicate or get information into a computer or out of a computer. And then there’s also an R&D department, where we develop new technologies and develop new accessibility standards so there are more opportunities for equality for everybody.

Host:That’s really cool, actually! Is there a reason you became interested in this line of work specifically or was it more just the opportunity that came to you?

Chad:It was definitely an opportunity. I would say for people who are starting their career and aren’t sure where they’re going to land, the nice thing about the majority of nonprofits is you really have the opportunity to try things and help things grow. When I took a permanent position [at Neil Squire] upon graduating from university, I was running the computer literacy program, and I started a computer refurbishing program. So this was the early 2000s, but we were getting donated computers and loading Windows on them, and we gave those computers to people with disabilities. That sort of opportunity to provide that foundational technology access was really transformative. You can directly see the impact you have on someone’s life, when you’re helping someone get a job or helping [them] get a computer or do things they weren’t able to do before. Many people come in and say “oh, I just want to get an email account or search things on the Internet,” and they realize that these terribly scary things aren’t actually that bad, and maybe if [they] can do this, [they] can do other things. It becomes a bit of a bridge to move onto going back to school or working or being connected to the community in other ways.

Host:For sure. Can you talk a little bit about how your job requirements have kind of changed with the advent of new technologies, or have they sort of stayed the same?

Chad:Mm-hmm.

Host:So just going back to your high school, how did you find the transition from high school to university and how did you adapt to some of those changes?

Chad:No, definitely. The joke of the organization is that I’m sort of an ‘intrepreneur.’ I’ve had the opportunity to start new programs, get them up and running, build teams around them, and move onto the next thing. So a program we started around five, six years ago is Makers Making Change, and that’s really leveraging new fabrication technologies to make assistive tech: creating assistive devices that can be 3D-printed. Or doing a small run of circuit boards and making assistive devices that can be built for 100 dollars instead of purchased for 1000. [We’re] always learning, there are always new evolutions of technology, and that’s something you see all the time at Neil Squire. New technology comes to market, it changes the way we live and work, but if there’s not accessibility options for people with disabilities, it can create an opportunity where they’re actually further marginalized. So an example for that is your smartphone. We all have one, for better or for worse. Those came in 2007, and there wasn’t really any assistive tech that would help people use them if they didn’t use their hands to touch the screen until mid-2015, 2016. That’s something that changed the way the world worked, changed the way a lot of things happened, but for people with disabilities who didn’t have that ability to access the device, it became another way they were marginalized and couldn’t get information, and pieces like that. There’s always new technology, there’s always new gaps posed by that, and new opportunities to try and increase inclusion.

Host:That’s a really good point. I know I personally was learning a lot about classroom assistive technology, especially this summer, so do you guys deal at all in the educational aspect of that, or is it more an individual thing?

Chad:Yeah, actually the prime funding for Makers Making Change right now is through CanCode and supports their student learning program, which is really focused on reaching youth and doing STEM education. We have—let’s not 3D-print a Yoda head, or 3D-print a Groot doll, let’s 3D-print a bottle opener, something simple like this, which is a simple key-turner. My boss is quadriplegic, he can lift his fingers through this and turn his car or open his keys, it’s maybe 50 cents worth of plastic, right? So there are always opportunities to leverage these new pieces of technology, and sometimes it seems like a really simple thing, but just to have those independence [aspects], we’ve helped people turn on their toothbrush, they couldn’t push the power button on their toothbrush. No one who’s twelve wants their mom brushing their teeth. So we’ve done a little hack on that so they can control it automatically. We do, in Eastern Canada, have a contract with the government there, where we’re really working with students in the classroom and helping them get the assistive tech to be successful, and it really carries on in post-secondary life too. Most of the clients we’ve traditionally served at Neil Squire are 18 or over, as they’re going into the workforce, but the Makers Making Change program is a bit of a different model. Many assistive tech programs are very top-down, so “you have a job, you need this technology in the job, you can apply for funding for it,” or “you’re in school,” etc. The Makers program is bottom-up. So someone can request from our website a dog treat dispenser, or a key turner—aids for daily living, not for a work or school context. That said, many things are used in the workforce. We have mouth-operated [computer] mice that we’ve developed, another assistive technology that’s used in a wide variety of settings, but that’s sort of the neat thing about this program, that it really cuts across different silos of where people are bucketed into—like you’re working, or you’re in this province, or you’re in school—anyone can request something they need.

Host:I mean, I’d imagine there are some difficulties presented especially with developing assistive technology and not necessarily knowing all the different challenges that people might face when posed with those. Do you think that’s one of the ways you’re able to get around that and focus on solutions on solutions that you’ve been able to come up with?

Chad:Yeah, and we’ve done a lot of work in also trying to educate and collaborate with different disability service providers, whether that’s rehab hospitals or children’s hospitals or recreational therapists or occupational therapists, to let them know that “this device doesn’t need to be a $500 thing that you buy from manufacturers in the States. There are students down the street who can help build this for you quickly and affordably.” There’s definitely that awareness-raising, bringing two different communities together. There’s the Maker community, that has these fabrication skills and pieces, this ability to make things, and then there’s the people that need stuff but may not be aware that some of these things can be fabricated. We’ve hit that tipping point of awareness, to a degree, but there’s always more people to grow our network and grow our community. We’ve delivered over 5000 assistive devices, we’ve served people in 33 countries, which is way beyond our wildest imaginations when we started, how much this would take off. I think a lot of people, especially millennials, really look at how they can give back with their skills, right? Like “how can I use what I am good at to give back to the world?” and this is an opportunity to do that, for people to use those STEM skills they’re developing and have a social impact.

Host:Mm-hmm. What would you say happens in a regular day of work, and what does it look like?

Chad:Yeah, for sure.

Host:Okay, why did you choose computer science out of all the sciences out there?

Chad:Sure! I mean, it would depend on who’s doing the job at work, but for me, it depends on the day. I do a lot of fund-raising and partnership development, but one of the events that we do run, and we run hundreds of these now, are these build-a-thon events. That’s where we have a number of people that come together for a day and help build some of the assistive devices, whether that’s hacking toys for kids with disabilities, or building adaptive video game controllers. On one of those days, we’ll set up the work stations—maybe soldering irons and some hand tools. When people arrive, we give them a bit of “what are you building and why are you building it?” like ‘how does it actually help people, why does it matter?’ Sometimes we’re able to have a guest speaker like an occupational therapist that works with kids with disabilities who might need it, people who have benefited from the devices. And then we’ll work with people, and we work through building these devices almost like a Lego project or IKEA, where they have the bits or the components and they might be screwing some things together, soldering pieces, connecting it, flashing the Arduino code, and then at the end, those devices that are made can go to community partners in the area. That’s what a standard build-a-thon day looks like. When we started this out, we thought that this was a great way to fabricate a whole bunch of things quickly. What became very apparent to us was that the people who volunteered really also had that tremendous sense of fulfillment, that they’re able to give back in a meaningful way. It’s been really a win-win across the board.

Host:Yeah, and do you think you feel that same sense of satisfaction or fulfillment in your own work?

Chad:Oh, for sure, I’ve had the opportunity to go and speak about this all over Canada and the United States. Sometimes a few people’s pictures come up and I try to tell a story [about them], and I’m like, “keep it together, Chad,” you know what I mean? “You’re up here to tell a story, not to cry on TV,” so to speak. It’s very impactful to see how simple things can really make a major impact in the quality of people’s lives.

Host:Definitely. And what would you say the biggest discovery you’ve made either in your field or about yourself while doing this work is?

Chad:That’s a good question. One of the things that—especially when I started the work, and I tried to stay very open-minded, and take the approach that “I don’t know what I don’t know,” [I saw that] there’s a huge social-economic divide. When I was first doing our computer refurbishing program, and I was getting computers ready to go into people’s homes, I would have, usually every Wednesday, I would go do that. So to break up the work-week I’d go around, it feels great to give computers a home, but to go into people’s different living situations and see how they’re living or what they’re living without, to do that, really opened my eyes into the gaps and pieces. I had the opportunity, early in my career, to set up a disability learning center that’s still running with the Penticton Indian Band. I lived up on band land for two weeks, and that was very, very eye-opening. Learning the different cultural ways and how they approached things—again, I tried to not come off as the “white guy from Vancouver here to tell you how to run things,” and just be very open-minded and add value where I could, to always listen. That was tremendously rewarding. It really helped also build that relationship: the fact that I was willing to live there, attend their events and learn, and sand logs with the youth that were going into the building and fabricate, and do my best to walk a mile in their shoes for a couple days. Obviously, a couple weeks is not the same as living that life, but trying to, you know, be open-minded. It makes you really appreciate the things that you have the opportunities you’ve had, when you see some of the frustrations and barriers that people have faced and the opportunities they haven’t had, going through that.

Host:And since we’re talking about these intersecting socioeconomic barriers, can you talk about the way that these stop people from getting into STEM, or even just accessing careers or education, and how your company is working to solve those?

Chad:Great question. We’re really focused on our current funded project to reach underrepresented groups in STEM. There’s some great work and projects happening for different people—Black Boys Code is a great organization that’s trying to leverage Black communities and introduce them to STEM opportunities, there’s a lot of great women in engineering groups, women in science, we’ve had a lot of success with those sort of groups throughout the country. We’re really focused on that. So instead of saying we’re going to serve a thousand youth to volunteer in our program, we’ve put specific metrics around youth: Indigenous, female, and people with disabilities, etc. That seems to be, again, really niche. There’s a lot of great people doing great work and trying to help the equity-seeking groups get those opportunities. We’ve not seen that in disability as much, in terms of those STEM and higher-learning, higher-opportunity careers. I think there’s still a lot of work to be done. We’re trying to target that. We’ve done a lot of work this summer in attending different disability camps. Whether that’s Easter Seals camp, or Diabetes—D-Days, they call them, a diabetes camp for kids—we’re trying to go to where those communities are and bring our expertise in, as opposed to expecting those communities to find us. Fish where the fish are swimming, you know what I mean? As opposed to throwing your rod somewhere and hoping something swims by. We try to meet people where they’re at, and bring our services and knowledge to them, and augment what they have, [instead of] expecting everyone to come to you and do things on your terms.

Host:I think that’s a really fantastic point. I feel like a lot of the barriers that exist are a result of expecting people to meet you where you are, rather than pushing your comfort levels to what they’re able to do. And I know this must be a tricky question because you’ve talked about a ton of projects that you’re doing, but is there one specific project or fund that’s really exciting you right now?

Chad:Yes. I will give you three very quickly—I know you only asked for one. Let me just grab this piece here. This is our LipSync. This is what really started our project. This is a mouth-operated mouse. We’ve built thousands of these things, and we’re about to release a new version. This one is a bit difficult to build, and it’s a bit hard to manipulate with the mouth. The new one uses the Hall effect sensor, it really does a proper 360-degrees. You try to draw a circle with our current [mouse], you maybe get a stop sign. So I’m very excited about that. It’s something we’ll hopefully get released by the end of the year. And we have a couple of projects that we’re really ramping up around accessibility in video gaming. There’s some great organizations in the States: AbleGamers does some great work, in the United Kingdom, there’s SpecialEffect, they do great work. Those are organizations where if you have a disability and you’re trying to game, you can work with them, and they’ll help get you set up with your accommodations, do some game testing and figure out your opportunities to game. There’s nothing like that in Canada. We’re making a push at that. Some of our staff are speaking next Saturday at the Accessible Gaming conference in Toronto, and I think there’s a real need there. It’s not just like “oh, video games are just for fun.” Well, yes. But also they have more economic impact than Hollywood in terms of GDP, and I think we definitely saw during COVID, people gaming a lot to stay connected. It’s really got a social aspect. I’m very excited about that sort of work and the technologies we’re building around that to make gaming more accessible for people with disabilities.

Host:That’s awesome. You mentioned COVID—so I’m sort of wondering: the first question is how COVID has affected your work specifically, and the second—I know I’ve noticed people discussing COVID has changed the conversation around how we talk about chronic illness and disability, so have you seen those effects on your work?

Chad:Definitely. One of the major barriers for people with disabilities in finding employment is just getting to work. Transportation in Vancouver isn’t awful, compared to other parts of Canada that have real winters and snow, so people that maybe can’t drive, they’ve got to get out of their door in their wheelchair in the snow to a bus stop, wait for a bus that maybe comes every half-hour—there’s so many barriers to just showing up. So the ability, and I think really the proof of COVID that people can be productive employees without all sitting with the same roof over their head, opened new opportunities for remote work and for people to work on their own time with that flexibility. I think that’s opened a lot of doors and opportunities for people with disabilities. For us at Neil Squire, people with disabilities—the majority of them have some underlying chronic condition, so we’ve been very cautious with that. In our classrooms, there’s still usually one participant, maybe staff working with them, we’re not doing full classrooms again. But it’s been interesting. Before COVID, our last annual report showed that we served just over 4000 people that year. This last year, we served over 6,600 people. So there were barriers, there were frustrations in the early days, but the change in the way you work and the way you think creates new opportunities and helps you reach people that otherwise maybe you wouldn’t serve—especially people that are rural or remote. Providing online access to services really opens opportunities for people with disabilities, by being flexible and having those spaces to get them in and get them engaged.

Host:I think the flexibility is a really big part. Because, like you mentioned, people who are both disabled and live in rural areas kind of face a double barrier in accessing the kind of care that they need.

Chad:For sure.

Host:And then I was wondering with a more process-oriented question, what kind of feedback and optimizations do you do to each product before it goes into its final form? I imagine that there must be a lot of improvements made in terms of user experience, and sort of the way that people interact with the product itself?

Chad:Oh, for sure. That’s the nice thing about this makers model, using local fabrication pieces. I’m not making a mold and sending it overseas, waiting six months for it to come back. I can print something for someone, they can try it the next day and go “the screws rub my hand here,” or “it’s a little tight there,” and you can adjust and fit it. For the majority of the products in our library at Makers Making Change, I think it’s also important to say that it’s an open-source library. Over half the things in that library are not made by me or my engineers. It’s crowd-sourced and has a wide variety of things, which is really boiling up the community’s best practices. We try to make sure that people are using it and that we have good feedback and experience—not just publishing for publishing’s sake. Our best projects are driven by community need, where there’s a gap, so people can use it and test it. Ideally we have occupational therapists or disability professionals looking at it and giving us the feedback. Some are simple things that don’t go through such rigor, but some are more in-depth projects like the LipSync. We’ll build stakeholder groups, they’ll give us feedback, and I’m a big believer in “fail fast, iterate quickly.” You’re not going to get it right the first time, so don’t try to build something for six months and show it to someone. Build something in six minutes and show it to someone. Find out all the terrible things about a six-minute build, then iterate. Fail fast and build on the lessons you learned as you go.

Host:Do you think there’s a certain project or challenge that really taught you that lesson within your career?

Chad:Yeah, the LipSync. We got that going through a funded project by Google, and it sort of had three major components. One—and you had to do one and two before you got the second half of the grant. One and two were “have the product and scale it out to 150 people.” Our first version of the LipSync, which we were very excited about, was built on a video game controller thumbstick, joystick. They’re well-supported and used all over the place. But by the time we built a bit of the CPAP interface so people could left-click, right-click by sipping on it, [the controller’s range] became quite a wide range of motion, and the amount of head movement someone needed to move to articulate the mouse was significant. When we’re dealing with people who are using this, [some of them] have high-level spinal cord injuries. People were trying to use this and it was causing them significant pain. So here we were thinking that we’ve got this product, we’re all done, then we did user testing with our first 5 people and we realized that this was not going to work. There’s certainly lost opportunities. And a lot of things aren’t quite that severe, but when you’re making something for someone, for example, this is my palm pen holder. For some people, they might find, “I need some foam in there, my skin’s brittle.” Or “I need to change the angle of the pen,” or “I need a thumb-rest piece for it.” I guess the neat thing with our product library, with it being open-source, is that everyone’s different, but especially people with disabilities. Their functional capability, their range of motion, the change in the angle of their joints, it’s all so unique. So the ability to twist it and shape it, get that final ten percent right for them, can make all the difference. I can’t remember who told me, but someone said “if you’ve met someone with cerebral palsy, you’ve met one person with cerebral palsy,” because it presents differently. The functional capability of each person is different, their goals are different, what they want to do is different, so you’re not going to have this magic thing that’s going to be perfect for everybody. You want that ability to tweak and make it work with people’s needs.

Host:And besides that product, do you think there’s another really big challenge that’s been posed in your career, and sort of how did you get past that, or is it an ongoing thing that you’ve faced with a lot of different projects?

Chad:Yeah, I mean—I would say one of the bigger pieces, and this is a little bit less about the technology side of it, but it can be just the sustainability of funding to run these programs. They go through different grant cycles. Every two or three years you’re writing for a major grant. Sometimes, there’s an election or things get delayed or changed, so trying to just have a steady program that you can run and consistently deliver is difficult. We’ve bent and changed the programs a little, to follow funding opportunities while trying to stay core to the mission, but it can be that tug-pull. As a non-profit, if you keep chasing the dollars, you can end up doing something that [doesn’t follow] the values and the mission of the organization. Our current funding is really focused on teaching youth STEM, but we’ve been able to try and make sure we’re teaching youth with disabilities STEM, and make those projects with youth have disability outcomes. But it can be a challenge, trying to keep the lights on to do the good work sometimes. In terms of the technology piece and access for people, finding the funding sometimes for people can be difficult. So I can 3D-print a ton of stuff, but if someone needs a custom wheelchair, getting through the application process, or like a van with a wheelchair lift, and someone is not working, they need that van for work. They can’t qualify for funding until they have a job—it’s the chicken and the egg thing. “How am I supposed to get $20,000 to get this van accommodated so I can get to work if I don’t have a job?” You know what I mean? Sometimes those roadblocks appear in people’s lives.

Host:And then I know I already asked about some present projects that excite you, but is there a past one that you’re really satisfied with the outcome of, or is that the goal you have with every new project?

Chad:Yeah, I’m trying to think. One of the ones I really enjoyed is adapting toys for kids with disabilities. If you think—you know, you can go to Walmart and buy a teddy bear, the left paw sings you the alphabet, and the right paw sings you some number songs. If you’re a kid with a disability—I’m talking like a very significant disability, maybe 5 [years old] or under, you’re not crawling, maybe your speech isn’t developing, you can get the same bear that has switch access. The idea is that you’d have a button that can be positioned where [the child] does have functional capacity. So they may not be able to reach out and squeeze the teddy bear’s paws, but they might be able to tilt their head into a button, a piece like that. Those toys that are switch-adapted: if you buy them, they’re around $250 and up, and they’re at least ten times the cost of a commercial one. It’s not a complicated thing to do and to adapt. The switch jack looks just like the jack that you’d see on your headphones or your computer, a 3.5mm jack. So we buy different toys and take them apart, “okay, we’re just going to cut this wire here and wire this jack in, and just do it.” To be able to give those to therapists or families with disabilities is great. If you have a child with a disability, it’s so much additional cost and different things in your life, and to buy them a toy they can use is another $250. It’s obscene. To adapt toys and to give them to families with disabilities is really tremendous and very powerful. Even therapists, they often have budgets. They’ll have 8 toys and go around [to visit children with disabilities], “we’re going to practice our cause and effect learning with this child,” and at the end they leave and the toys leave, and—I don’t know about you, but practice makes perfect. If you’re only practicing that once a week or once a month, you’re not going to develop those skills nearly as quickly. We’re pretty excited, we’re just about to launch a campaign called Hacking for the Holidays. We’re going to have people volunteer. Anyone can sign up, especially university groups or classrooms, we’ll bring the toys in and teach people how to adapt them. We’re trying to get a thousand toys adapted in time for Christmas to give them to families that really need them.

Host:That sounds really fantastic! One other thing I was wondering: obviously you’ve been at Neil Squire for a long time. How have you seen the definition of disability change over that time, and how has the organization expanded its scope?

Chad:When I started, it was very “adults and physical disabilities.” That was the core mandate and where our specialties were, where our funding was targeted. In Eastern Canada, we did a lot of work around youth and different pieces. That wasn’t always expanding the age range that we served, but also helping people with learning disabilities or literacy issues, using things like screen readers, speech to text systems to help build communication and find the learning style that works best for them. My work with the Penticton Indian Band also really helped to raise my awareness. The disability rate in Indigenous communities is almost twice that of the population. It’s hard to measure; there are certainly data-collection issues in Indigenous communities given the history, but there’s a huge need there. It was not just—high rates of arthritis, sure, but also—the spirit is broken. That unwillingness to engage or to lean in [when it comes to disability] and we need simple digital literacy education, simple pieces. I used to do the computer teaching side of it, and I would drive out there for the first week of class. We did a lot of online learning—this was early 2000s, before COVID, we were doing online learning at Neil Squire for a good decade and a half before the rest of the world was forced into it. I would drive up there and we would take a computer apart. We would demystify it. Doing the hands on piece: “it’s just a machine, we’re not going to break it and if we do, it’s not the end of the world.” It really ignited that interest in people, instead of just being the guy speaking through the headset all the time. Doing hands-on things [helped]. Disability can be a wide range of pieces. It’s a marginalized group that can really expand. It doesn’t matter your race, your gender, your sexual preference, your ethnicity—disability is something that can happen to any sort of population. In some ways, it’s the world’s largest minority group, or the most inclusive minority group. Everyone has a connection in their life or a couple degrees of separation from it.

Host:Yeah, I really love that you mentioned that. I was talking to a disability specialist earlier this summer and she spoke about how the disability community is really the only [marginalized group] that you can enter at any time. Any incident in your life can cause that to happen. Others have different criteria because they depend on your background, but [disability] is something that everyone can relate to because everyone has a connection to it in their life, so I’m glad you mentioned it. Just to wrap this up, I know this must be a difficult question, but if you had to pick one thing that most inspires or excites you about your work, what do you think it would be?

Chad:Well, I guess I’ll pick two. I’ll cheat. In working with the youth or volunteers that are making [products]. When they solder and test their toy, and it works, that toy they’ve ripped apart, it’s just like that oh, thank god moment. You can feel the relief and the joy of feeling like, I did it. So that’s always inspiring, seeing the volunteer. Sometimes we’re working with a corporation, they’re doing a team-building day. Some of them are engineers and some of them are marketing people, they’ve never touched a soldering iron—you know, they’re not really comfortable turning the screws on the toys. So for them to get through that and do it is really rewarding. But it’s just the change in people’s lives. When you hear people that are getting a job and work after three or four years, how that really empowers them to do things, is amazing. One of my first roles at Neil Squire was in communications, helping write success stories about people, just talking about people and hearing their stories: things they’ve gone through and things they haven't had, but what they’re doing with their lives now. It’s hard not to be moved when you see the impact and the change in people’s lives. I had someone say “we’re maybe not nurses saving people’s lives, but we’re definitely changing people’s lives [at Neil Squire].”

Host:Yeah, that was a great answer! I honestly wasn’t expecting that much insight, but I’m really glad that you shared that. I feel like a lot of the time people see STEM and social impact as kind of disparate things, rather than something that can be united. So I think that’s the reason a lot of people don’t try to go into CS because they don’t know the social effects it can have, whereas when you see the work that people are doing, especially in the public sphere, that really motivates you to continue to do that work. Thank you for sharing and helping us unlock STEM!