erin-perkins-of-mabely-q-design-for-accessibility

Erin Perkins55min

Speaker 1

00:07

Season Three of the wearable takeover podcast is powered by the Boeing Company. The wearable takeover podcast is a platform highlighting innovative talent while supporting the global wearable tech ventures ecosystem. support this effort by making a donation at WWW dot wearable tech ventures that org. We would like to thank all of our wonderful volunteers, sponsors, coaches, and everyone that contributed to our second annual hackathon called Tech remix. We so appreciate you and we're excited about the future. Are you looking for a community to grow? Being a founder, innovator or leader does not have to be a lonely journey? Join the virtual founders and leaders book and Podcast. Today. Our Club hosts startup founders, entrepreneurs and leaders from all walks of life, who seek growth and community. Once a month, we'll share a feature and podcast for group discussion. We meet via zoom and the platform tech. We look forward to reading with you register today for the virtual club at WWW dot lucky bit.com. That's Luc K I fit that I write and now it's time for the show. Thank you for joining another episode of wearable take over.

Speaker 1

01:45

Hello, wearable take over Can you believe we are in season three? Yes. And we are recording these particular episodes during during a special time. Not only is it the time of our global wearable tech hackathon known as tech remix. And it's an exciting time because we're in person and virtual. And these podcast episodes are used to give clues to our participants about products that they can develop for the wearable tech ecosystem. But it's also an incredibly special time because it's Disability Pride Month. And I'm super excited to have our guest for today, who was not only an innovator, but she's an advocate, and she's someone that you want to know. So I'm going to introduce you to Erin Perkins, who is an accessibility educator and speaker. And Aaron is based here in the DMV. She's the CEO of MABLEY que, and she also found it successful. Now what is that you ask? You want to stay tuned, but let me tell you a little bit more about Aaron before we get into the meat of the episode. So Erin Perkins is a champion of disability rights, and an aspiring entrepreneur who advocates for greater accessibility, inclusiveness and understanding within the business world. As a deaf blind woman herself. She founded her online business MABLEY Q, as well as, as an experienced speaker educator. Erin's message has been heard by CEOs around the country. Her unique gifts are her life experiences which she compassionately shares with others through keynote speeches, private workshops, or one on one consulting sessions to foster true inclusion at all levels. And this allows people with disabilities equal opportunities to succeed professionally. So wearable take over we are the platform for wearable tech innovation and making sure that all underrepresented and non traditional founders have a spot at the table. Let's give a warm virtual round of applause to Erin Perkins. Yay,

Erin Perkins

03:56

thank you. Can you have can you just like be my MD every time.

Speaker 1

04:03

We will tag team together. And folks, let me tell you, Erin is dynamic. I actually witnessed her in action in person. We both were dinner hosts and speakers for get cities there, hack dinner hack for impact dinner series. And this was an initiative that launched here in the DMV, for those of you that maybe say it was DMV, DC, Maryland, Virginia area, DMV when I say that, and so we launched we helped to launch a national effort airing where we're saying, hey, if we're going to build tech businesses and enterprises, you need to look at some of these things. So number one, shout out to the team at get cities. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Shout out to the team at porch fest. We love you. We love you. We love your entire team and thank you for giving us the opportunity to impact books but again here that's how we met girl.

Erin Perkins

04:57

Grateful for that platform to do truly awesome. What they are doing is putting the human back into tech. And I think that we'll get to that. So human, the tech, and we need to really bring that to our life.

Speaker 1

05:18

Absolutely, absolutely. And so we launched this national effort. I believe that dinner series is about to end right now for this particular season. But it was an invite only private dinner series. I mean, it was Lux, it was absolutely bad. But one of the things that Aaron did was she provided some awareness for folks that were in the room as to how they can approach accessibility from not only a tech product perspective, but from the workplace and hiring etc. So, Aaron, why don't you provide? Let's start off there, why don't you provide people with an insight of what it was like to develop your discussion, and again, get cities is backed by pivotal ventures, which is a Melinda Gates company. So this was a big deal. So what was that like developing that? And what did you learn from it?

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