Co-Design with the Blind Foundation 

Redesigning the future services of the Blind Foundation using an inclusive, member-centred co-design approach

Facilitators: Miriam Walker, Louise von Sierakowski & Cathy Hardinge

The Blind Foundation, like many organisations, has been seeking to empower clients and members in determining the organisation's strategy and services. We'd like to share our experiences and to invite others to share their experiences of inclusive co-design. The Blind Foundation is undertaking a co-design approach with members and clients to look at how we can best meet the needs of the people with vision impairments.

Our goal is to look for opportunities for the Blind Foundation to constantly improve how we respond to the challenges, experiences and hopes of people with vision impairments. We will be looking for opportunities to better to support members and clients in everyday life and future hopes, while also growing the size of the team and the number of people with co-design skills. We've started with a team of 9 with diverse vision. This team have been learning about co-design, getting to know each other's strengths and deciding where to start.

By the time of Nethui we expect to be able to discuss more about how we included diverse groups of people in this process and how we adapted our codesign methods to be inclusive for specific groups and individuals (e.g. many of the Blind Foundation's members are elderly, some are parents of visually impaired youth, some are in paid employment and a number have other sensory or health challenges). The inclusive co-design approach draws on the strengths of our members and clients to design the lives they want to live.

Collaborative notes for Co-Design with the Blind Foundation (Google Doc)

Tags: Access, Community, Government & Citizens