I trained to teach at West Midlands Teacher Training College and then got the opportunity to study at University of Birmingham for a teaching degree. That’s where my connection with the University began.

Early in my career, I moved from mainstream teaching into teaching young people with learning difficulties and then specifically those with severe physical disabilities. During that time – in the mid 1980s – I learnt a lot about assistive technology and how transformational it could be for children with special needs within a school setting. It made a big difference for individual children, but I could also see there was huge potential for this technology to make an impact on a much a wider scale.

I moved from teaching to The ACE Centre, a specialist organisation providing technology support for those with complex communication needs and had the opportunity to help children throughout the UK. During this time I met an exceptional University of Birmingham academic, based at the School of Education – Penny Lacey. Penny was an expert in special needs and, with her support, I started working for a Masters degree, which later became a PhD, looking at access to learning through technology.

Through my PhD research and beyond, I learnt more about the wide range of ways in which children could enhance their learning through technology. However, when I spoke to the parents of the children we worked with, they would regularly bring up something else – how could they help their child socially? How could children with severe physical challenges access ways to play with other children and not feel so isolated outside of school?

Computer games seemed an ideal way for people with severe physical learning difficulties to have fun and play with their friends and family, but the technology required for them to access videogames was, in my view, at least two decades behind progress made in other accessibility-related areas and there were no UK-based specialists that I could direct the children’s parents to.

For this reason, I set up our charity – SpecialEffect – to address the challenge. Initially I ran the charity on a voluntary basis with a very small core group of staff but, over the years, it has expanded and our reputation has grown and we now employ approximately 25 staff.

Our aim is to help people with physical challenges right across the world through the innovative use of technology. At the core of this mission is our work to optimise inclusion, enjoyment and quality of life by helping people control video games to the best of their abilities for as long as they need us.

We have a team of occupational therapists and technical specialists who create bespoke control setups for hundreds of individuals each year. We also have a research and development team who create freely available online software and training resources.

We’ve been involved in many exciting collaborations: working with EA Sports on making games like FIFA more accessible, with Microsoft on creating the Xbox Adaptive Controller and Logitech on the  Adaptive Switch Kit to name a few. Developers come to us for advice and there are many more collaborations in the pipeline.

We also look beyond gaming, for example by using eye-gaze technology to help people communicate in intensive care units with a severe injury or illness, or by using telepresent robots to reconnect medically isolated children with their education and friends.

Find out more about some of our other Sector-leading alumni.