they basically navigate down the aisle. The issue here is that for Kylie, she's done this a 100 times. But the staff that were there at the gate had not And she was telling them what they needed to do. And from that perspective, the humanity of what she was doing, I love your point. Right? It's not up to the participant, to be telling people the experts what to do. I would say, Kylie, probably has helped, New Zealand see a whole lot of things that they didn't realize. Anyway, this is Dan and, the doggy is Ezra. Ezra has the most amazing bark. He is so amazing. It is ridiculous. Anyway, Dan was our low vision participant. Now Dan is a guide dog handler, which means he's used to having Ezra guide him places. He's used to having Ezra with him. He travels with Ezra if he goes across to Australia. But if someone gets COVID and you have to reschedule, their flights they that can't be done at short notice. So as a business traveler, he's actually he was told I'm sorry, you cannot take your guide dog with you. Even though the guide dog has all of the right documentation to come to Australia and back again and whatever, and Ezra is legally entitled to be on that plane he was told no. What happened was poor old Dan, who is used to having his dog take the lead, had to wait around around, and at one point, he said, I felt like a piece of baggage. Because, the people that were, nominated to lead him places, just treated him as if he could just wait over there, nobody talk to him. He said he basically ended up hanging out with most of the baggage handlers for most of the trip. That's not a flight experience. As we saw in the, in the, survey, security was one of the biggest pain points for everybody whether it was the indecency of having your umbilical, octopus being handled by security, whether it's struggling to get your shoes on and off when they did not contravene the, security guidelines but that person made him take his shoes off and then did not offer to help him. Or for me, when you get stuck in the you know, you come through the security, and everybody's there, and I hate that, but that's scares me. And it says move to the end. Nobody does it. Despite training, what I would say is the big thing for me was many people just do not apply basic good manners. Whether they're a disabled person or anybody else, Now this woman has my Julius. I've just handed my Julius over to this woman, and she's looking at her phone. Not talking to Julius, who is a person, quite funny, quite adorable. She's basically just looking at her phone. Now, her job is to take him to the gate. Now, as far as she's concerned, that means take him to the gate. It doesn't mean have a bit of a chat and, you know, get to know this person or find out who they are. She never even asked his name. She just checked his boarding card and said, okay. And away she went. We said that check-in, signage, and toilets the big issues that came through. These weren't things that we weren't expecting. Anybody wanna hazard a guess as to what the big thing was that we did find? Anybody want a hazard to guess? It was the food Oops. Sorry. It was the food service. So let's think about Corin who has a bionic arm, a bionic hand. And they say, would you like water? And she goes, yes, please. And they give her a plastic cup. Everywhere, all over her. So she has to pause and think, yes, I would like water. Thanks. But could you please put it into a proper cup so that I can hold on to it? Also, all of the little packets and bits and pieces that need to be opened. For Corin, she either has to ask one of the attendants, ask her colleague, whoever's sitting next to her, or, you know, in my dad's instance, watching him struggle to open the, earbuds, for the in flight entertainment was absolutely bloody hilarious. And I was trying very hard to be professional and not step in. Because I'm here to document this. But he's my dad, so I did. I mean, once I've taken the photo of course. The other thing is is that being on the journey also allowed really good observation of other people's pain points. So because we were part of the specialist assistance as we went through, the airport, we observed a variety of different things that kind of can be quite sad. So, on the far side, this lovely woman is, has a pair of crutches, Now, she happened to be on our plane on the way back. Thank you. And, what happened was, she couldn't reach up to put her crap in the, overhead locker. And her husband was trying to do something else, And one of the staff came along and were actually really rude at taking them away from her and taking them somewhere else. They were not near her. So when she wanted to go to the toilet, she didn't just have to get out of her seat, she also had to go, excuse me, can I please go to the toilet? Can I have my crutches? The lady is in the middle. The elderly lady is now as she said, I'm too old to do this on my own, and my kids don't trust me to not get lost. So I take special assistance. And she said, one time she remembered when her husband, who was unwell, they were traveling together. He basically had special assistance and she was able to walk. But the special assistant staff just took off, and she couldn't keep up. And so, she was left waiting, and as she said, doesn't make any difference whether or not the special assistance people are there for the special assistance person they're there for that experience, not just for the person in the wheelchair. This one over here, number one, the woman is trying to to push a wheelchair one handed. We don't do that. That is not safe. There is health and safety issues around that. Number two, she's on her mobile phone. Number three, The person in the wheelchair doesn't need a wheelchair. She's blind. She doesn't need a wheelchair. And, if you think about the fact that you are off offering special assistance and one size will fit all, that's not the case. Okay? A blind person just wants to be led. They want their elbow, somebody to help them guide them through. Yep. I'm very aware. The last one, what we did once we've done all of the research and combined it all, is we did a validation workshop, with experts from the community. So, this is Amy, who's on pretty much every governance board for disability in in the country. As well as the people from Air New Zealand. It really helped us kind of validate and get that buy in from, the broader disability communities that what we were doing was authentic. We Oops. We created a research report for them. Of course. But actually, what was more important was the data. And the photos, and the videos, and the diaries, and the files. Actually, the report never got finalized. So, we gave them the draft and they said that's fine. Actually, we just want the dataset, please. And, anybody I got to this part of the story without mentioning AI? Guess what they did with the, with the data? They created their own, an AI tool. To challenge their business decisions. So now, they basically can say, hey. We are thinking about doing this. What are the implications from a from this dataset? What have they done already? Okay. So one of the biggest issues was insecurity. We know that. That's not their remit. That's not from New Zealand. They can't do anything about that. But wait, they did, which was really awesome. They actually worked with the the airport security in Auckland and have changed some of the processes. Around medical equipment screening. In the middle, my NZSL participant, got lost and left her baggage behind, and caused all sorts of drama, Excuse me. They've now actually taken on board I Staff can now learn. 30 basic signs that will help them communicate with someone who has who is in ZSL. And these are basic signs that try and inform them of what they need to do and keep them safe. And the last one is from an autism perspective. Is that they actually provide autism days where kids, families, people who have high needs children who don't wanna travel, the opportunity to come go through the plane, sit on the plane, have a whole flight experience. Without leaving the airport. And that is huge for a kid who is, you know, is terrified. You can't take them on a flight, but you can take them through one of these, And then when they realize that they get to go and hand out, lollies at the end of it, that's wonderful. Okay. I know my time is short. And I know you wanna go to the pub. So key principles. I tried to keep the number of words down, I would argue that we should be using expert, researchers who understand the space. No reflection at all. I think that it's vital that we believe that when we are dealing with a specialist or a specific population, we should be thinking about using someone from that population, or at least someone who is expert in that area. We need to design accessibility into all aspects of the research. From the comms to the survey to every part of it. We need to build flexibility as well, and allow people, participants to be able to participate in the way that works for them. The most. I also think that measuring dignity and effort from all perspectives is really important because I think I think it was you like, if we're just looking at the transaction, it's not enough. Actually, we have to think about the heart, and we have to think about the embarrassment there's one story I know. One story of, a participant who was going through, security, has a very large umbilical hernia. And, the security person decided to give him a frisk down Didn't ask his permission, and then basically lifted his t shirt up to find out what this big thing was on his belly. No words spoken. Words were spoken by me to the security head of basically, that's not human. You don't you don't treat someone like a, like a piece of meat. That's not okay. I also think that it's really important that we share the authority and validate any findings around the disability space with disabled people. That aren't the ones that have the political stance. I also think that you need to budget for the unexpected. We were lucky it was an air plane an airline thing, and the flights could be rebooked. With no hassle. But, yeah, if it hadn't been an airline, research then we could have had some more issues. So my takeaway is talk with people who make you see the world differently. It's the only way that you will, see the answers. So, thank you. That's me. We do not have time for questions. I'll get you to take your chocolate mousse Thanks. Seesha. Thank you. Wonderful. That brings us to the end of the day and end of the conference. I wanna thank everyone for coming. It's always a privilege to run these events I know John and Jenny appreciate you coming. From web directions. It's it's a a remarkable piece of work that we do, and we find ourselves in this situation. And I think you would've picked up from Chandra's stories then. We sort of create this space of shared vulnerability with the people that we're engaging with during our research. And as much as they're opening up to us we also necessarily are opening up ourselves to them as well in a lot of these cases. It's really important that we find ways to take care of ourselves in those moments. It's really important that we find ways as a community to care of each other as well. And so with that, I'll send you on your way Thank you very much for today and I hope to see you all again. I'll see some of you tomorrow. I may see some of you at pub and otherwise have a lovely evening and thank you very much for coming. And otherwise, have a lovely evening, and thank you very much for coming.