I travelled down to London Excel on Thursday 6th July 2023 to have a look around the Disability Expo to see if there was any new equipment or technology that I hadn’t seen before.
When we arrived at the car park, we asked where to park as we have a WAV, it is higher than normal cars, the person moved a barrier for us to access the car park. The car park was underneath the building so I was able to go straight up in the lift, however the lift was at the other side of the building so I had to go across the car park, which wasn’t too bad as it was all covered. Once I got out of the lift, it was quite a walk to the exhibition hall, past the coffee shops and eateries to Hall N4 where the exhibition was. When we arrived at the hall we had to queue as it wasn’t open and ready, we waited around 10 – 15 minutes, some people came up to me and gave us lanyards, I was given a sunflower one, we then moved forwards and a man asked us for our ticket information and he gave us our tickets so we could get in.
Once inside the Expo, we went to Centrobed first, they were right at the main entrance so it was very easy to access their stall. I spoke to a salesman that I had met before as we have purchased a Centrobed bed for our Strongbones caravan. Next, Josh from AbleMove came up to us, we spoke about the products we have already purchased and he asked us to go to his stall to complete a survey. We didn’t go straight to his stall as we were waiting for April to arrive, once she got there we went back to the Expo and headed to AbleMove stand to see Josh. We spoke to a woman on his stand who asked us to complete a survey about travelling with a disability, we gave the woman my contact details and she sent me the survey to complete once I got home.
Next we wandered around the exhibition to see all the different stands, we saw the stands for Coca-Cola, Amazon, PHAB kids, National Bobath Centre, Cosmo, Hello Fresh, Snowball and Geberit. We went to have a closer look at AdaptIT, this is accessible gaming and technology, I was very interested in the Xbox adaptive controller, I already had this controller at home that I had previously trialled however I hadn’t used it with the Xbox. I also looked at the Nintendo Switch adaptive controller by Hori, this is also something I have trialled working with the Nintendo Switch, which I know works fro me and my abilities. I really liked a button and switch stand they were using, I am still thinking about contacting the company to enquire about it, I think this would make me gaming even easier.
My experience at the Disability Expo London was positive, it was different to the previous exhibitions I’ve been to as it was a different location, however for me, I don’t think I’d travel all the way to London again as I can access Naidex at The NEC, Birmingham and Kidz to Adultz Middle at Coventry easier. If you are more local, I would definitely suggest going.
I enjoyed my day and came home thinking about new technology and equipment I can explore further.
Thank you for reading my blog! I hope it was useful.
Myles
xxx
