Simon Wheatcroft’s future vision for the visually impaired grew out a quest to overcome his own visual impairment and to run marathons unaided. Now he’s focused on helping give equal opportunity to a generation of under-represented blind children.
Guest Overview.
Simon Wheatcroft is living proof that resilience is born from adversity, accepting that things will go wrong, not go to plan, and being prepared to embrace failure without fear. This is his playbook for making his impossible, possible.
Having lost his sight at an early age Simon used running solo as his foundation to building an abundant life as a runner, motivational speaker, and now teacher.
In part one Simon discusses the impact of growing up in the 80’s, in a small coal-mining town in the North of England, and the devastating social and economic impact of the coal mine closures. He then takes us through his early life and journey to where he met the founders of Haptic Technology company Wear Works.
In this episode Simon explains how he discovered the Haptic technology company Wear Works and how the combination of sensors enabled him to run races and sense people around him
We discuss the future advances using Lidar technology to create 3 depth maps of spaces and object recognition technology that will transform the lives of people with visual impairments
Simon explains the serendipitous moments that enabled him to study clinical psychology, computational neuroscience, and AI in later life and led him onto the motivational-speaking stage.
Simon covers resilience, dealing with adversity, fear, failure, and managing pain.
Simon discusses the appalling and enduring employment discrimination against blind or partially blind people and reveals why he is changing his career to teaching and explains his passion to provide visually impaired children with computer science skills to live an equal opportunity life.
Simon and I discuss accessibility and how web page metadata and hierarchies work.
Simon also reflects on his wife’s enduring support.
And of course all our quick-fire questions
I am sure you will feel uplifted, inspired and energized by the life story of Simon Wheatcroft.
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