Deaf from the age of ten, Elise Roy has been a design thinker from early on, constantly adapting her environment and its tools to serve her extraordinary abilities. Elise argues that this same approach can be taken by anyone solving big challenges. We can gain new perspectives and learn from people with disabilities — and build better solutions in the process.

Elise Roy is a lawyer, artist, artisan, and human rights advocate who works in the vanguard of the social design movement, which holds that designers have the capacity and responsibility to address and resolve human problems on micro and macro scales and thereby contribute to social well-being.