Patrick Fitzgerald bridges the often unaddressed gap in helping people adopt accessibility tools.
The Disrupt Disability Arts Festival was well underway by the time I reached Projects Arts Centre in Temple Bar. A sunny evening had added to the day’s apparent success, with many milling about the building as a sold-out 5pm theatre performance on life as a non-speaker begins.
In the busy foyer, a volunteer from the centre approaches me with a box of surgical masks, asking if I need one. I catch a small table with snacks and Palestine cola from the corner of my eye.
I’m here to meet Patrick Fitzgerald: a coach, not a teacher. He is persistent about that distinction. He approaches me, walking behind his colleague Sarah Boland, who would be facilitating our conversation.
Fitzgerald needs to use assistive technology (AT). During our chat, he describes screen readers and AI tools such as ChatGPT as essential to his day-to-day life (note how AI presents as a ‘tool of a lifetime’ for people with disabilities).
