Episode 8: Richard Daly - Technology Enables A Vision for Change

Richard Daly is an executive officer in the Irish Department of Defence.  A lawschool classmate of mine, Richard graduated from Trinity College Dublin with an LLB in 1995. 

Richard has been completely blind from birth and we discuss his early education at St. Joseph's school for the blind and his subsequent pursuit of legal studies.  We first look at how education was first accessed by him - through the use of braille, scanning equipment, and recording equipment.  We then reflect on the massive advances in technology that have taken place even in the years since his graduation and how that should have made workplaces more accessible and more tasks do-able.

Richard describes his early experience with finding employment after graduation and how that was less than optimal.  Things changed though around 13 years ago when he obtained a position in the Department of Defence and started to put his legal skills into practice.  We discuss the low level of employment for blind people around the world and how biases persist around what blind people cannot do, when the focus instead should be on what they are capable of doing.  While technological changes have facilitated making productive and satisfying work more accessible, more needs to be done in terms of employers creating a truly inclusive environment. 

This series is brought to you with the kind support of Eversheds Sutherland.  As a global top 10 law firm, Eversheds Sutherland provides legal services to a global client base. With more than 3,000 lawyers, Eversheds Sutherland operates in over 70 offices in more than 30 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the United States.

The firm recognises that having diverse talent across its business brings many benefits. It is committed to accessing a wide range of views, perspectives and thinking in all of its teams and in this way is building a culture of inclusion, where each person feels able to be their true self at work and reach their full potential.

Diversity and Inclusion is fundamental to the firm’s purpose of “helping our clients, our people and our communities to thrive”, and ‘Inclusive’ is one of its five values.