Technology, for me, is more than a tool: it’s the bridge that brought me back to life. After a spinal cord injury left me paralyzed from the neck down, everything I knew stopped. Studying, working, or simply taking part in society felt impossible. But accessibility changed that, and it turned limitation into possibility.
During the pandemic, when online learning was seen as a temporary fix, I saw it as a second chance. I enrolled in the university access exam for adults over 25 and passed, earning a place in a Mechanical Engineering degree, where I still study today.
Thanks to assistive technologies, from eye-tracking systems to MouthX, the intraoral hands-free device we’ve developed at Aurax, I can manage my computer, phone, and digital tools independently. Accessibility didn’t just give me back control over technology; it gave me back my future.
Accessible Learning: Education Without Barriers
My return to education happened entirely online. The opportunity was there, but it wasn’t always easy.
The virtual campus allowed me to download materials, read digitized books, and study at my own rhythm. I could pause, repeat, or skip lessons depending on my energy. It made learning flexible: something I could adapt to, instead of being left behind.
Videoconference tools like Zoom or Google Meet made it possible to meet with teachers from home. Some professors even offered short, personalized sessions that helped me stay on track when fatigue made it harder to focus.
I wrote my papers in Word and Google Docs first with eye-tracking, and later with MouthX, which made everything faster and more natural. Cloud storage platforms like Google Drive meant I could work anywhere, even from the hospital, without waiting for someone to send my files.
But not everything worked. I couldn’t take part in chemistry lab sessions because the facilities weren’t adapted to my wheelchair, and some teachers didn’t know how to react. It wasn’t about capacity, it was about fear. The answer was exclusion instead of adaptation.
Even when I requested digital textbooks, they arrived weeks late. That delay cost me study time and forced me to improvise.
That’s when I understood something crucial: accessibility isn’t just about having access to a platform, but about being able to use it fully. Uploading a PDF isn’t enough: it must be readable, navigable, and adaptable.
Remote Work and Digital Autonomy
Today, I work remotely with my team at Aurax, helping develop MouthX, the hands-free device that has changed my own daily life.
Technology allows me to join meetings, plan projects, and collaborate without leaving home. It gives me the same capacity to participate as any other team member: because accessibility removes the distance between ability and opportunity.
It lets me contribute, create, and share ideas every day with full autonomy. Tools like project management platforms, video calls, and MouthX make it possible to work efficiently, naturally, and with dignity.
For people like me, accessibility in remote work is more than an adjustment, it’s what makes employment truly inclusive. It means being valued for what we bring, not for how we move.
Still, there are barriers. Many companies don’t yet understand what digital accessibility really means, or assume it’s complex and costly, when they're not. The truth is that inclusive tools benefit everyone, not just those who depend on them.
Accessibility in remote work isn’t a technical issue. It’s an ethical one, a matter of fairness, inclusion, and respect.
The Invisible Barriers
The hardest barriers aren’t always technological. Sometimes, they’re invisible. I’ve learned that the most difficult thing isn’t always adapting tools, it’s convincing others that I can use them.
Prejudice, lack of awareness, and low expectations still create limits that technology alone can’t erase. That’s why the first step toward inclusion is simple: listening.
When companies, educators, and teams ask “what do you need?”, everything changes. Accessibility becomes collaboration, and difference becomes value.
For me, digital accessibility is what allowed me to choose again; to study, to work, to write, to live. It’s not about special treatment. It’s about equal opportunity.
When technology is designed with empathy, it stops being just innovation. It becomes freedom, the kind that lets every person, regardless of ability, participate fully in life. Accessibility doesn’t only change what we can do... it changes who we can be.
