Inclusive Design Researcher & Disability Advocate; Director of Communications at The Disabled List; Co-Author of Disability Dongle Concept
Alex Haagaard Biography
Alex Haagaard is a designer, researcher, and disability activist whose work focuses on inclusive design, health justice, and advocacy. Specializing in accessibility, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI/EDI), disability, and digital health, Haagaard integrates academic training with personal experience as a chronically ill patient to inform their approach to design and healthcare systems.
Haagaard earned a Master of Design from OCAD University in Toronto, where their research examined knowledge-gathering practices among emergency medical professionals to inform healthcare information design. This academic background, combined with firsthand experience navigating medical systems, shapes Haagaard’s perspective on how design can empower or marginalize disabled individuals.
As a founding member and Director of Communications at The Disabled List, an advocacy collective, Haagaard develops and promotes disability-led design methods. The organization treats the lived experience of disability as both creative and technical expertise, challenging the design industry to move beyond basic accessibility compliance toward genuinely inclusive methodologies that center the knowledge and agency of disabled people.
Haagaard has consulted on disability-led design methodologies with organizations including New York Times, Washington Post, Volkswagen, and Twitter. With more than 13 years of experience in user research and product strategy, Haagaard has worked with Fortune 100 companies, nonprofits, and federal agencies across technology, healthcare, automotive, education, and fashion sectors. Haagaard has co-taught a course in Disability-Led Design within the Products of Design program at School of Visual Arts in New York and served as a Designer-In-Residence in the Design for Social Innovation program at SVA.
Haagaard is recognized in design circles for co-authoring the concept of the disability dongle, a term highlighting the phenomenon of design and engineering solutions for disabled people that receive mainstream attention despite concerns from the disability community. Haagaard contributed the theoretical analysis for the academic paper on the disability dongle, framing it as an example of Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum. Their published work appears in V&A Blog, Quartz, Medium, and CASTAC Blog, and their speaking topics include accessible design history, inclusive research methodologies, and patient-centered medicine.
Haagaard’s research interests encompass the history and philosophy of medicine, philosophy of disability, crip technoscience, anarchist biohacking, and invalid futures. They design speculative access supports, infrastructure for participatory research, and tools to restore agency to patients within medical interactions. Through writing, consulting, and public speaking, Haagaard advocates for critical analysis of healthcare guidelines and a focus on marginalized patients, advancing equity in both design and healthcare systems.
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Alex Haagaard Speaking Topics
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Accessibility
How can we design accessible systems, services, spaces and products? Who gets left out by typical approaches to accessibility and why? This session discusses the history of "barrier-free" and accessible design, examines why chronic illness and neurodivergence have never been meaningfully included within those movements or the legislation and compliance frameworks that emerged from them, and suggests actionable approaches to create design outcomes that are as usable as possible for as many people as possible.
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Inclusive Design
What does it mean for design to be meaningfully inclusive? Who and what tends to get left behind by processes that we claim are inclusive, and how do we make those processes better? This session examines how we can build equity and accessibility into our design research methods, from research screeners and co-design workshops, through to analysis and reporting.
Alex Haagaard Videos
MWDW 2021 | Thank You for Your Feedback | Alex Haagaard | Liz ...
In Hyphen-Status, whatever follows the hyphen is systematically uncompensated and rendered powerless. When Co-Designers, Co-Creators, ...
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What topics does Alex Haagaard speak about?
Alex Haagaard is a keynote speaker and industry expert whose speaking topics include Art & Design, Civil Rights, DEI, Digital Health, Disability, Diversity & Inclusion, Empowerment, Healthcare, LGBTQ, Personal Growth, Social Activism, Social Justice -
Where does Alex Haagaard travel from?
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Alex Haagaard is a keynote speaker and industry expert who speaks on a wide range of topics such as Accessibility, Inclusive Design, Patient-Centered Medicine and Biohacking Chronic Illness. The estimated speaking fee range to book Alex Haagaard for your event is available upon request. Alex Haagaard generally travels from Ontario, Canada and can be booked for (private) corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. Similar motivational celebrity speakers are Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown, Aurielle Marie, Alex Iantaffi, Dominick Evans and Chella Man. Contact All American Speakers for ratings, reviews, videos and information on scheduling Alex Haagaard for an upcoming live or virtual event.
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