Thursday the penultimate day of LTW was such a contrast. Two polar opposite sessions.
The lunchtime event was a fringe virtual, “Locked Out by Design: Disabled People and Personal Finance in a Digital First World.” A cross-party think tank, with a panel of researchers and advocates, having a conversation about what happens when you build a financial system that assumes everyone has a smartphone, a stable internet connection, and the cognitive bandwidth to navigate twelve authentication steps before breakfast. Personally I don’t have the patience to navigate twelve authentication steps at any time of the day, but that’s just me.
The panellists were Ros Weinberg from RIX Inclusive Research, a lived experience researcher with a learning disability, who talked about cash being essential for a significant portion of the population. [1] Dr Paul Watts, Director of Research also at RIX, spoke about the structural spine of the access problem: the research behind why the gap exists and why it persists. [2] Marc Goblot, who advises the Cabinet Office Disability Unit, said this about the dangers of handing financial decisions to AI: “I wouldn’t want to hand that off to something that doesn’t know me at all. I think that sounds so dangerous.” [3] He also said: “We need to be able to control it in terms of how much we want to use these things that will help us just enough while staying in control over it.” [3]
I have personally been banging on about that since 2020, and will continue to do so. The dangers of data sharing and overall digitalisation are massively underreported and in many cases like the NHS data contracts actively suppressed by legacy media, but I digress.
Next up was Ismail Kadji from the Cabinet Office and Mencap who said: “We have to remember that we’re living with human beings, not money technology.” [4] Which is kind of ironic being as the latter part of the day was spent at the Tony BIair Institute Event and TB is pushing digital ID like there is no tomorrow, it’s a big part of the UN sustainable goals too.
Bex Brindley, Disability and Accessibility Lead at NatWest was the last panellist to be introduced, newly invited onto the Financial Inclusion Committee, she said something I know sounds great in theory but doesn’t work at all in practice: “As long as there’s a way to configure it so your preferences come through.” [5]
Configure it so your preferences come through.
That is not a UX note. That is the whole problem, stated plainly, but as is increasingly obvious, the point is we can’t configure it how we want. I don’t do banking apps through choice. However the routes of choice are being eroded one step at a time and the big banks continue this charade of choice when it is clear that the only choice you have is doing what you are told. That is not a choice, it’s nudging, something I have studied for a long time particularly the Behavioural Insights team.
Ros closed the session with a story about Amazon. She had an account but her phone needed an update, and post update she can no longer get into her account. She is now saving her Amazon vouchers up for a laptop and handing them to her sister in the meantime. [1]
That is not a technology problem. That is what happens when a system is not built for the people using it. What the exact reason for the system is, is a long running and polarising cause for debate which leads beautifully into the evening session.
The evening was an in person event at the swanky 1 Triton Square NW1 building hosted by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, ARIA, and Venture Café. [6] “Governing in the Age of AI.”
There was wine. Trivento Malbec Reserve, pretty cheap and nasty available from Iceland, the frozen food place not the Country. We were rationed to two tickets per person, which considering it was being paid for by the UK taxpayer during a cost of living crisis I did find quite ironic. I am not a fan of being made deliberately sober which I thought was rather fitting being as anything to do with Blair requires a level of anaesthesia to stomach it. But I digress, again.
The badges were numbered with attendance count. I was a newbie, badge number one. I also managed to spell my own name wrong on it, which was a solid start. There was a lady on number 54, who was based in Boston and went to the MIT one all the time.
I was overdressed, as it was a typical chilly June night outside. The room was warm and full of LED lighting, which is nobody’s friend at close range. I found the first available table and started removing layers, which is how I met Paolo.
Paolo has been working in and around AI for forty years, considerably more than the mean age of the room. He has a family connection to a cachaça business in Brazil, which instantly made him my new BFF, and is currently researching motor neurone disease. He was standing at exactly the spot I had chosen to shed my coat, which meant we ended up talking for quite some time about all sorts of human stuff: travel, his family’s centenary in Brazil, his move to the UK, and Slough. He also told me he was refused a ticket for London Tech Week because he lived in Slough, which technically is not London. After the morning session it made the morning session even more pertinent. He was in a room he was not supposed to be in either.
The panel, moderated by Guy Ward Jackson, Senior Policy Analyst at the Tony Blair Institute, [10] featured Gerald Mullally, CEO of OQC; [8] Jenny Read, Programme Director at ARIA; [11] Sam Warren, Partner at Phoenix Court; and Sarah Hill, Chief Delivery Officer at NSIIF. [12]
Ros Weinberg, from the morning, cannot get into her Amazon account because her phone needed an update. I am not saying Gerald Mullally doesn’t care about that, I have no idea whether he does or not, I’m drawing the parallel between the two events.
After the panel discussion, I spoke to Phil about em dashes. Phil works in content for tech companies, and told me they come from 18th century printing houses, named for the width of the capital letter M in movable type. You learn something new every day. I did find it rather amusing that during the course of writing a research paper about the use of them in AI, I found out their actual origin from Phil. I had no idea em dashes had a life before AI and I bet most other people don’t either if they are being honest. [7]
Tom was there too, he supplies robotics to factories, which he described as selling photocopiers with arms. I do love a simple description and found that the best all evening.
Elaine, who also attended, founded Soundaisleep, an AI voice cloning app that helps children fall asleep to the sound of their loved ones. If you have ever tried to settle a child at night you will know why this exists. She has been building it in the same determined, figure-it-out-as-you-go way that most of us are building anything with AI right now. soundaisleep.com [13]
Two rooms, same city, same week, same subject matter, Technology. Both full of intelligent people trying to solve real world problems, or in some cases make a lot of money. The point is that they couldn’t have been further apart. The people in the morning room were not in the evening room. The people in the evening room were not thinking about the morning room, or if they were, I did not hear it through the quantum announcements, the numbered badges and the cheap, rationed Malbec.
Configure it so your preferences come through, yeah right, that’s not in our hands now is it.
And if you don’t like the sarcasm, tough.
Sam
References
[1] Ros Weinberg, lived experience researcher, RIX Inclusive Research / University of East London. Contribution to “Locked Out by Design: Disabled People and Personal Finance in a Digital First World,” Policy Connect / A-Tech Policy Lab, LTW Fringe, 11 June 2026. https://www.rixinclusiveresearch.org/about/the-rix-team/
[2] Dr Paul Watts, Director of Research, RIX Inclusive Research, University of East London. Contribution to same session. https://www.rixinclusiveresearch.org/about/the-rix-team/
[3] Marc Goblot, Tech for Disability / Tech London Advocates / Greater London Stakeholder Network. Contribution to same session. https://techfordisability.org/author/marc-goblot/
[4] Ismail Kadji, Parliamentary and Government Engagement Officer, Mencap. Contribution to same session. https://www.mencap.org.uk/user/226
[5] Bex Brindley, Disability and Accessibility Lead, NatWest; Cabinet Office Disability and Access Ambassador to the banking sector; Financial Inclusion Committee. Contribution to same session. https://the-digital-accessibility-podcast.captivate.fm/episode/becks-brindley-digital-accessibility-lead-at-natwest
[6] Tony Blair Institute for Global Change / ARIA / Venture Café London. “Governing in the Age of AI,” LTW Fringe event, 1 Triton Square NW1, 11 June 2026. institute.global
[7] Samantha Maeer, “The Feed Loop,” Zenodo, 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20474271. https://zenodo.org/records/20474271. Also available at: https://www.researchhub.com/paper/11303835/the-feed-loop-how-ai-generated-governance-documents-amplify-the-patterns-they-were-designed-to-suppress
[8] OQC, JPMorganChase, AMD. Research collaboration announcement, 3 June 2026. oqc.tech/company/newsroom
[9] OQC Series C funding round announcement, £260 million, 3 June 2026. oqc.tech/company/newsroom/series-c
[10] Guy Ward Jackson, Senior Policy Analyst, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Panel moderator, “Governing in the Age of AI,” 11 June 2026. institute.global/experts/guy-ward-jackson
[11] Jenny Read, Programme Director, ARIA (Advanced Research and Invention Agency). Panel contributor, same event. aria.org.uk/robot-dexterity/
[12] Sam Warren, Partner, Phoenix Court; Sarah Hill, Chief Delivery Officer, NSIIF. Panel contributors, same event. Confirmed from event panel slide, 11 June 2026.
[13] Soundaisleep. soundaisleep.com