Baltimore Social Innovation Journal, Fall 2016 Fall 2016 | Page 22

Ability Redefined
An economist used to thinking rationally finds his world turned upside-down.
In struggling to achieve a new normal he finds the power to change lives.
By Lisa Simeone

By now, the tragedy that sundered Ed
Slattery’s life into “before” and “after” has
been well publicized. In 2010, on a highway
between Maryland and Ohio, a truck
slammed into Slattery’s car and crushed it.
Slattery wasn’t in it. His wife and sons were.
Susan was killed almost instantly. Peter and
Matthew were injured, severely. Peter, 16 at
the time, recovered. But Matthew, then 12,
was left with permanent brain damage.
“It was the most nauseating time of my
life,” Slattery sighs. “Absolutely horrible.
And I had no time to grieve Susan because
Matthew needed so much help.”
Matthew spent six months in the hospital,
unable to walk, talk, or move, and then
began what would become a lifetime of
rehab. Thanks to the Kennedy Krieger
Institute, he has made progress. He now
lives with his father in a house in Lutherville,
every aspect of the structure specifically
designed to accommodate a person with
disabilities. And Slattery, who has had no
training in architecture or design, had a
hand in its creation.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have a tower?”
Slattery mused one day as he looked out at
the two acres of green where his new house
was to be built. “And whaddya know? We

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got one.” It’s now Matthew’s bedroom.
It might seem counterintuitive that a
house designed for a person in a wheelchair
would have a tower, but Slattery has
discovered that what seems impossible
can be do-able. He and the architects he
hired figured out how to enhance that most
important element of a disabled person’s
life – ADL, or Activities of Daily Living.
Things we take for granted, such as getting
in and out of a chair, eating, holding a
book, all become more problematic for
someone with disabilities. Slattery wanted
to take what he had learned through the
construction of his house and apply it to
the design of other products. But he didn’t
know how to go about it.
Enter the hackathon.
A hackathon is an informal gathering of
professionals in various fields – computer
graphics, engineering, coding, software
development – who collaborate intensively
for a short period of time to come up
with new ideas. Slattery attended his first
Baltimore Hackathon in March 2016 and
raised his hand.
“I had no idea what I was doing,”
he says. “I just explained my situation
and asked for help. At the end, they all