“I believe that losing my hearing was one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received,” says Elise Roy. As a disability rights lawyer and design thinker, she knows that being Deaf gives her a unique way of experiencing and reframing the world — a perspective that could solve some of our largest problems. As she says: “When we design for disability first, you often stumble upon solutions that are better than those when we design for the norm.”

The solutions that were originally made for people with disabilities, some ended up being picked up, embraced and loved by the mainstream, disability or not. Examples include the OXO potato peeler.

 It was originally designed for people with arthritis.

Text messaging, that was originally designed for people who are deaf. Everybody loves this, too.