Dave Steele
Disability and chronic illness touch a large share of every workforce, yet most inclusion programmes stop at policy language and training modules. The gap between a stated commitment and what employees with sight loss, invisible conditions or progressive diagnoses actually experience at work is where credibility is won or lost. Leaders need a way to close that gap without reducing it to a checkbox.
Dave Steele is a poet, author and keynote speaker who helps organisations confront the lived reality of sight loss and disability, and put human experience at the centre of their inclusion work.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Dave Steele
- He turns an abstract inclusion agenda into a room of people who have felt something specific. Poetry, song and personal testimony land with audiences in a way a policy deck cannot.
- He brings a named platform behind the message: the Stand By Me RP community he founded in 2015 is one of the largest RP groups in the world, and his trilogy topped poetry charts in the US and Australia.
- He has been trusted by serious institutions to represent the patient and lived-experience voice, including the American Foundation for the Blind (Helen Keller Achievement Awards emcee) and the National Eye Institute at NIH.
- Brand and product work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam gives him direct fluency in how large companies are approaching accessibility in practice, not just in principle.
- He delivers as a performer as well as a speaker, which makes him suited to conference mainstage, awards nights and internal culture events where a standard keynote would not move the room.
Biography highlights
- Author of the “Stand By Me RP” poetry trilogy (2016-2018); Volume I reached number one poetic release in the US and Australia in its first week.
- Founder of the Stand By Me RP online community (2015), one of the largest Retinitis Pigmentosa support groups on social media.
- Emcee of the 24th Annual Helen Keller Achievement Awards, American Foundation for the Blind.
- Invited speaker at the National Institutes of Health, where he opened the National Eye Institute Intramural Program retreat in April 2024.
- Patron of Henshaws; 2018 Henshaws Impact Award; 2018 Pride of Bury Community Hero Award; 2023 National Diversity Award shortlist (Positive Role Model for Disability).
- Global Ambassador for Two Blind Brothers; collaborator with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Parfums de Marly, Navilens and OrCam.
Biography
Most inclusion work still treats disability as an HR category. A poem, delivered in a room of executives, does something a training module cannot. It gives the audience a few minutes inside someone else’s life, and that is what Dave Steele’s work depends on.
Steele was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa in 2014. He had been a singer and a car salesman; the diagnosis ended both careers and left him at home in Manchester with four children and serious debt. In 2015 he started a Facebook page called “Stand By Me RP,” named after a song he had rewritten for a support group. It became one of the largest RP communities on social media and the seed of everything that followed.
The poetry came next. His “Stand By Me RP” trilogy, released annually between 2016 and 2018, reached the top of poetry charts in the United States and Australia. He has since written more than 700 poems and songs about sight loss. That body of work is why serious institutions invite him in: he emceed the 24th Helen Keller Achievement Awards for the American Foundation for the Blind, and in April 2024 opened the National Eye Institute’s Intramural Program retreat at NIH at the invitation of its scientific director.
The organisational value is different from a typical DEI speaker. Steele does not offer a framework. He offers a specific voice that leaders can put in front of their people when they want an inclusion conversation to stop feeling procedural, supported by active work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam on how accessibility actually shows up in product and brand.
Key speaking topics
- Disability inclusion and lived experience
- Sight loss and visual impairment advocacy
- Resilience after a life-changing diagnosis
- Accessibility in product, brand and workplace
- Poetry and storytelling as communication
- Mental health and identity through chronic illness
- Patient voice in medical and research settings
Ideal for
- CHRO, DEI and employee experience leaders running disability inclusion or accessibility programmes
- Healthcare, life sciences and ophthalmology audiences wanting an authentic patient voice
- Awards nights, conference mainstage slots and internal culture events that need a performer as well as a speaker
- Consumer, tech and retail brands working on accessibility in product and communications
Audience outcomes
- A first-hand account of what a progressive sight loss diagnosis does to work, family and identity
- A sharper sense of where stated inclusion policies diverge from daily employee experience
- Specific references from brand and product work with companies like Apple, Meta and OrCam on accessibility in practice
- Poetry and spoken-word performance that anchors the message in memory long after the event
- A reframing of disability as an active contribution to an organisation, not a compliance line