About Advokit

What Advokit offers

• Plain-language tips for key benefits and practical steps that successful applicants use - even encouragement to get started!
• Real stories: Recorded stories about people with aphasia's benefit experiences including their insights and experience.
• Community-informed red flags and workarounds for digital portals, phone systems, and assessments.
• Accessible formats: larger text, clear hierarchy, read-aloud support, and multimedia where helpful.

Our partners

Built in partnership between Aphasia Re-Connect and King’s College London, with contributions from 40+ people with aphasia, speech and language therapists (SLTs), and caregivers in London and online.

The study ran across 4 stages and 8 workshops with 42 participants.

Who are Aphasia Re-Connect?

Aphasia Re-Connect is a UK charity that brings people with aphasia together, creating a peer support network to help people live life, discover opportunity, and build confidence and wellbeing.

• Peer-led support: people with aphasia take active roles as peer supporters, advisors and befrienders, working in equal partnership to design and run services.
• Groups & activities: online and in-person groups such as conversation, reading, workers’ forum, and access-to-work support.
• Who they are: founded and coordinated by Dr Sally McVicker, alongside a wider team and volunteers.

Learn more or get in touch via their website: Visit Aphasia Re-Connect↗

Aphasia Re-Connect is a UK charity that brings people with aphasia together, creating a peer support network to help people live life, discover opportunity, and build confidence and wellbeing.

Co-design process

• Stage 1: Advisory board, unstructured interviews, and support during a live Universal Credit migration call.
• Stage 2: Ranking services with tangible Help and Feelings cards to map importance and difficulty.
• Stage 3: Journey-mapping barriers and facilitators using Where and Barrier cards.
• Stage 4: Speculative design-fiction videos to discuss risks and hopes for AI-automated services.

What we heard

Co-designers highlighted the realities of navigating digital welfare and identified recurring challenges:

• Performing disability: pressure to “prove” impairment and the emotional cost of assessments.
• Geographies of inequity: uneven access shaped by region, class, and local service cuts.
• Digital bureaucracy: logins, portals, uploads, and long phone queues that exclude.
• Accessibility paradox: systems “for access” that trap people in limbo.
• Hostile design: deterrence, outsourcing, and fragmented responsibility.

What we envisioned together

Co-designers imagined more caring, transparent, and accountable futures for AI in welfare:

• Patient, multimodal dialogues: slow turn-taking, options to speak, type, or use visuals; involve trusted supporters.
• Human-in-the-loop: a clear path to a named person when needed (a “radar-key” style escalation).
• Open and truthful infrastructure: public, auditable systems that explain decisions and surface real entitlements.

Ethics & acknowledgments

The study received university ethics approval; participants could pause or withdraw at any time and were compensated for their time. We thank every co-designer, SLT, and caregiver who shared their expertise and lived experience.