Accessibility

Where my accessibility journey began

My journey towards digital accessibility has been an unusual one.

In 1989, I was a passenger in a serious car accident, along with my fiancée Jess and two friends. It left us with life-changing injuries, Jess most of all.

That experience changed the direction of our lives. It also gave us a very real understanding of how much harder the world can become when it has not been designed with disabled people in mind.

Jess went on to campaign for better physical accessibility in Chichester, West Sussex. At the time, there was no legislation in force to support much of what she was trying to achieve, but she kept going.

Changing the face of Chichester

Over time, Chichester changed. The District Council installed thousands of dropped kerbs across the city. Historic buildings that had once seemed impossible to adapt found ways to install lifts and improve physical access. One by one, barriers started to fall.

Jess helped change the face of Chichester through her tireless work. That mattered then. It still matters now.

Years later, that same principle became central to the work we would do online. The barriers were different, but the issue was the same. People were being excluded because accessibility had not been considered from the start.

How Access by Design began

In 2006, we started Access by Design.

Jess had already been creating websites for many years. She was a successful, award-winning digital artist, and had also written and taught website design modules to degree students at Chichester University.

When we began selling websites to local businesses, Jess discovered that website accessibility guidelines had existed since 1999. That should have been encouraging. The problem was that many websites that met the technical criteria at the time were, to put it politely, not exactly things of beauty.

We wanted to prove that a website could look professional, work beautifully and still be accessible to everyone.

That belief became the foundation of Access by Design. Accessibility was not something we bolted on at the end. It shaped the way we thought, designed and built.

Designing with disabled people

From the beginning, we wanted disabled people involved in the process. Every website we created was tested by people with lived experience, and their feedback helped us understand what worked, what failed and what needed to change.

Those early reports were used for our own internal development, but they also became the beginning of our accessibility audit work.

That approach is still central to what we do today. Automated tools can find some issues, but they cannot tell you what it feels like to use a broken menu, a confusing form, an inaccessible layout or a service that does not work properly with assistive technology.

Real accessibility needs real people.

A world first

Jess stepped down from the business in 2010, but our approach to accessibility was firmly established.

At the start of 2011, something important happened. Mobile devices were becoming more common, and many organisations were being told they needed separate mobile websites. Others simply accepted that their existing websites would be tiny, awkward and difficult to use on a phone.

Responsive design changed that. It allowed websites to adapt automatically to different screen sizes.

We combined responsive design with the accessible web design techniques we had already developed. As far as we are aware, this created the worlds first website that was both fully accessible and fully responsive across different screen sizes.

That mattered because accessibility was no longer just about whether a website passed a checklist. It was about whether people could actually use it, wherever they were, whatever device they were using, and whatever access needs they had.

Speaking about digital accessibility

For years, I spoke about website accessibility at local networking events. It was always satisfying to see the moment when people finally understood what digital accessibility really meant.

Lockdown changed things. Networking moved online, speaking opportunities increased, and we began receiving more enquiries about accessibility audits. I also started posting more regularly about digital accessibility on LinkedIn.

In 2021, I was approached by Dale Howarth, who was putting together a TEDx event on the Isle of Wight. The theme was “If not now, when?” He felt my message fitted perfectly, and I was invited to be a keynote speaker.

By the time of my TEDx talk in 2022, I had built an accessibility audit team made up of disabled testers with lived experience. They share their screens with me, I record their experiences, and we provide those videos as part of our accessibility audits.

My TEDx talk was very well received by the live audience. When it was released on the TEDx YouTube channel, it was listed as an Editors Pick and received 20,000 views in the first 24 hours.

It has since been featured on TED.com and has received over one million views.

Changing the world, one website at a time

If the accident in 1989 had not happened, Access by Design would not have happened in the way it did. We might have become just another web agency, building websites without understanding who was being excluded.

Instead, accessibility became part of our identity.

Today, my mission is still the same: to change the world, one website at a time.

If you would like to talk to me about digital accessibility, website accessibility audits, inclusive design or how to make your organisation more accessible online, please get in touch.