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The East London Inclusive Enterprise Zone (ELIEZ) was an accessible, specially designed, community for entrepreneurs, business leaders and design thinkers who are disabled or whose work focuses on people with disabilities.
The programme...
...led by UCL and several other partners including London Legacy Development Corporation, Plexal, Disability Rights UK and Barclays - enrolled over 30 entrepreneurs, helping them accelerate the development of products and services that address unmet needs, from the idea stage through to deployment.
Alongside unlimited support from the ELIEZ network, the cohort benefitted from mentoring, workshops and pitch practice sessions.
Bravand ran several streams of work with ELIEZ, including writing and delivering a series of accessible online workshops as part of ELIEZ’s Lunch and Learn sessions.
Workshops included:
- Jen Tree's guide to building a community on social media - watch “Building a Community” on Bravand’s Vimeo channel
- Branding 101 with Collette Philip - watch “Branding 101” on Bravand’s Vimeo channel, and
- Accessible Communications with Jonathan Holden - watch “Accessible Communications” on Bravand’s Vimeo channel
Following Jonathan’s Accessible Comms session - attended by over 60 people, a mix of the ELIEZ cohort and partners - a number of participants, including the ELIEZ programme’s Project Lead at UCL, Bhavna Malkani, got in touch and asked for further help producing comms for all.
This led to UCL commissioning Bravand to produce the Accessible Comms guide for them, building on the learnings contained within the workshop. The guide has now been shared far and wide, with UCL’s partners in the ELIEZ programme and beyond:
- Barclays Eagle Labs
- Capital Enterprise
- Disability Rights UK
- Global Disability Innovation Hub
- Greater London Authority
- Hackney Council
- Here East
- Inclusion London
- Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales
- London College of Fashion
- London Legacy Development Corporation
- Loughborough University London
- Plexal
- UCL
- University of the Arts London
And here it is - freely available for you to learn from and share. You can read the guide to Accessible Social Communications by clicking here.
- Written by Jonathan Holden
- Designed by Emma Wood
- Funded by UCL
Tell us what you think!
- Is the guide useful?
- What’s good / bad about it?
- What would you like to see added?
Email accessibility@bravand.com with your thoughts, comments, feedback and requests!
“Our [Bravand's] work is all about designing and building products and services that help people complete tasks using the Web. So it was a bit of a revelation to learn that the things we were designing and building were actually excluding people.
In fact, for years, people with a disability have been an after-thought, or not thought about at all. That should not be. We realised we had the opportunity to change the script but we lacked the experience and capability to do so.
So, we found and started working with Jonathan Holden. Jonathan is now an integral part of Team Bravand, helping us to Shift Left accessibility thinking, so we’re focussed on designing for everyone.
This is not a one-time exercise. Making our work accessible for all is an ongoing process and we’re learning all the time. Our work, the value it brings to the people that engage with it, is greater for it.
Too often we define people by their disability. But we believe that people are largely disabled by the barriers that are put up to stop them living their life autonomously. It is up to all of us to break this cycle.
I’m not claiming we’re perfect. I’m not saying we have all the answers. I’m saying we’re trying, and our ongoing work with Jonathan and this guide will help keep us designing for all and help others - like you - learn, too.” Ross Musgrove, Insight and Strategy Director @ Bravand
