Access by Design

Access by Design was founded by Clive and Jess Loseby in 2006. They were both passengers in a very nasty car crash in 1989, which left everyone involved with life-changing injuries. In 2006, Jess and Clive start a web design agency and discovered 2 things: 1) Very few websites has given any thought to accessibility, despite the guidelines on how to do this being widely available since 1999. 2) Those websites that were actually accessible were, frankly, horrible to look at, which offended Jess’s sensibilities as an artist. So, Access by Design was born. The idea was simple: they were on a mission to prove to the world that it is possible to have an attractive, well-designed website that also fully meets the needs of disabled people. The business grew and, in February 2011, they created the World Wide Web’s first mobile, tablet and fully accessible website. They won Product Innovation at the Observer Business Awards 4 years later, in recognition of this. Access by Design have gone through some challenging times and, although Jess has not been part of the company for some years, their ethos is the same. Every website they create meets over 80 different checks to ensure compatibility with each browser, device and contains different accessibility options to ensure that every visitor to their websites has their needs met. They have also always offered website accessibility audits and, in recent years, this side of the business has grown significantly. They employ a team of disabled people with every audit they do, and this gives some unique insights into whether a website is truly accessible or not. Clive has been speaking publicly about website accessibility since Access by Design began. In February 2022, he was invited to give a TEDxTalk on website accessibility at the TEDX Lukely Brook event, on the Isle of Wight. This opportunity has allowed Clive to reach a much bigger audience with his passionate goal, to Change the World, One Website at a Time.