about US
The Association of Accessible Employers is a Community Interest Company that offers innovative and ground-breaking training and support for companies to adopt a truly accessible culture in their workplace and practices.
Every penny of profit goes back into delivering our high-impact training and consultancy to make sure that we continue to be highly effective in achieving results. What we do transforms the way companies do business and the day-to-day working lives of individuals who have disabilities, learning differences, or other access needs.
Our training is created and delivered by highly experienced teams, and by inspiring individuals who live with the challenges of disability and learning differences.
Our ethos is that bridges are built by an integrated, collaborative approach that is bespoke and tailored to meet the needs of the company and importantly, the people we are working with.
Our Story
The Association of Accessible Employers CIC was founded by Viki Carpenter and Lucy Green. Viki is neurodivergent herself with a neurodivergent family and has worked to support a variety of organisations including the RNID and smaller charities helping those with neurodiversity, vision impairment and a range of disabilities and learning differences.
“It occurred to me that the focus is always on supporting individuals to cope with accessibility barriers rather than removing those barriers – it’s not my idea, it’s the well-known social model of disability – but the training that many companies and organisations were using tended to be very much based on doing quick online courses that ticked boxes but would quickly be forgotten. I thought a lot about what would actually work. As someone who left a job and career I loved due to the difficulties I faced due to being neurodivergent, this is something I’m passionate about. I can’t go back and help my younger self, but there are lots of people out there who would benefit hugely from meaningful and long-lasting cultural change in the world of employment.
I met Lucy Green, a forest school instructor and through our conversations, I learned more about the huge impact that forest school style training has and I wondered how effective that would be on people in the business world. We began pilots, taking corporate decision-makers out of their comfort zones and providing immersive training that gives a snapshot of the challenges faced by people with disabilities. The training is always led by people with lived experience. We got grants to fund experts in L&D and academic researchers to help us develop and hone the training.
The results were apparent immediately. Very senior decision-makers told us that our blend of storytelling, experiential and immersive sessions and well-delivered factual and solution-focused content had made them think differently. From there, we have had many case studies and testimonials of that thinking leading to new behaviour, new policies and real cultural shifts within organisations. We won’t pretend that we can teach everyone everything about the world of accessibility, it is hugely complex, but we give you the understanding, mindset and basic knowledge to co-create and deliver ongoing change within your organisation.
If you want to get started, please get in touch.
get involved
If you’d like to learn more, call us, email us, or book us to give a free talk to your teams. We offer sessions on how accessibility can make business and working life better, plus simple, low cost ways to make changes right now. We’d love to work with you, so please get in touch.
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We offer CPD accredited training in a range of areas of accessibility, led by individuals with lived experience.
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