The less accessible a website is to disabled or impaired people, the worse the UX is for every user. That’s the view of Caren Launus-Gamble, one half of KreativeInc Agency.
“Making a website accessible, which includes disabled and impaired people, actually makes it easier to use the website for everybody because user friendliness is top of the tree and businesses need to understand that,” she told Prolific North.
Founded in 2019 by Caren and son Callum, the inspiration for the Leeds-based web accessibility agency came after Callum lost a graduate job due to a lack of understanding about his autism.
The 24-year-old was excited to start his first graduate role at a web agency but three weeks later he was left feeling “humiliated” after feeling his manager was unwilling to make adjustments with his autism.
“I would have just been another statistic,” Gamble told Prolific North, on having to leave his dream job.
This did not deter him and instead, with the help of his mum, decided to turn the upsetting experience into something positive. The pair set up their own agency to showcase neurodiversity.
As a result, Callum won the Young Digital Leader of the Year award at the Digital City Awards, hosted earlier this year.
“I decided to start my own agency to give other autistic people and others with disabilities and impairments a chance to properly access websites,” he said.
Caren’s copywriting experience and Callum’s web development skills were originally combined to develop WordPress websites on behalf of brands.
Now the family company is working on projects to boost website accessibility alongside various companies, including a recent neurodiverse museum research project with Sporting Heritage CIC and Northern Powerhouse Consulting.
When the Coronavirus pandemic forced businesses to shut down in March 2020, Caren said business took a “nosedive” as people cancelled their projects leaving them without income for two months.
“It was really hard,” she said, but added that the moment inspired a shift in their focus as an agency focussed on digital inclusion and website accessibility.
