Over 2 million people in the UK live with sight loss — and automated accessibility tools catch only a fraction of the barriers they face. The rest only surface when a real person, using real assistive technology, tries to complete a real task. That's where I come in.
I help organisations find and fix the gap between "technically compliant" and "genuinely usable" — drawing on lived experience of navigating the digital world with a visual impairment.
01 · Audit
I walk through your key customer journeys — sign-up, checkout, account management, support — the way a customer with sight loss actually experiences them, using the assistive technology they use. You receive a prioritised, plain-English report your team can act on immediately: what blocks customers entirely, what exhausts them, and what to fix first.
02 · Training
Accessibility fails when it's treated as a checklist owned by one developer. My workshops give your product, design, and content teams a working understanding of how people with vision impairments actually use technology — and practical habits they can apply from the next sprint onwards. Hands-on, honest, and tailored to your product.
03 · Speaking
I speak about disability inclusion, independent living, and what organisations get wrong — and right — about accessibility. Talks are candid, practical, and built around real stories rather than statistics alone. Suitable for conferences, internal inclusion events, and lunch-and-learn sessions.
Most accessibility problems aren't technical failures — they're empathy gaps. A page can pass every automated check and still be impossible with a screen reader, or so exhausting with low vision that customers give up and go to a competitor.
£274bn
The estimated annual spending power of disabled people and their households in the UK — the "Purple Pound".
4.3m
Disabled internet users who clicked away from websites with accessibility barriers, per the Click-Away Pound report.
75%
Of disabled people and their families have walked away from a UK business because of poor accessibility or customer service.
I don't simulate barriers with a browser plugin; I encounter them daily and know which ones genuinely matter.
As a published author and content creator, I deliver findings teams actually understand and act on — not a wall of WCAG references.
Accessibility isn't charity; it's customers. Accessible products win the business your competitors are turning away.
Sources: Department for Work and Pensions estimate cited by the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee; Click-Away Pound report 2019; We Are Purple research.
Abi Crowther is a London-based author, accessibility consultant, and the founder of Blindish and Thriving, where she creates content about vision loss, orientation and mobility, and independent living. She is the author of Blindish and Thriving (nonfiction) and the novel His Fourth. She works with organisations across the UK and remotely.
If you'd like to explore an audit, workshop, or speaking session, get in touch — no obligation, no jargon. Tell me a little about your product or team and I'll come back to you within one working day.
Or email directly: hello@abicrowtherauthor.com