SociAbility

Problem

Almost 1 in 5 people in the UK live with a disability. Yet, finding information about the accessibility of social venues remains frustratingly tedious, time-consuming and difficult.

For those with access needs – whether disabled, elderly or pushing a pram – the anxiety and stress of not knowing whether their destination will be accessible creates tangible barriers to social inclusion and economic participation.

Solution

SociAbility empowers disabled people to decide – for themselves – whether a venue is accessible or not.

By creating standardised, objective and detailed accessibility profiles of local hospitality and retail venues, SociAbility gives users the information they’re looking for – every time, everywhere.

By combining crowdsourced tags from our community with vetted contributions from venue partners, we’re building a comprehensive & reliable accessibility database for all.

Market

SociAbility will generate revenue through three parallel streams: advertising, data licensing and premium B2B partnerships.

SociAbility targets a presently missing market – the excluded economic spend of disabled people and their friends & family. This is most commonly measured as The Purple Pound and valued at £249 billion per year. Of this, our target customers (supermarkets, pubs, clubs, restaurants etc) miss out on more than £12 billion/year through a lack of accessibility.

Traction

To date, our traction has been organic and controlled. Our MVP app has been downloaded more than 750 times and seen more than 750 venues profiled by our ~250 registered users. Alongside this, we’ve won startup awards internationally, raised more than £50k in grant funding, been accepted into multiple top-tier accelerator programs and developed partnerships with leading disability organisations in the UK, including Disability Rights UK and Scope.