Accessibility is not an add-on. It is how better work gets designed

For too long, accessibility at work has been treated as a problem to solve after the fact.

Someone joins the organisation.
Someone asks for an adjustment.
Someone checks the policy.
Someone worries about cost, precedent, legality, wording, risk.

Then, eventually, a decision is made.

But by then, the real problem has already been revealed. Not the adjustment. The system.

Because when accessibility only begins at the point someone has to ask for help, we have already designed work around a narrow idea of who belongs.

In this episode of Freeformers Unplugged, Toby Kheng and Emilie Forrest were joined by Alix Burgess, an accessibility trainer and advisor specialising in LGBT+ and deaf inclusion, to explore what organisations often misunderstand about accessible workplaces.

The conversation started with a familiar assumption: accessibility is expensive.

Alix challenged that quickly. Yes, some adjustments can require investment. But many do not. Often, the first barrier is not budget. It is attitude.

“Change can be scary for some people,” Alix said. And that might be the most honest place to start.

Because accessibility is not just about ramps, captions, lifts, software or policies. It is about whether your workplace is designed to notice difference, respond to it, and value people enough to change.

Reasonable adjustments are the floor, not the ambition

Reasonable adjustments matter. They are a legal requirement under the Equality Act, designed to make sure disabled people can access work fairly.

But as Toby pointed out during the conversation, the legal minimum is not the same as a good employee experience.

That distinction matters.

A transactional organisation asks: “What are we legally required to do?”

A relational organisation asks: “What does this person need to do their best work, and what does that teach us about the system everyone is working in?”

That shift is everything.

Because once we treat accessibility as a compliance exercise, we narrow the conversation. We make it about forms, thresholds, approval processes and definitions of “reasonable”. We turn human need into organisational admin.

But when we treat accessibility as design, we ask better questions.

Not just: “What adjustment does this person need?”
But: “Why was the work designed in a way that excluded them in the first place?”

Not just: “Can we afford this?”
But: “What does it cost us when people cannot fully contribute?”

Not just: “Is this exceptional?”
But: “Would more people benefit if we changed this for everyone?”

That is where accessibility stops being an accommodation and becomes a source of better work.

The best adjustments often help more people than you think

One of the most powerful points in the conversation was also one of the simplest: when you make work easier for someone who faces a barrier, you often make it better for everyone.

Captions are a good example.

For a deaf colleague, captions may be essential. For someone in a noisy environment, they are useful. For someone processing complex information, they are supportive. For someone watching a recording later, they improve comprehension. For someone whose first language is not English, they can make the difference between following and falling behind.

That is the point.

Accessibility is rarely as niche as organisations imagine.

The same applies to meeting design. Shorter meetings with breaks can support neurodivergent colleagues, disabled colleagues, parents, carers, people managing health conditions, and frankly anyone whose brain has ever stopped functioning 47 minutes into a rambling call.

Clear written instructions help people who process information differently. They also help new starters, busy managers, remote teams and anyone trying to remember what was agreed three meetings ago.

Flexible social events include disabled colleagues, sober colleagues, parents, carers, people with religious commitments, people with sensory needs, and people who simply do not want every work relationship to orbit around alcohol.

This is the quiet power of inclusive design.

It does not ask, “Who is the exception?”
It asks, “How do we build more room into the system?”

Attitude is often the biggest barrier

Alix shared a moment from their own experience as a deaf person. After telling someone they were deaf, the person began speaking very slowly and loudly for the rest of the appointment.

The intention may have been good. The impact was not.

That is often where organisations get stuck. People are afraid of saying the wrong thing, so they avoid the conversation. Or they make assumptions, so they solve the wrong problem. Or they move straight to policy, because policy feels safer than uncertainty.

But inclusion cannot work without curiosity.

Not performative curiosity. Not intrusive questioning. Not making someone responsible for educating everyone around them.

The useful kind.

The kind that says: “What would help?”
The kind that listens without defensiveness.
The kind that understands one person’s access needs will not represent everyone with the same condition, identity or diagnosis.

Emilie named this clearly in the episode: just talk to people. Have the conversation in good faith.

That sounds simple. It is simple. But simple does not always mean easy.

Because good faith requires trust. And trust requires culture.

If people do not feel safe telling you what they need, the issue is bigger than accessibility. It means your culture has taught them that honesty carries risk.

Stop designing for the imaginary average employee

Most workplaces are still designed around an imaginary average person.

Someone who can work the same hours every day.
Someone who can process information in the same way as everyone else.
Someone who can attend every meeting, read every document, join every social, use every tool, travel to every location, and adapt without friction.

That person does not exist.

Every employee has a context. Energy levels. Caring responsibilities. Health needs. Communication preferences. Technology preferences. Sensory needs. Life stages. Learning styles. Confidence levels. Access requirements.

Some of those needs are legally protected. Some are not. But all of them shape whether people can do good work.

Toby gave a beautifully simple example from Freeformers. Emilie works best on a Mac. Toby works best on a PC. So Emilie uses a Mac and Toby uses a PC.

No drama. No special process. No philosophical debate.

Just a basic recognition that people do their best work with the right tools.

That same logic should apply far more widely.

Because when organisations force everyone through the same experience, then treat difference as an exception, they create avoidable friction. They make people spend energy navigating systems that were never designed with them in mind.

That energy could have gone into the work.

Accessibility should be proactive, not retrospective

One of the strongest reflections in the episode came from Toby’s experience working with Alix on an event. The venue had been chosen. The format had been shaped. The technology had been decided. Only then did accessibility come into the conversation.

That is common.

It is also the problem.

Retrofitting accessibility is almost always harder than designing with it from the start. It creates more work, more cost, more compromise and more risk of exclusion.

The better question is: what would change if accessibility was part of the first conversation?

Before choosing the venue.
Before designing the meeting.
Before buying the platform.
Before launching the policy.
Before planning the social.
Before onboarding the employee.

This is not about predicting every need. That is impossible.

It is about building flexibility into the system so that when needs emerge, the organisation can respond without panic.

Alix made this point clearly: when you design things to be accessible to as many people as possible from the outset, you reduce the number of individual adjustment requests later.

That is not only better for employees. It is better for the business.

Less friction. Less rework. Less risk. More participation. More trust. Better performance.

Humanity and commerciality are not in conflict here. They fuel each other.

Representation changes what people think is possible

The conversation also touched on media representation, particularly through Alix and Emilie’s work connected to the broadcast industry.

Representation matters because it changes the stories people grow up with. It changes what feels visible, familiar and possible.

Alix spoke about the value of seeing more deaf and disabled people on screen, not as exceptional plot devices, but as part of ordinary human variety. That visibility helps challenge the idea that disability is rare, distant or unusual.

It also matters inside organisations.

If people never see disabled colleagues progressing, leading, creating, advising, challenging and thriving, they absorb a message. If accessibility is only discussed in policy documents or risk conversations, they absorb a message. If difference is treated as inconvenience, they absorb a message.

Culture teaches people what is safe to say.

Representation is part of that teaching.

But representation on its own is not enough. Visibility without access is optics. The real test is whether people can participate fully, influence decisions, and shape the systems they are part of.

Evidence over optics. Always.

Start with small, practical changes

So where should organisations begin?

Not with a grand transformation programme. Not with a glossy statement. Not with a one-off awareness day that changes nothing about how work actually happens.

Start with the everyday design of work.

Create “working with me” documents or access passports for everyone, not just disabled employees. Normalise conversations about how people work best. Ask about communication preferences, meeting needs, focus time, technology, caring responsibilities and access requirements.

Review your meetings. Do they need to be that long? Is there a break? Is there an agenda? Are actions written down? Can people contribute in more than one way?

Look at your social rituals. Who do they include? Who do they quietly exclude?

Check your digital content. Are captions available? Are documents readable? Are colours and contrast accessible? Are recordings usable after the fact?

Listen to feedback without making people fight for every change.

And when someone asks for an adjustment, do not treat it as the end of the conversation. Treat it as the beginning of a better one.

Try something. Review it. Ask whether it is working. Adapt.

That is what relational work looks like.

The future of work has to be designed for difference

The old model of work asked people to fit the system.

The future asks us to design systems fit for people.

That does not mean every organisation can do everything immediately. Context matters. Size matters. Resources matter. What is reasonable for a multinational may be different from what is reasonable for a small charity.

But attitude is not a budget line.

Curiosity is not expensive.
Listening is not expensive.
Clarity is not expensive.
Flexibility is not expensive by default.
Designing with people in mind is not a luxury.

It is how better organisations are built.

Accessibility is not an add-on. It is not a favour. It is not a niche HR process sitting somewhere between compliance and discomfort.

It is a way of seeing work more honestly.

Because people are not standardised. Needs change. Lives shift. Bodies, brains, energy, confidence and circumstances all vary.

The organisations that understand this will not only be more inclusive. They will be more resilient, more trusted and more capable of growth.

Less “tell us what you need once the system fails you”.
More “we designed this with human difference in mind”.

That is where balance begins.