Enabled by Design is a social business run on a not-for-profit basis for the benefit of its community.

It’s all about people-powered products and services:
Enabled by Design is a social business and community of people who are passionate about design for all. They believe that a good design can support people to live as independently as possible, by helping to make day-to-day tasks a little bit easier and in turn more manageable.

Enabled by Design’s work focuses on doing the following:

• They provide their community with a space to share and talk about independent living products and services that are already available on the market, and to look at how they could be improved.

• They are interested in exploring how people can “hack” or modify things to make them more accessible and easier to use.

• They are working to develop relationships with designers, so that their community can help to improve the designs of the future with the aim of mainstreaming accessibility.

Enabled by Design was inspired by co-founder Denise Stephens’ experiences following her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2003. Having suffered a series of disabling relapses and hospital admissions, Denise was assessed by an occupational therapist (OT) and given a range of assistive equipment to help her to be as independent as possible. Although this equipment made a huge difference to her life, she became frustrated as her home started to look more and more like a hospital. But Denise had an idea…

In April 2008, Enabled by Design was chosen to take part in the first ever Social Innovation Camp. A weekend long competition, Social Innovation Camp brings together people with ideas of how to solve specific social issues, with web developers, designers and those with business expertise to develop online solutions to real world challenges. At the end of the weekend after a Dragons’ Den-style pitching competition, Enabled by Design was awarded first prize as the ‘project with most potential’.

Since then Enabled by Design has been chosen to be part of the independent living stream of the Innovation Exchange’s Next Practice Programme, as well as a Level 1 and Level 2 Better Net UnLtd (Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs) award winner.

Denise and her co-founder, Dominic Campbell (also founder of government consultancy and social innovation incubator FutureGov), continue to work hard to spread the word about Enabled by Design and its goals, building a diverse community of people with an active interest in accessibility and design that supports independent living.