Accessibility-led UX & product design
Accessibility-led UX and product design – from the consumer apps I build myself to enterprise systems used by hundreds of thousands of people. Over 35 years making software people can genuinely use, and proving it works.
My LGBT History wiki has reached around 40 million visitors and a Prime Minister’s award. I’ve also built Nearmark, Moxii and the Tollesbury Arts Trail app.
Most software is built to serve the business first – to keep you subscribed, to hide what’s really going on, or simply because someone bought the licence and nobody designed what came next. I build the opposite: honest, accessible, measurable software that’s on the side of the people using it – and that matters most for the software people are given no choice but to use.
Selected work
Everything here is my own – self-initiated projects, designed and built in my own time. Each one exists because I noticed a problem most people and products quietly miss: a dating app where you somehow never actually meet anyone; local history that vanishes because no one preserved it; a place full of stories you can’t find while you’re standing in it.
A national LGBT heritage archive I founded and built – now reaching roughly 40 million visitors and recognised with a Prime Minister’s Points of Light Award. Recently migrated and rebuilt on modern infrastructure so it lasts. Proof that community memory, properly built, endures.
Founder · design · build · ongoing custodian
A location-based heritage storytelling app – a progressive web app that surfaces the history under your feet as you move through a place. Accessibility and craft built in from the first line.
Solo design & build · in development
Ask about itAn activity-first, group-based relationship app countering the loneliness-by-design of subscription dating platforms. Its founding principle: we succeed when you leave. Real connection through shared activity, not endless swiping.
Founder · in development
Ask about itA community app mapping a village arts trail – built to help a local cultural event reach the people around it, and to give a small place a proper digital front door.
Design & build
Ask about itEnterprise systems
The apps above are where you can see my craft. Most of my work you can’t. For years I’ve led user-centred design for large-scale business software – the timesheets, booking, finance, legal, audit, sales and service tools that hundreds of thousands of people are required to use every day. Most of it sits under NDA, so it isn’t shown here.
That’s the arena where design matters most, precisely because nobody chooses this software – they’re handed it. The same care you can see in my own apps is the care I bring to the systems people can’t opt out of.
User-centred design · accessibility · usability testing · measurable UX – at enterprise scale
What I do
I bring consumer-grade, user-centred design to the software people are given, not just the software they choose – enterprise systems for timesheets, booking, finance, legal, audit, sales and service, alongside my own consumer apps. Research, UX, interface, build. Accessibility-led throughout: WCAG-standard work that’s genuinely usable, not merely compliant.
Speaking
I speak on accessibility, AI ethics, and building products that respect the people who use them. Past platforms include a keynote at the HMRC LGBT conference in Whitehall and Capgemini’s global UX conference. See speaking & talks →
Writing
I write on Medium about AI, consciousness, and what it means for machines – and people – to be genuinely on each other’s side. Read on Medium →
Beyond the screen
Away from the screen I’m an East Coast sailor, a choir singer, a painter and photographer, and a lifelong community-builder. I founded London Raiders (now one of the largest softball clubs in the world), Sport London, the London Gay Bikers, and the UK LGBT Archive. The through-line is the same as the work: bring people together, and make things that outlast you.
Photography stocked on Alamy, Adobe Stock and Getty.