1) Shane Bratby
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My name is Shane Bratby the founder of MobilityBuy.com and Disabled Entrepreneurs.
When I was 10-years-old, I became very
clumsy and un-steady on my feet, after convincing my parents it’s hard
for me to walk in a straight line, I was taken to see a doctor who after
three years of tests gave me a diagnosis. The doctor said to me I have
Friedreich’s Ataxia, which is a rare neurological condition which gets
worse over time and it has been said that I will die around
25-years-old.
From that day I’ve lived in fear for my
life living every day like it was my last, as time went on I gradually
stopped walking. My wife had a still born baby at eight months pregnant,
it dawned on me to fulfil my life.
Now I live in Doncaster with my wife Amanda and my three children Chloe, Sian and Chanelle who was born prematurely and because of that she got brain damage and Cerebral Palsy. She is now also in a wheelchair.
Me and my partner have been through some up
and downs in my time. I feel it is my destiny to help people with all
types of mobility issues, offering the very best in our products and
services.
My first service was a charity to help disabled people get there grocery shopping, I wanted to deal in Mobility Aids due to seeing so many able-bodied people working in the disabled market.
Statistically, disabled people don’t hold as many high qualifications as an able-bodied person and the reason for this is down to disabled education across the United Kingdom.
When I was 16-years-old my feelings told me
that I could not have the career that I had dreamed about due to having
no qualifications because of my special school and the disabled education system. We did not study GCSEs, and those really mean something in this world.
This was not fair. It is hard enough being a
wheelchair user getting accepted for a job nevermind having no
qualifications as well. So, I turned that into what I enjoyed knowing
qualifications would not be needed and that the sky would be my limit.
Now, I have Mobility Buy and this project.
2.) Dom Smith
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I was born with Cerebral Palsy and my parents were told that I would not be able to walk at all from age 12. Now, at 25-years-old, thanks to the love and support of those around me, I walk with the aid of two sticks and regularly travel around the UK promoting and providing content for my business, Soundsphere magazine. This is an online and print publication that looks at rock music and culture specific to the North of England. I also work as a copywriter and journalist in the city of York.
My aim is to support and offer advice (along with my colleague and the project’s founder Shane) to people with a range of disabilities so that I can help them to achieve their goals and “live their dream” just like I have been lucky enough to do.
3. Guy Harris
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Hi. My name is Guy Harris and I started www.DisabledGear.com
in 2009. It is a great business that is evolving. I started it because I
felt that there was no decent alternative to the expense of always
buying new. I wanted to create a Free-Ads website allowing people to buy
& sell second hand disability equipment easily. I knew it had to be
a free service and one that was clear and easy to use, with good
functionality – i.e. searching for items by price, distance, or keyword –
that kind of thing.
Planning was everything and from concept to launch was actually a
long period, a year. The old saying “there’s no second chance for a
first impression” is really true.
Starting your own business is hard work. Sometimes it seems that no
matter what your business will do for others, it’s difficult to persuade
them to take a few minutes to look at what you’ve got to show them. But
what I know is that every contact with a customer is a golden
opportunity to give them a reason to come back and tell all their
friends. Customer service really counts. For me, this is easy because I
really believe in what I am doing.
I had an RTA in 2003, as a result of which I am paralysed at L1.
Predictably, a whole world that I knew nothing about has opened up in
front of me, and the first piece of advice I would give to anyone
setting out is: Do what you know. It shines through in your business and
in your product. And flexibility is also crucial. I started selling new
products because I wanted to pay for the free service I was offering.
By choosing solutions to my problems, I have hit on some really popular
products.
4. Mark Esho
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When Mark Esho set up his internet company 10 years ago, it was one of only four of its kind in the UK.
But setting up the business was a big challenge. He claims the fact
he was black and had a disability – he is unable to walk long distances
because of childhood polio – made getting the venture off the ground
much harder.
“I got zero support,” he said. “It was a new technology and people didn’t understand what I was trying to do.
“I started my business off on a credit card and I had to work for
three months without pay while I built up my portfolio. It was pretty
hard.
“If you are black and disabled you have two things going against you.
What people tend to do is base their opinions on what they see. Even I
do it.
“That’s why I’ve always been driven to prove myself.”
A decade on, and his company, Easy Internet Services, in Westleigh Road, Leicester, employs 17 people and boasts 50,000 customers.
“When we started up in 2000 there were only four of us in the UK doing search engine optimisation (SEO),” he said.
Esho’s taste for business came when he decided to do a MBA while drifting from job to job in London.
He came back to his home city in 1994 and enrolled at the University of Leicester. He then worked at city disabled charity Mosaic for a while before taking the plunge.
“The internet was a hobby for me,” he said. “I thought I’d go for it. It also gave me flexible hours.”
As a result of his polio Esho suffers from chronic fatigue. “I get it
two or three times a month,” he said. “I get really, really tired.
That’s why I’m better suited to running my own business.”
The business expanded quickly and before long had moved from his home
in Thorpe Astley to premises in Ross Walk, Belgrave. It then moved to a
larger office at the LCB depot in Rutland Street before ending up in Westleigh Road.
I am the owner and Director of Virya Technologies, with the responsibility for leading the website design team. One of my roles is to be primarily involved with the day to day
project management for our website projects, and liaising with our
clients from across the world.I started to experience the negative effect of the form of sever
joint pain, fatigue and exhaustion. Within a couple of months I went
from being a very busy, active 27 year old involved in mountain
leadership training, hockey, going to the gym and having a normal life,
to being barely able to get out of bed or get up and down my stairs let
alone walk to the end of the road or climb a mountain! I was, for the
first time in my life, signed off sick from work, and given strict
instructions to rest – do nothing, just rest. Unfortunately this didn’t
mean sitting in front of the TV as I have a severely hypermobile coccyx
so sitting is also extremely painful at times! This was absolutely devastating to me, but I was absolutely
determined that I wasn’t going to give up, let myself get down, or shove
my head in the sand and hope it went away. I decided after much soul
searching that full time employment wasn’t helping matters, and found a
part time job with the help from Access To Work, it was much less
stressful and in a far better environment. This also allowed me 2 days a
week to dedicate to start a business.
My name is Erasmus Habermann but everybody calls me Raz. I am 27 years old. I am wheelchair bound due to cerebral palsy. I am originally from Germany however I’ve been living in the UK since 1999. I was watching Dragon’s Den one-day and since then I have always wanted to own my own business.
When I left Staffordshire University in 2007 with a higher certificate of education in multimedia computing with web media technology, I found it extremely hard to find a job.
I then started thinking I should really begin to write down my business idea – until then I had not really considered that running my own business would be a viable option for me. How wrong was I? In 2009 Habermann Translation was born…
We specialise in translations from English into German and from German to English. The business is currently run this under the permitted work scheme. Our aim is to provide an excellent service to our customers. We achieve this by tailoring our service to customer’s individual needs. We will not take on more than we can confidently handle, in other words if we get a job then we will not take other jobs on until we have completed and delivered it to the customer.
Our ethos is to deliver a good finished translation to the customer. To us it is quality not quantity that is the key to success. Feel free to take a look at what our customers have said about our company by visiting our website.
My name is Abigail Stafford, an 18-year-old student and freelance journalist with an invisible disability called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. I am the founder of HideAndSeek Invisible Disabilities Blog (www.hideandseekdisabilities.blogspot.com) which is a social platform where people from around the world can interact by sharing their stories, offering support and advice or learn more about invisible disabilities. Also, I have written numerous articles and pieces regarding life with an invisible disability.
After nine years of aching pain in my legs and joints, endless fatigue and many misdiagnoses, I was finally diagnosed with the hypermobility for EDS at the age of 16. EDS is currently an incurable hereditary condition in which the collagen in the body is too stretchy resulting in loose ligaments in the joints which causes a great deal of pain as well as subluxations and dislocations of the joints. But for many sufferers such as myself, EDS is a physically invisible condition and so we look “normal”.
After my diagnosis, I had to make many changes to my day to day life, I stopped playing sport and started to pace myself, acknowledging my limited ability. Nowadays, I know my limits and how to balance it with my social life (which is also important) I can manage my condition. To help me cope, I attend a monthly support group, and have some inspirational people in a similar situation, which got me thinking… what could I do to raise awareness about EDS?
So, I set up the HideAndSeek Disability blog in September 2011 and in the space of a few months it had received a lot of interest from all over the world with people contacting me asking to post material to share with others. The blog is regularly updated but I could still do more to raise awareness. I used my love for journalism and started writing articles about all aspects of my condition. The magazine Disability Now have recently featured my story ‘Living With The Less Obvious’ as a page spread in their latest issue. Also, I have contributed to various online blogs such as The Patient Experience to educate others about EDS.
I had started up my own charity – me&dee - www.meanddee.co.uk in
a very small way with my cousin Delia who sadly died just as we got it
going. I covered the one treat a month I created with local fundraising.
The aim of the charity was to show that you don’t need to spend thousands making someone happy- even with not long to live – and by the same score – support and sponsorship in even the smallest way, would help me&dee thrive.
I now create around 20 special moment treats a month for when time is precious. I also have a fast track nomination process for Rainbows Hospice and the Teenage Cancer Unit at Birmingham along with children\’s oncology wards at Birmingham. I have also set up the “me&dee comfort pack scheme”. Listening to parents who, when their child is quickly admitted with a terminal condition, can go two days without a hot drink or washes, I wanted to try and address that. The comfort packs for parents contain everything two adults would need for two days from cups with hot drinks and soup sachets to towels and toiletries and pens etc. Children and teenagers have toiletries and age-appropriate toys.
These schemes will be going into Leciester Hospital early in the new year, along with Treetops Hospice. I have been to visit Hospice Hope in Ashby to see how me&dee may help them.
I would like to see the comfort pack scheme in hospitals all across England by the end of next year. I have set up a £10 sponsorship scheme to allow this to happen; this is working very well.
I’m 23 and I’m autistic. Life was never easy especially at school, I
knew I was different and found it hard to make friends. I have to
say, though, I’ve attended three brilliant schools who did everything
they could to support me. I was in a special school until I was nine,
as I was quite severely autistic but really started to progress on
joining mainstream school.
I started making music (electronic stuff using samples and also live instrumentation) when I was 18, influenced by DJs like Fatboy Slim and Freddy Fresh from USA. I’m lucky as my mum and dad are musicians, so music has always been a big part of our lives. I put some tracks on MySpace to see what the reaction would be and within two weeks I’d had amazing feedback, and the offer of a record contract with non-other than one of my heroes, Freddy Fresh, who runs Howlin’ Records in America. Now I’m on my fourth album, I’ve had vinyl EPs released through BigM Productions (Germany), various remixes and collaborations on various labels worldwide, including the legendary SKINT Records label, and lots of forthcoming releases in the pipeline. I’ve also since had e-mails from Fatboy Slim himself praising my work! Other people who have sent me messages of praise include Mr Scruff, DJ Cam, Ali Shaheed Muhamed from A Tribe Called Quest, Fake Blood/DJ Touche and many others. How cool is that?!
Here’s some of the other stuff “in a nutshell” I’ve been doing.
My music has been played regularly on BBC Radio Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show.
5. Robin Kettle
 |
I am the founder and owner of Access All Areas
one of the UK’s premier access auditing companies that I created in
2003 after receiving a college degree and the founder and owner of the
U.K.’s busiest and most viewed disability information resource Ableize
I also created and run a mind body and soul Internet directory and I
work on a daily basis as a premier editor of the world’s oldest
disability directory called the Best of the Web. I am (cough) 52 years
of age and a tetraplegic wheelchair user after a motorcycle accident in
1976, married, with no children and I much prefer the more predictable
company of my pet Jack Russell’s. I am a self-confessed workaholic, my
access auditing takes me to all areas of the UK and I have a client list
from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, DTI, DWP and many of the
U.K.’s largest businesses such as Capital One, Metropolitan Housing, UBS
Global Management etc. I take great pleasure in the challengers that
our businesses of today face with meeting the needs of people with
disabilities through the compliance of what was previously called the
Disability Discrimination Act DDA now The Equality Act 2010. I take
great pride in my work in finding the right solution at the right cost
so that businesses and services can meet the needs of the disabled
through access to their buildings and services rather than shy away from
making what can often be expensive and often unneeded alterations.
6. Ruth Cheesley
|
7. Erasmus Habermann
|
When I left Staffordshire University in 2007 with a higher certificate of education in multimedia computing with web media technology, I found it extremely hard to find a job.
I then started thinking I should really begin to write down my business idea – until then I had not really considered that running my own business would be a viable option for me. How wrong was I? In 2009 Habermann Translation was born…
We specialise in translations from English into German and from German to English. The business is currently run this under the permitted work scheme. Our aim is to provide an excellent service to our customers. We achieve this by tailoring our service to customer’s individual needs. We will not take on more than we can confidently handle, in other words if we get a job then we will not take other jobs on until we have completed and delivered it to the customer.
Our ethos is to deliver a good finished translation to the customer. To us it is quality not quantity that is the key to success. Feel free to take a look at what our customers have said about our company by visiting our website.
8. Abigail Stafford
 |
My name is Abigail Stafford, an 18-year-old student and freelance journalist with an invisible disability called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. I am the founder of HideAndSeek Invisible Disabilities Blog (www.hideandseekdisabilities.blogspot.com) which is a social platform where people from around the world can interact by sharing their stories, offering support and advice or learn more about invisible disabilities. Also, I have written numerous articles and pieces regarding life with an invisible disability.
After nine years of aching pain in my legs and joints, endless fatigue and many misdiagnoses, I was finally diagnosed with the hypermobility for EDS at the age of 16. EDS is currently an incurable hereditary condition in which the collagen in the body is too stretchy resulting in loose ligaments in the joints which causes a great deal of pain as well as subluxations and dislocations of the joints. But for many sufferers such as myself, EDS is a physically invisible condition and so we look “normal”.
After my diagnosis, I had to make many changes to my day to day life, I stopped playing sport and started to pace myself, acknowledging my limited ability. Nowadays, I know my limits and how to balance it with my social life (which is also important) I can manage my condition. To help me cope, I attend a monthly support group, and have some inspirational people in a similar situation, which got me thinking… what could I do to raise awareness about EDS?
So, I set up the HideAndSeek Disability blog in September 2011 and in the space of a few months it had received a lot of interest from all over the world with people contacting me asking to post material to share with others. The blog is regularly updated but I could still do more to raise awareness. I used my love for journalism and started writing articles about all aspects of my condition. The magazine Disability Now have recently featured my story ‘Living With The Less Obvious’ as a page spread in their latest issue. Also, I have contributed to various online blogs such as The Patient Experience to educate others about EDS.
9. Maria Hanson
|
The aim of the charity was to show that you don’t need to spend thousands making someone happy- even with not long to live – and by the same score – support and sponsorship in even the smallest way, would help me&dee thrive.
I now create around 20 special moment treats a month for when time is precious. I also have a fast track nomination process for Rainbows Hospice and the Teenage Cancer Unit at Birmingham along with children\’s oncology wards at Birmingham. I have also set up the “me&dee comfort pack scheme”. Listening to parents who, when their child is quickly admitted with a terminal condition, can go two days without a hot drink or washes, I wanted to try and address that. The comfort packs for parents contain everything two adults would need for two days from cups with hot drinks and soup sachets to towels and toiletries and pens etc. Children and teenagers have toiletries and age-appropriate toys.
These schemes will be going into Leciester Hospital early in the new year, along with Treetops Hospice. I have been to visit Hospice Hope in Ashby to see how me&dee may help them.
I would like to see the comfort pack scheme in hospitals all across England by the end of next year. I have set up a £10 sponsorship scheme to allow this to happen; this is working very well.
10. Rory Hoy
|
I started making music (electronic stuff using samples and also live instrumentation) when I was 18, influenced by DJs like Fatboy Slim and Freddy Fresh from USA. I’m lucky as my mum and dad are musicians, so music has always been a big part of our lives. I put some tracks on MySpace to see what the reaction would be and within two weeks I’d had amazing feedback, and the offer of a record contract with non-other than one of my heroes, Freddy Fresh, who runs Howlin’ Records in America. Now I’m on my fourth album, I’ve had vinyl EPs released through BigM Productions (Germany), various remixes and collaborations on various labels worldwide, including the legendary SKINT Records label, and lots of forthcoming releases in the pipeline. I’ve also since had e-mails from Fatboy Slim himself praising my work! Other people who have sent me messages of praise include Mr Scruff, DJ Cam, Ali Shaheed Muhamed from A Tribe Called Quest, Fake Blood/DJ Touche and many others. How cool is that?!
Here’s some of the other stuff “in a nutshell” I’ve been doing.
My music has been played regularly on BBC Radio Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show.
