Inkfire is a 100% disabled-led enterprise help company dealing with advertising, IT, digital assistant work, and web site design. However they’re not in search of a pat on the again.
When co-founder Imali Chislett spoke on the UK Parliament’s Home of Lords on the launch of the Lilac Overview into disabled entrepreneurship, she wasn’t there to inform a narrative about overcoming the percentages. “We’re not your inspiration, we’re your competitors.”
Being disabled-led is simple to name inspiring. For Inkfire, it’s their edge.
When your complete workforce is aware of what it’s wish to be missed, you construct issues that don’t overlook anybody. You discover what others miss. You design for the individuals most corporations overlook about, and the work finally ends up higher for everybody.
Right now, Inkfire has delivered greater than 250 initiatives, grown to a workforce of 15, and earned a number of nationwide awards whereas remaining solely disabled-led.
It began with a closed door
Earlier than the pandemic, Imali was working a company workplace job whereas managing critical bodily well being circumstances that had put her out and in of hospitals for years.
When COVID approached, she requested the flexibleness to work remotely because of important well being dangers. That request wasn’t accommodated, in the end main her to depart her function and reassess what work might appear like.
“I went freelance initially and simply began doing graphic design as a result of that’s what I knew how you can do,” she says. It picked up shortly.
Cameron, her husband and co-founder, is neurodivergent and manages bodily well being circumstances of his personal. The normal 9-to-5 didn’t swimsuit him both, so when Imali’s freelance work began rising, he shortly joined.
By 2023, what had began as freelance survival had became a full workforce.
“We by no means got down to have an enormous workforce,” Imali says. “It form of simply ended up that means as a result of we realized that our associates, our household, folks that we care about had been in the same place. And all of us needed to assist one another.”
Individuals first, all the time
Inkfire’s mannequin seems to be nothing like a conventional company. There aren’t any fastened hours. No one is compelled right into a client-facing function if that’s not their energy. The entire system is constructed round what every particular person must do their greatest work.
Some workforce members thrive working late at evening, whereas others choose early mornings. The workforce is not any stranger to working from ready rooms, infusion facilities, or wherever life occurs round them. The main focus is on reaching the end result, not on how they get there.
A consumer sees one level of contact, however behind the scenes, six or seven individuals could be contributing to the challenge, every selecting up duties that match their power and strengths at that second.
Regardless of the flexibleness, the workforce constantly delivers complicated initiatives for charities, social enterprises, SMEs, and nationwide organizations.
“We’re people-led, not work-led,” Imali says. “If we’re not having fun with it, what’s the purpose?”
The willingness to let individuals discover their very own path runs via all the pieces Inkfire does. Crew members have arrived considering they needed to work in a single space, tried it, hated it, and located their ardour someplace fully totally different.
“Everybody has the power,” Cameron says. “It’s simply whether or not you allow them to present it.”
Accessibility baked in, not bolted on
Most organizations deal with accessibility as a guidelines. Inkfire lives it. Once you expertise the limitations that dangerous design creates day by day, you don’t want somebody to inform you what’s unsuitable. You simply construct it proper from the beginning.
“Typically individuals will construct an internet site after which say, ‘Now we would like it to be accessible,’” Imali explains. “However really what you get isn’t excellent as a result of they didn’t give it some thought from the start.”
Their lived expertise shapes each resolution, from coloration palettes and alt textual content written by people to actual testing with disabled individuals throughout totally different entry wants.
At an occasion, a consultant from Be My Eyes (an app that helps blind and visually impaired individuals) examined certainly one of Inkfire’s web sites utilizing a braille field linked to her display reader. Her response: it was one of the vital accessible web sites she’d ever used.
The enterprise case is powerful too. Cameron factors to the curb minimize impact: curb cuts had been designed for wheelchair customers however ended up serving to mother and father with pushchairs, vacationers with suitcases, and everybody in between. Accessible web sites work the identical means.
Construct it proper from day one and it’s higher for all customers, with the added bonus of stronger search rankings.
Inkfire believes accessibility and nice design ought to go hand in hand. Compliance ought to by no means come on the expense of creativity, character, or person expertise.
If you wish to see what that appears like in observe, spend 5 minutes on Inkfire’s web site. You’ll want each web site was constructed that means.
Empathy and an entire lot of braveness
The work solely tells a part of the story. Behind it’s a tradition constructed on care and empathy.
When somebody has an ideal week, they may get a present card. When somebody’s having a tough one, they get a message to remind them the workforce’s acquired their again.
It sounds easy, however for individuals who’ve spent years being advised to push via or simply get on with it, having a workforce that truly notices makes a distinction.
That care extends past the prevailing workforce. Inkfire runs the Again To Work scheme, which provides disabled individuals three months of hands-on expertise on actual initiatives. They get to strive totally different roles, determine what matches. Three individuals who got here via the scheme are actually everlasting workforce members.
It takes braveness to function like this. To prioritize kindness over effectivity. To belief that if you happen to take care of individuals, the work will take care of itself.
That very same braveness reveals up in how they discover work, too.
Again in January 2026, Imali despatched a DM to psychological well being campaigner Ben West on Instagram to inform him his Causes to Keep web site wasn’t accessible. She didn’t anticipate a reply. That one message led to Inkfire serving to rebuild the positioning and make it accessible.
Causes to Keep has since been featured on the BBC, reposted by Jennifer Aniston, and opened the door to a collaboration with the Premier League. It’s turn out to be certainly one of Inkfire’s most high-profile initiatives.
Imali says they’ll all the time inform when Ben’s been on TV as a result of “we see all the pieces spike and we go, ‘Oh, right here we go once more.’”
A web site like that wants internet hosting that holds up underneath stress, particularly when the individuals visiting could be in a susceptible second.
Inkfire hosts all of their consumer websites with Hostinger. They switched about three years in the past after their earlier supplier’s pricing had turn out to be arduous to justify.
“We would have liked internet hosting that would develop alongside us with out changing into a headache to handle,” Imali says.
Web sites are sometimes the very first thing companies come to Inkfire for, and, from there, the connection tends to develop into different types of help. The aim is to maintain all the pieces underneath one roof, one set of touchpoints, making it straightforward for the individuals accessing them.
250 initiatives and counting
Once you do work that you just’re pleased with, individuals have a tendency to note. Inkfire received the Scope Awards 2025, which rejoice incapacity equality throughout the UK, and the Enterprise Incapacity Awards 2025, which acknowledge corporations main the way in which in incapacity inclusion.
And behind all of it is a enterprise constructed on the idea that individuals do their greatest work after they’re supported, trusted and given the chance to thrive.
“Collectively we’re a power to be reckoned with,” Imali says. “We’re extremely succesful collectively. We are able to do large issues.”
Simon is a dynamic Content material Author who loves serving to individuals rework their inventive concepts into thriving companies. With intensive advertising expertise, he continuously strives to attach the best message with the best viewers. In his spare time, Simon enjoys lengthy runs, nurturing his chilli vegetation, and mountaineering via forests. Observe him on LinkedIn.
