UK firms championing inclusive innovation awarded £2.5 million

Innovate UK is helping 50 companies to develop inclusive innovations, from smart gloves that translate sign language to digital assistants for people with dementia.

Fifty pioneering companies across the UK have each been awarded £50,000 to further develop their inclusive innovations that include universally accessible electric vehicle chargers and curriculum-aligned mobile games that are revolutionising learning.

These companies are winners of the inaugural Inclusive Innovation Award announced today by the UK’s national innovation agency Innovate UK.

The value of inclusive innovation

The Inclusive Innovation Award encourages all parts of society to engage with innovation as a process that they can both benefit from and contribute to.

Inclusive innovation rejects the notion that a product or service should be designed around the ‘average customer’.

By ensuring that accessibility and inclusion are considered from the outset of innovation design, businesses can maximise the chances of commercial success by broadening their potential customer base. It also mitigates the risk of creating innovations that deepen existing inequalities and widen societal gaps.

Exclusive innovation, on the other hand, results in aspects of modern living being inaccessible to certain people, and to communities missing out on opportunities.

One example of an exclusive innovation went viral when a video of sinks at a hotel in Atlanta was posted online in 2015.

The video shows a soap dispenser failing to detect dark skin but working well on light skin. This is just one of many innovations designed without all users in mind, resulting in products that are not fit for purpose.

Diverse range of innovations

The Inclusive Innovation Award winners breaking ground in inclusive innovation include:

Spanning the whole of the UK

There is a high level of diversity among the leaders of the winning businesses:

• 67% are women
• 38% are Asian, Black or another ethnic minority group
• 52% have unpaid care responsibilities
• 22% identify as disabled

There are also multiple winners in every nation and region of the UK, including:

Giving a voice to everyone

BrightSign founder Hadeel Ayoub said that her company’s award will help it make its life-changing technology more accessible to the most vulnerable in society. She commented:

We are working towards making our innovation as affordable as possible, so that every person who could benefit from a BrightSign glove is able to access one. Our hope is that one day, we can help to give a voice to everyone, everywhere.

Improved life chances

Coracle Inside, which is taking its innovation into 85 prisons across England and Wales and has recently been awarded a King’s Award for Promoting Opportunity through Social Mobility, has ambitions to further tackle the digital skills gap. James Tweed, Coracle founder explained:

We want to help more people gain access to education and develop digital skills. By helping prisoners, we hope to help them leave a life of crime. Currently, the UK loses £18 billion per year in reoffending.

Breaking down barriers

Human Beauty founder Millie Flemington-Clare, whose goal is breaking down barriers in the cosmetics industry that prevent disabled people being included and represented, commented on winning the Inclusive Innovation Award:

This award will help me achieve my long-term ambition for my innovation, which is to establish my brand as the go-to source for authentic and innovative adaptive beauty products.