Back to top arrow

About Us

SimplyOpen is the global inclusive insight community of Open Inclusion.

Open Inclusion Limited is a disability and age inclusive insight, design and innovation agency founded in 2015, based in the UK and growing globally. Our mission is to improve the accessibility and usability of design for all consumers of mainstream products and services.

We work to ensure Human Centred Design considers more specifically and practically which humans are at the centre of the designs. This helps us understand who may be excluded if we don't extend our perspectives and practices.

Started before Open's formation our disability and age inclusive research community has been providing insight to major commercial brands and government organisations. Working across many sectors including retail, banking, consumer brands, technology, transport, health and leisure, the research and insight community was rebranded and combined with Open's inclusive design team 7 years ago.
The Open Inclusion team are presenting at an event.
An illustration of a diverse group of 7 people having a discussion
Our members include more than 600+ people in the UK and 1000+ globally with a very wide range of access needs, ages and other markers of diversity. They engage in paid online surveys, focus groups, usability testing, co-creation, ethnography, mystery shopping and other research formats as and when they wish.

We are now expanding our insight community and capability to even more regions of the world. Come and join us. This is the opportunity for consumers with access needs from across the globe to be heard and understood. This will influence brands we work with who are listening and wanting to progress the inclusiveness of their global customer offerings.

Our communities

The broader group is organised into seven sub communities, each represented by a Community Lead and Open team member who has lived experience in line with their community. The communities are:

  • Hearing
  • Sight
  • Neurodiversity
  • Mobility / dexterity
  • Chronic health conditions
  • Mental health conditions
  • Just getting older
A sign language user communicating at a roundtable.

Experienced team

Over half of our team are people with lived experiences of disability (visible and hidden). Our research is co-created and tested with the community to ensure it is inclusive in language, format and ways that people can perceive the questions and communicate their responses.

Our researchers are members of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, the Market Research Society and the Design Research Society. Our research complies with the Market Research Society Code of Conduct and data privacy is managed in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations.
‍
Open works to ensure all our research is beautifully inclusive, practically informative and decision supportive.

A person using an Oculus VR headset at the XRAccess Symposium in New York.