Our family. Our reason why.
Born from experience.
Built to give people choice.
All About Access began with our daughter, her experience of sight loss, and a simple family wish: that enjoying a meal out should include the freedom to explore and choose from the menu for yourself.
Where it all began
It started with a simple family wish.
In January 2015, our daughter Eleanor was diagnosed with a childhood brain tumour. Her sight was profoundly affected and she is now registered severely sight impaired.
As our daughter has grown older, she has wanted the same ordinary independence as other teenagers: to have her own voice, make decisions for herself and enjoy time out with family and friends.
Like so many families, we love visiting restaurants and cafés together. But a beautifully designed printed menu can be difficult to read when you have little useful sight. Sometimes it means waiting for somebody else to read every item aloud, or trying to make a choice without having all the information in front of you.
A simple question
Why should choosing from a menu be harder than it needs to be?
We don’t want to change what people love about eating out. We want everyone to feel part of it. There’s something quietly important about being able to browse the same dishes as everybody else, discover something new and decide what appeals to you.
Accessible braille menus can make a huge difference for people who read braille, but many blind and partially sighted people do not. Others need larger print, different contrast, screen-reader support or simply a little more time and privacy to explore their choices.
That idea stayed with us. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience in IT and Apple technology, All About Access was developed around a simple idea: using the accessibility features already built into everyday smartphones & devices to help more people explore restaurant menus independently.
What began as a response to our family’s experience has grown into All About Access: a practical service designed to help venues offer more people a choice about how they read and explore a menu.
The values behind the work
Personal by nature.
Professional by design.
We’re a small family with a personal reason for building this. Our background in technology helps us translate that experience into something practical for venues. The goal isn’t to reinvent hospitality – it’s to give more customers the freedom to enjoy it.
Looking beyond our own experience
Inspired by one experience.
Built for many more.
Not everyone has the same needs. The aim isn’t one perfect menu for one person – it’s more ways for different people to access the same information with dignity.
It soon became clear that a menu like this could help people with very different needs: from low vision and age-related reading difficulties to people who prefer a different font, need more processing time, or find it difficult to communicate their choices aloud. We’re still learning, and we want the service to keep improving.
Growing with purpose
A thoughtful business.
With room to give back.
Our purpose is to make everyday places more welcoming. As All About Access grows, we also hope to support charitable work in sight loss and wider inclusion.
