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Soda's mission and aims

Soda’s mission is to help organisations engage people with lived-experience of disability, chronic illness, neurodivergence, and those facing the most significant health inequalities in design processes, as experts.

We work with impact driven companies and public sector organisations who want to reach more users by centring accessibility and inclusion in everything they do.

When people with lived-experience lead the way in creating and innovating healthcare solutions, the impact is more inclusive and more equitable products and services for all.

A dark skinned wheelchair user with long hair and a beanie sits at a small table, using their laptop to participate in a video meeting. The laptop screen is shown to their right, with the call being live captioned. The main speaker is a dark skinned person wearing a hijab and glasses, and 3 other participants are at the bottom of the screen, in smaller windows. In the bottom right corner, a yellow service dog bounds towards the wheelchair user.

What we do

Soda can support you in your journey to accessibility and inclusion through:

Co-Production

You know users and communities are experts by experience, but you don't know how to go about bringing them into your design processes. From co-design workshops to full scale co-produced health initiatives, we help you identify and deliver the right level of engagement at the right time in a productive, non-tokenistic way.

User-Driven Insights

You want to find out more about how people with different access needs experience barriers to your healthcare product or service. We will connect you with a tailored community of disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent innovators to provide insights and solutions to your design challenges.

Inclusive Design Learning

You want to learn more about Inclusive Design and how to practice it in your organisation. We create cutting-edge learning programmes, workshops and events delivered by disabled experts to shift mindsets and transform how you work.

Our Values

Foster Belonging

Through opportunities for long-term involvement in Soda’s work and community, we ensure people we work with feel they belong to a collective that is wider than one single design process. We take a trauma-informed approach which acknowledges that people bring different histories with them which can impact their sense of belonging in the present.

Centre Accessibility

Accessibility is woven into how we work; we ensure that access needs are always considered across cognitive, physical, sensory, mental,, non-visible, undiagnosed disabilities, and neurodiversity. We recognise that access benefits all, not just people who live with disability. We are committed to going beyond compliance to accessibility standards and always learning to adapt through new approaches.

Design Justice

We are committed to fighting oppression and prejudice. We follow the principles of design justice, which centre decolonisation and the perspectives of intersectional identities, including QTBIPOC people. We are committed to an anti-racist way of working and actively look for opportunities to bring a more equitable approach to design processes.

Reflect and Learn

Inclusion and resisting prejudice is a journey; there are always new ideas and approaches to iterate and improve from. We recognise that we don’t always get it right. We are curious and committed to learn and adapt our own practice from every design process, and are always open to change.