Some things I learned about freelancing, LinkedIn and life, after offering accessibility training for a quid

If you have a quid you could book a session at www.theaccessibilitybriefing.com (if you like.)

In early 2025, I was made redundant.

So, I put together my CV showing what an exemplary employee I was and set about trying to find a new job.

It went really well, and I was offered one.

And, to my surprise more than anyone else’s, I said no. It could have been something to do with the fact I found the interview so overwhelming (no fault of theirs, btw!) that afterwards I walked around London in a daze, was ‘hit by a motorbike’ (it clipped my elbow quite gently as it slowed to a stop at some traffic lights) and promptly burst into floods of tears. I would have been embarassed, but I think the people of London are used to this sort of thing.

This peculiar episode told me something quite clearly. I no longer wanted to be an employee. In fact, maybe I no longer could be an employee.

I decided I was going to do my own thing, and I’ve been really lucky to have a) a network of lovely people I’ve met throughout my career who think I am competent and b) loads of knowledge about accessibility after working in the RNIB social team.

The Accessibility Briefing was born, which led me to the first thing I learned:

People sort of don’t care about accessibility?

I know this sounds really harsh, and you’re probably sat there thinking: “Well, I care about accessibility!” and I’m here to tell you - you’re in the minority.

You must be! Hardly any of the content on social media is accessible. That’s a really hard and shocking truth I’ve learned working alongside disabled people.

And the reason for this is that the people creating the content - corporate marketing teams, ad agencies, content creators - largely don’t even consider that their content should be accessible. This is often simply due to a lack of awareness. Marketing briefs say they want to target skateboarding grannies, without considering for a second that these grannies might be losing their hearing.

When you lay out the case for accessibility - eg that it not only helps disabled people, but can also help your content reach a wider audience and perform better - people are all ears. So I suppose what I should be saying is: most people don’t care about accessibility enough to spend any of their training budget on it.

There are exceptions to this, obv. Charities are incredible, and so far ahead of high street brands and huge corporations when it comes to adding alt text and all that jazz. And there are a few big brands who are head and shoulders above the rest (your Monzos, your NASAs, your innocents).

But for the rest, I realised that with a lack of awareness and shrinking training budgets, there needed to be as few barriers as possible.

Enter, £1 training sessions.

People deserve to learn even if they don’t have any money

It’s tough out there right now, pals.

Not long after announcing my £1 sessions, I had a lovely message from somebody who said they were facing redundancy after returning from maternity leave, and were hugely grateful for the opportunity to expand their knowledge.

Now, I’m not saying that all freelancers and training businesses should offer up their wares for nowt. Because it’s just as tough for us, for sure.

I’m lucky to be able to have a couple of clients on board, offering me the huge honour of being able to pay my mortgage every month. So, I felt like I was able to take the risk. It feels worthwhile, because I properly love accessibility, and the idea that I’m making the internet more accessible for my disabled friends - and everyone.

People are generous

Okay, so, full disclosure, I found this feature on Acuity Scheduling where you can enter a ‘minimum’ cost for a session, while allowing people to pay more if they want to.

And quite a few people have. I’ve been genuinely chuffed to bits with this.

I wanna be clear - I’m not expecting folk to pay more, or resenting anybody who paid a quid. After all, that’s what it costs. But it’s really heartening to know if people can or want to pay more, they do. And that helps me keep doing it for the people who can’t.

The LinkedIn algorithm is shagged

It was a big decision, you know, offering this £1 accessibility training. I didn’t know if it was going to make any financial sense. I was very nervy about announcing the whole thing. I agonised.

But I at least thought that, when I did, people would talk about it. There’d be some degree of buzz. Maybe some people would be mad about it? I dunno.

Well, I posted the news and… crickets.

LinkedIn knew I was trying to promote something worthwhile I was doing, rather than writing an asanine take about making a stray dog a CEO. It knew I cared about it. It could smell it.

And it didn’t like it.

After a couple of hours, it’d shown my post to roughly 200 people. And, to their credit, a fair percentage of those 200 people had engaged, shared, left comments… It definitely wasn’t the fact that the post was rubbish and was bound to flop.

LinkedIn was suppressing me.

So, I did the only thing I could think of. I spent a week, promoting my training every day, through the format of accessible Simpsons memes. And now, my first training session is full up. But why did it have to be such hard work? Why do we have to pretend we’re not talking about the things we want to talk about? Cursed website.

You can just do things

This is something it’s taken me a long time to learn in life. Decades, actually.

When you’re an employee, you sort of get used to being told what to do. There’s a degree of autonomy, sure, but largely you stay in your lane. In fact, this is something I used to pride myself on. When asked to do anything outside the narrow confines of my job role, I would bristle. Did they not know how busy and important and creative I was?

Freelancing has shown me a whole other side to this. Yes, you can have your niche. But what if nobody wants to pay you for your niche for the entire month of August? Well, then you have to do something else.

In my freelancing life I’ve done some wonderful accessibility training sessions, for folk like Monzo and lots of lovely charities. But I’ve also done copywriting, social media management, audio described a production of The Crucible, offered to be a runner on a video shoot, and I’m due to moderate an online conference for a really big/cool charity quite soon. That last thing is peak “this is not in my wheelhouse but it sounds like fun and also gets me in front of this great company.”

I’ve strayed from the point, which is that I’m much more open to giving things a try. Offering up my wares for a single English pound very much seemed like something I shouldn’t do. But it was something I wanted to try, so I did.

And listen! I’ve had one session fully booked, with three more just announced, and I’ve made about £80. Happy days.

Interesting side note, I also got quite a lot of enquiries through for team training, because it helped me get my name out there. The universe provides, etc.

Anywhoo, thank you for reading my first substack. I will be sharing lots more accessibility tips, reflections on freelance life and diatribes about LinkedIn’s algorithm. Please tell your pals.