“To foster more love and liberation in the world through inclusive design, for a just future where people and the planet thrive.”

– Deborah Campbell, founder Born Equal

Welcome to Born Equal Consults, we are an inclusive design practice empowering businesses, education spaces and organisations to step up and align with creative industry expectations of providing equitable and inclusive, spaces, services, products and systems. We want design to foster belonging and connection.

Our practice requires designers to challenge their own biases, and assumptions about what is ‘normal’ and by doing so can become oppression conscious. For too long society has tiptoed around the word Disability, generally seeing it as a bad word. Similarly, non-apparent disabling conditions like neurodiversity and mental health have huge stigma and ableism attached. This leads to division, upholds oppressive practices, prevents creativity from thriving and ultimately blocks sustainable business, social and environmental growth.

‘A study by Accenture found that companies that prioritize inclusive design outperformed their peers by 70% in terms of financial performance’.

While it is important to show the numbers, inclusive design must ultimately be about empowering people to access, use, and live better lives thanks to organisations’ products, services, work culture and systems. By bringing the human impact to life in your business strategy you avoid inclusive design being seen as a compliance-focused, check-the-box exercise - something founder, designer and consultant Deborah Campbell sees all too often.

Inclusive design is the responsibility of everyone in the design ecosystem, from leaders to product managers to fashion designers to digital marketers. When succesful it can drive revenue generating loyalty and a competitive edge.

‘A study by Deloitte found that companies with inclusive cultures are 6 times more likely to be innovative and 2 times more likely to meet or exceed financial targets.’

Meet The founder

Deborah Campbell’s mission is to empower organisations to see their unseen audience, by actively engaging and working ‘with’, rather than for neurodiverse and Disabled creatives to embed inclusive design into the heart of the work. A practice that embeds a diverse range of needs and abilities requires innovation and creativity and can lead to more practical solutions and an ethical competitive edge in your industry and education space.

‘It’s not about designing for or accommodating people with non-apparent Disabilities or physical Disabilities it’s about designing with them’

-Deborah Campbell Founder, Born Equal Consults

Deborah has used her neurodivergent creative insight to develop an essential inclusive design programme called CARE, which is rooted in her extensive experience in:

• Delivering inclusive design and language workshops for business and education that opens hearts and minds to stigma, bias and ableism and introduce an intentional approach to inclusive design with language tools that address low organizational understanding of why inclusive design matters. An inclusive design questioning methodology is employed to reveal that answers lie in the ‘questioning’.

• Sustainable fashion design and ethical production through her brand Deborah Campbell Atelier, working with John Lewis, Anthropologie EU and independents.

• Academic researcher and published author in sustainable supply chains.

• Teaching fellow and visiting lecturer in Inclusive design and language, sustainable fashion supply chains, freenwashing and regenerative design at Winchester School of Art and Kingston University

‘According to a report by the World Health Organization, creating an inclusive workplace can reduce absenteeism by up to 20%.’

CARE - Our four-step inclusive design programme - A series of workshops underpinned by our CARE pillars to help you discover, connect and work with your unseen audience. The sessions are essential for setting robust foundations for your organisation to begin building (or for iterating) a sustainable inclusive design practice.

Our CARE pillars will allow you to:

Create space and a place to have honest conversations that foster belonging, so inclusive design can thrive.

Address and become conscious of the stigma, stereotype and ableism that is often attached to working with design creatives with non-apparent conditions like Neurodiversity and mental health as well as broader physical Disabilities.

Realise the cultural and societal benefits of inclusive design to allow you to work creatively with Neurodivergent and Disabled people, whether they are customers, clients or employees.

Empower individuals and teams to centre, value and work ‘with’ and not on behalf of your unseen audience so they feature in every part of the design process.

Our Methodology

We support businesses, education and organisations to get to the heart of your unseen audience using an inclusive design question methodology so you can:

Understand the ethical and financial value of embedding inclusive design into your business, education or organisation, using human-centric principles that support people and the planet.

Recognise the sustainable equitable growth opportunities that come from designing inclusively. We change design narratives by sharing neurodiverse and Disability lived experiences that are deeply rooted in advocacy and underpinned by the UN sustainable development goals and the inner sustainable development goals. Our practice is innovating toward regenerative design, during this transition, our clients will benefit from an introduction to regenerative design futures.

Our programme provides opportunities for a research roundtable with access to diverse and intersectional lived experiences of Neurodivergent and Disabled creatives.

‘Designing ‘with’ neurodiverse and Disabled creatives unlocks creative ideas and narratives that support a just future for people and the planet to thrive equitably.’

-Deborah Campbell, Founder Born Equal Consults

Why work with us?

Because we care and want to build design systems that foster belonging and connection and that are created for love and liberation to thrive. Our practice also requires designers to challenge their own biases, and assumptions about what is ‘normal’ and by doing so can become oppression conscious. We believe inclusive design is the future of design and is the responsibility of everyone in the design ecosystem, from leaders to product managers to fashion designers to digital marketers.

Our Inclusive Design programme is for:

• Business and organisations who are socially conscious and either design products, services, and systems, from fashion design to product design, to creatives designing marketing campaigns.

• B Corporations, and organisations planning to go for B corporation status.

• Universities wanting to embed inclusive design into the curriculum and need a foundation to start from.

Inclusive Design is about thinking holistically of the characteristics that make people who they are in everyday moments. Your audience, employees and customers are multifaceted and interconnected, and your design must be created with that in mind. When we think and create in silos we build homogenous experiences, environments and products and designing in silos without considering diverse groups oversimplifies. When we innovate ‘with’ diverse groups and ‘not for’ diverse groups we connect with unseen audiences. Inclusive design is the route to social justice and liberation.

‘Neurodiversity as a creative practice unlocks design questioning, which provokes critical discussion for a more inclusive design response and narrative.’

-Deborah Campbell, founder Born Equal Consults