At the EN Indy Expo on 17 October 2025, correspondent, Heather Nicholls, sat down with Orla Pearson, director of My Clear Text, to talk about accessibility within the events industry.
In the interview, Pearson also discussed the inaugural Accessible Events Show, which took place at The Drum in Wembley, London, which she founded alongside Catherine Grinyer and Dr Shani Dhanda.
Pearson has had a long career in accessibility, starting her career at the BBC in the team that developed live captioning for broadcast and then moving into the events world and created, My Clear Text and Access Loop to deliver live captioning at events.
She said: “The reason we pulled the accessible events show together is because we kept going out to try and educate the industry about accessibility and we didn’t feel like we were making enough impact so we decided to make a whole show about it.”
She said: “The lack of understanding and knowledge is the biggest barrier to accessibility in events. This isn’t an easy win, it’s very nuanced. We are talking about people and what they need. You are trying to balance all this needs and it is quite difficult. You need to talk to experts, to good suppliers, you need to educate yourself on what you’re trying to achieve. You need to understand that there is no truly accessible event, you can only do your best to try and meet the needs of as many people as you can. But it’s not that difficult, it’s just a different way of thinking.”
She added: “True accessibility is an attitude, it’s a mindset. It’s about training your mind to think about other people. At the beginning of your event, ask yourselves, am I including everybody? One in four people in the UK has a disability. Make sure that at the very beginning you plan it in because retrospective accessibility never works.”
Watch the full podcast here.
