TED stands for technology, entertainment and design. TEDTalks are opportunities given to public speakers to present a great idea to the world. They take place either at the main TED annual event or at one of their satellite events. They are all 18 minutes or less in length and are filmed, with the videos later published afterwards on TED.com, provided they have still adhered to TED's strict criteria.

TEDxTalks (pronounced TEDex Talks) are ones that takes place anywhere around the world,  TEDx meaning local to a particular community, rather than at one of the main TED events. A great deal of thought and preparation goes into both the overall event and into each individual presentation, sometimes for as long as a year in advance. 

Dale Howath had been planning a TEDx event in Newport, on the Isle of Wight for some time. The theme of the TEDx event was "If not now, when?" and Dale approached our very own Clive Loseby and asked if he would give a presentation at the event. He had been reading many of Clive's posts on LinkedIn about the subject closest to his heart: how to test website accessibility and how to help people understand what it actually meant to the live experience of disabled people/

It was a great honour for Clive to be invited and he spent many months in preparation for the talk. Clive has spent 15 years, travelling across the South of England, as well as giving many presentations online, spreading his message and always having it enthusiastically received The only difficulty was that it would generally be to small groups of people at networking events. To be able to give a presentation on the meaning of accessibility with regard to the digital space and to have it available online afterwards was something he simply jumped at.

The presentation was well-received and was subsequently made available on the TEDx YouTube Channel. In 13 minutes, Clive was clearly and calmly able to explain the meaning of accessibility through the use of the example of two set of doors: one with handles and the other that opened automatically.

Clive and his Team of Disabled Testers are accessible people, They live and breathe this every day and this came across clearly in his presentation. He suffered a head injury when he was a passenger in car crash in 1989, which has left him with severe memory loss. Despite months of preparation, he was unable to give his TedxTalk without notes and, although the event organisers supplied a lectern, an attempt was made to keep it off-camera. During the dress rehearsal, it proved to be unsuccessful as Clive kept turning his head to check his notes so it was decided to actually make the lectern part of the presentation! This in itself gave a new definition, accessibility, to the TedxTalk.

6 months later, TED contacted Clive and informed him that they would like to feature his talk, the only one of many Tedex Talks given on the day, on their main channel TED.com and in January 2023, it was indeed featured!

One year later, thanks to TED.com, Clive's talk on making the web more accessible has in itself been able to define accessibility in a digital framework to more than 950,000 people! This amazing experience has provided a legacy that can give everyone who asks "What is Accessibility" in relation to websites wants, a clear answer!

We hope you enjoy the video and, at the end, you will learn a simple trick that will allow you to test website accessibility on any website! You may even be inspired to join Clive and his global army of accessible people!