Adaptive Atelier, the accessibility technology startup founded by Toyosi Badejo-Okusanya, is working to reshape how African businesses design digital products for people with disabilities by embedding accessibility directly into websites and platforms.
Launched in 2023, the company is targeting a persistent gap across the continent’s digital economy where accessibility considerations are often overlooked during product development, leaving millions of users excluded from everyday online experiences.
By combining real-time interface personalisation tools with continuous compliance monitoring, Adaptive Atelier aims to help brands move beyond basic accessibility features and adopt inclusive design as standard practice.
For Badejo-Okusanya, Adaptive Atelier’s mission extends beyond company growth metrics. Instead, the focus is on embedding accessibility into the foundations of digital economies while creating participation pathways for disabled professionals.
“The goal isn’t to build a large company,” she added. “It’s to build a scalable accessibility economy.”
What you need to know
In 2017, Badejo-Okusanya relocated to the United Kingdom, where she experienced a markedly different approach to disability support.
Through the National Health Service, hearing aids were provided as part of routine care, while universities incorporated accessibility as a baseline requirement rather than an optional add-on.
“Nigeria showed me how culture and stigma can shrink a person’s sense of possibility,” she said. “The UK showed me what happens when systems create room for you to exist fully and people are genuinely held accountable.”
The contrast between cultural perception and institutional support would later inform her entrepreneurial path.
Launching Adaptive Atelier to reframe accessibility
In 2023, Badejo-Okusanya founded Adaptive Atelier, an accessibility technology company focused on improving how digital products and platforms are designed for people with disabilities across Africa.
The startup operates within a region where assistive technologies remain scarce and accessibility considerations are often absent from early product development cycles.
With an estimated 35 million Nigerians living with disabilities, the company argues that many businesses remain unaware of how inaccessible design can exclude large segments of potential users.
Adaptive Atelier works primarily with beauty, fashion and lifestyle brands, helping them embed accessibility features directly into websites and digital products rather than retrofitting solutions after launch.
Addressing overlooked users
While accessibility conversations frequently focus on visible impairments, Badejo-Okusanya observed that neurodivergent and cognitive accessibility needs are often overlooked in product design discussions.
Features such as image alt text and video captions have become more common for visually impaired and deaf users. However, individuals with ADHD, dyslexia, autism or epilepsy frequently encounter digital environments that remain cognitively overwhelming or difficult to navigate.
Adaptive Atelier was built to address these gaps and challenge the perception of accessibility as a niche concern.
Building an accessibility infrastructure stack
The company’s approach centres on two core products designed to address both user experience and compliance oversight.
AdaptiveWiz, an API-based integration layer, enables users to personalise digital interfaces in real time. Rather than enforcing a uniform experience, the tool allows individuals to activate profiles that adjust contrast levels, reduce motion, simplify layouts and emphasise key content elements according to their needs.
Businesses can integrate AdaptiveWiz through lightweight scripts or APIs, enabling accessibility improvements without requiring a complete website redesign. The adaptations align with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, a global benchmark for accessible digital content, and are validated through testing by disabled professionals.
Complementing this is AdaptiveTest, a monitoring and diagnostics platform that scans websites for accessibility violations. The system flags issues such as missing alt text, inadequate colour contrast, keyboard navigation barriers and structural markup errors, creating a continuous feedback loop for improvement.
Together, the products form what Badejo-Okusanya describes as an accessibility infrastructure layer that combines personalisation with ongoing compliance monitoring.
Creating economic pathways through accessibility
Beyond product development, Adaptive Atelier is attempting to cultivate what it terms an “accessibility economy”. The company operates with a core team spanning Lagos and London and a distributed network of more than 5,000 disabled professionals who contribute to platform testing and consultancy work.
Since launch, the startup reports serving approximately 5,000 users through audits and integrations.
Its business model comprises four revenue streams: enterprise accessibility consulting, subscription licensing for AdaptiveWiz, marketplace commissions from AdaptiveTest engagements that connect companies with disabled consultants, and corporate training workshops.
Badejo-Okusanya argues that this structure transforms accessibility from a compliance obligation into an employment opportunity, particularly in Nigeria where disability unemployment rates remain high.
Competing with automation while prioritising lived experience
Adaptive Atelier operates in a landscape populated by automated accessibility testing tools such as Google Lighthouse, WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, and accessiBe. These platforms primarily focus on detecting technical compliance gaps.
However, Badejo-Okusanya contends that automation alone cannot fully capture user experience quality.
“They can tell you if alt text exists, but not if it is actually useful,” she explained. “They can check colour contrast ratios, but not if a neurodivergent user finds the layout overwhelming.”
Adaptive Atelier’s differentiation lies in combining artificial intelligence diagnostics with structured human validation, enabling companies to access both compliance insights and experiential feedback.
Navigating structural and regional constraints
The company continues to confront structural challenges, including accessibility standards largely designed for Western markets and African digital ecosystems characterised by bandwidth limitations, multilingual contexts and infrastructure variability.
To address this, Adaptive Atelier is iterating on AdaptiveWiz to function effectively in low-connectivity environments, a critical requirement for scalability across emerging markets.
Looking ahead, Badejo-Okusanya expects artificial intelligence to play a transformative role in accessibility design but emphasises the importance of inclusive development processes.
“AI is going to make accessibility scalable in ways that were impossible five years ago,” Badejo-Okusanya said, but was careful to add a condition that “only if it’s built with disabled people, not just for them.”
The entrepreneur is now working to reshape digital environments across Africa, demonstrating that accessibility is neither charity nor optional compliance, but essential infrastructure for inclusive innovation.
Talking Points
It is significant that Adaptive Atelier is approaching accessibility as infrastructure rather than an afterthought, positioning inclusive design as a core component of Africa’s digital economy rather than a compliance checkbox.
At Techparley, we observe that many African digital products prioritise speed, mobile optimisation and growth metrics, often sidelining accessibility in early development cycles. Adaptive Atelier’s model challenges this pattern by embedding accessibility directly into product architecture from the outset.
Particularly notable is the company’s emphasis on neurodivergent and cognitive accessibility, an area that remains underrepresented in mainstream accessibility conversations despite affecting a substantial portion of digital users.
The marketplace element that connects businesses with disabled consultants introduces an economic dimension to accessibility, transforming testing from unpaid feedback into professional work and creating participation pathways for historically excluded talent.
As Adaptive Atelier grows, partnerships with design agencies, developer communities and digital platforms could accelerate integration and normalise accessibility within standard product workflows.
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