The Snowball app was designed by entrepreneur Simon Sansome to allow the disability network to determine accessibility credentials for services such as department stores and restaurants.
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A crippled entrepreneur, who created one of the UK’s apps for people with maximum disabilities after an embarrassing incident at a Spanish restaurant, has won a prestigious business award.
Simon Sansome, aged 41, was left paralysed from the waist down, after a bungled chiropractic session resulted in three of his vertebrae being crushed.
But one night to celebrate his rehab breakthroughs turned into a crisis when it became apparent that the first-floor bathroom was not wheelchair accessible.
As a result, he couldn’t make it to the toilet on time – and the experience inspired him to set up a Facebook group, rating venues in his home city for accessibility. The page grew quickly, with 1,000 joining in the first few weeks – and has now amassed more than 110,000 members.
Simon, from Leicester, created the Snowball app, which allows the network to review and record accessibility credentials for services such as shops, restaurants and hotels.
And it has been crowned winner of the Santander X Awards, a difference reconverted for startups, after receiving 40,000 applications across the country during the first year.
Since launch, Simon has also been able to protect Paralympians Hannah Cockroft OBE and Aaron Phipps MBE, to help spread the word about the platform.
Learning
He said: “After the accident, I said to myself, ‘there has to be a bigger solution’, there will have to be more people like me who have disorders all over the city.
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