We’ve since evolved even further to launch Podium – the first jobs platform for disabled freelancers.
Not long after launching, we won contracts with Chelsea FC and HSBC. It was intimidating moving from the pool to the boardroom, but I knew we had a worthy cause and, evidently, so did the big corporate players. Without laying these foundations, you can’t support truly diverse workforces. We work alongside businesses, transforming their culture and operations to ensure everything is authentically inclusive. "My life experiences taught me that just because you do things differently, doesn’t mean you can’t do them at all"
We’re a melting pot of different ethnicities, ages, and genders, and we meet in the middle to talk honestly and openly to businesses about our experiences, and break down barriers to access. Everyone at TAP has some form of disability, and is committed to achieving diversity. We created TAP to change the way businesses approach diversity, and naturally, that starts with our own team. We had our lightbulb moment, and The Ability People (TAP) was born. We were arriving at the same problem from different angles: diverse talent was being ruled out of the hiring game before it had even started, and we needed to take action. It was around this time that I met Steve Carter, who’d been in recruitment for more than 30 years, and was tired of being presented with the same pool of candidates. So, I was determined to carve out a place for the disabled community in the world of work I was about to enter into myself. My life experiences taught me that just because you do things differently, doesn’t mean you can’t do them at all. It was the employers who needed to change. But on hearing about the employment gap, I refused to see disability as a setback or accept that it should control a person’s opportunities. Some setbacks are beyond your control – an injured shoulder for example. I called time, retired from the sport, and heard that news report on the employment gap while embarking on new beginnings. As a result, I didn’t go for the Games in Rio de Janeiro that summer. I had to have surgery for a hernia in 2015 and fell behind with training. The thing that eventually slowed me down was completely unrelated to being disabled. Instead, they’re met with closed doors and excuses. So many disabled people have this same drive to succeed, but are attempting to work in sectors that don’t champion their difference. Although my disability determined my race classification, it didn’t determine my chances of success. I realise now that this is what sets my experience of being disabled at odds with that of so many others. My can-do attitude ensured my hard work in the pool was rewarded. I also sustained a shoulder injury which left me without the use of my strongest arm in training. My mum – my best friend and my biggest supporter – passed away not long beforehand. Over the course of my career, I won five gold medals across European and World Championships and although I failed to qualify for the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney, I went on to get bronze, silver and gold in the following three Games. It was one of the few places where my disability didn’t seem to matter. I wasn’t inherently gifted, but swimming was a great outlet, and I embraced it with everything I had.
I felt free in the pool and powered through my training sessions. I was born with cerebral palsy, so she enrolled me in swimming classes to strengthen my muscles. My mum first took me to the pool when I was three. This outlook was reaffirmed when I went swimming. But at that point in my life, I was doing almost everything my able-bodied friends were doing I just had to go about it in a different way. These impair us more than our disabilities ever could. I now realise that I was simply naïve about the microaggressions society exhibits to discriminate against disabled people. Winning my medals came with a huge amount of hard work, but growing up – and throughout my swimming career – I never really considered myself to be disabled. But as a recently retired Paralympian, my own career was largely free from most of the barriers that block the path of many. On a human level, I related so closely to the people I was hearing about. It stood in complete contrast to my own experience as a disabled athlete. This meant that barely half of the UK’s 13.9 million disabled people were employed, compared to 80% of able-bodied people. I was watching a report about the disability employment gap, and heard a statistic that left me shocked and appalled: the gap stood at more than 30%, and had remained that way for a decade. My career was re-routed in a single moment in 2017. Paralympic swimming gold medallist Liz Johnson has swapped the pool for the boardroom in a bid to close the disability employment gap for good