The cinema is a useful place to begin a conversation with Toyosi Badejo-Okusanya about accessibility. She had seen the publicity for Barbie, a 2023 satirical fantasy comedy film directed by Greta Gerwig, and bought a ticket to watch it. There were no captions at her screening.
All the work of persuading her to come had succeeded, but at the point where she sat down to watch, much of the film was out of reach.
Badejo-Okusanya, who is deaf, knows what goes into getting a customer that far. Her career in marketing took her to Jo Malone London, where even the placement of a bottle on a shelf was something to think about.
“A report is something you file,” she says, “What a customer experiences is something you have to keep working on.”
She still notices where shops put things and wonders what the sales data told them. That attention to detail makes the cinema experience striking. A company can spend months making you want to see a film and fail to give a thought to whether you can follow it once you’re there.
She grew up in Nigeria, moved to London at 16 and studied law. Her family had expected a lawyer. They got the law degree, she says, and then she went into tech.
