Fiona Jarvis is the CEO of Blue Badge Style. Fiona established the www.bluebadgestyle.com website in 2007, with an aim to highlight – in a positive way – where the ‘equal provisions of goods and services are unreasonably deficient’.
The intention of the website is to act as an agent for change, altering venues’ mind-set toward accessibility. Accessibility needs to be treated as an important prerequisite, rather than something a venue is compelled to do by legislation.
Blue Badge Style has launched a hugely successful Mobile App which finds cool places to visit near people’s location. The App has been recommended by The Guardian and has featured on BBC Click. The App rates venues on style, accessibility and facilities, up to a maximum of 3 BBS Ticks. Her ‘Leutenants’ review and score locations across the UK and worldwide. In this way she hopes that venues will aspire to achieve the maximum accreditation.
We admire Fiona’s unending passion and drive to Ensure that wherever you go or whatever you do it is a positive, cool, fashionable and elegant experience. Style and disability are not mutually exclusive.
About Fiona:
Fiona Jarvis first realised she might have MS when she kept falling off her high-heels! ‘People thought I was drunk – and that was the confusing thing, as I could well have been.’ That was over 20 years ago and today she uses a wheel chair to glide through life.
‘ I have always refused to give up being stylish, whether that’s eating in smart restaurants, wearing elegant clothes or going on glamorous holidays. Mobility, or the lack of it, doesn’t and shouldn’t mean you can’t have style! Blue Badge Style can help you to have a positive, cool, elegant experience. As Coco Chanel said,“fashion fades, only style remains the same”.
Becoming progressively disabled, but determined to maintain her social life, has alerted Fiona to the lack of information for stylish, discerning people with mobility issues; a shop or restaurant may have a ramp, but how far away are the Ladies and down how many flights of steps? NHS crutches may work, but where do you find a walking stick to accessorise a glamorous outfit?
The Blue Badge Style site has this information and has already established a small community; like a 17th century Salon, it is an assembly of guests consisting of, if not leaders, then a stylish and informed group.