Martin Austin MBE

Managing Director, Nimbus Disability

Community Action
Image of Martin Austin

Martin is Managing Director and Founder of Nimbus Disability, a social enterprise consultancy service leading a range of industries by providing practical and tangible support in meeting and exceeding legal obligations toward disabled people.

Nimbus offers a range of services including The Access Card, which is a current recipient of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation Category. The internationally recognised Access Card is the only scheme of its type in the world offering a universal and consistent way for disabled people to evidence and communicate their rights to providers quickly and discreetly – including through a range of digital integrations such as ticketing.

A believer in the power of sport for disabled people, Martin plays in and coaches wheelchair basketball squads, including the gold-winning University of Nottingham wheelchair basketball team, and has also represented Great Britain in Para Ice Hockey – the Paralympic version of Ice Hockey.

This passion for the impact of sport led to Martin being a founding member, and Chair of, The Richard Whitehead Foundation which provides sports equipment, opportunities and monitoring to disabled people.

Martin was named in the New Year Honours List 2020 as an MBE for services to Accessibility in the Tourism and Entertainment Sectors.

“I have a genuine and absolute devotion to the social model of disability and this created the foundations for everything that I, Nimbus and The Access Card stand for.”