With “digital accessibility” at the fore, The Chooze shop will this week officially launch an e-commerce platform designed to meet the needs of NDIS participants.

Founded by Rick Negale, The Chooze Shop is an Amazon-like marketplace where customers can buy NDIS-approved goods – everything from toys to mobility aids.

Featuring only Australian sellers, the platform has a built-in NDIS invoicing solution that simplifies the bureaucratic process for buying goods, meaning purchases can be made in line with NDIS plan goals and it auto-fills NDIS support item reference numbers.

The Chooze Shop will launch on Thursday at Port Adelaide’s accessible venue Confession, and newly appointed CEO Kerry Kingham told InDaily that the site was set up to be as “accessible as it can be”.

“Every single product that goes on the site has an NDIS support item reference number,” she said.

Kingham said the site assists NDIS participants who manage their own plans, using tech to make things simpler such as automatic invoice generation.

“For the ones who are self-managed – which means they’re given that money by the NDIS and they can go and spend it as they choose – they still have to make sure they keep all the right documentation and receipts because they will be audited down the track,” she said.

“The Chooze Shop creates that singular invoice and stores it all on the site for them.”

Kingham said it was important that the company only deals with Australian sellers.

“We only deal with Australian sellers, so no overseas drop-shipping or anything like that. When they sign up to be a seller on Chooze they know that we will pay them within 14 days of confirmed delivery,” she said.

“We want buyers to have a fabulous experience. If you go to sites like Go-To Skincare or The Iconic, you know that you’re going to have a bespoke experience and you know there’ll be products that come up recommended for you.”

Kingham said digital accessibility was at the core of the site and included elements like colours, white space, fonts and more that made it more user-friendly for the target market.

“White space makes it visually easier for people to look at and distinguish the font that we use, same with the background colours. Everything was designed with that accessibility in mind,” she said.

“We’ve looked at the structure of the platform, how easy it is for people to order from many different sellers, and we’ve made sure we have a really wide range of products.

“Even our marketing team and quality manager have all been put through an ‘easy English’ course which helps them write in a way which is much easier to comprehend.”

Kingham said 50 per cent of the team have lived experience.

“We are very open about the fact that we want to support people with disabilities, but not only people that have disabilities but maybe their parents or their carers or support workers,” she said.

“Look at someone – a parent – that might have a full-time job and they have a child with a significant disability; it’s just not possible for them to work traditional hours. That’s where we could step in and say ‘We’re e-commerce, you can work from home, you can work wherever suits you’.

“There’s a lot of ways for us to support the sector without just employing a person with a disability.”