What is accessibility?

Many organisations have taken great strides in recent years to give disabled customers an improved experience, but have you considered the accessibility of all parts of your facility?  

If you haven’t, this could be because you don’t have practical policies and procedures in place. You may not have considered physical access. For example, do you have a useable accessible toilet, or if you have stairs and a customer cannot use them what other alternatives can you consider? Have management, coaches, employees and volunteers received training? They may not have considered the experience from the perspective of a disabled person. If all your materials are in block capitals or have no colour definition is that accessible? If someone has a visual impairment how would they access your website? 

All of these are questions I have been asked as a disabled person and as a CEO of a charity and it’s not always easy to know the answer, especially when you consider that in the UK there are more than 11 million people with a disability, impairment or limiting long-term illness. The needs of these people may not be immediately evident – not everyone is using a wheelchair! For organisations from blue chip companies through to a local dance studio, this means planning for a broad range of needs. 

So where is the best place to start? Personally I would recommend you don’t panic, but you may want to consider some of the following points: 

All of these points typically will come under four main headings, can you say you have considered all of these areas? 

Ultimately, you should have nothing to fear from meeting disabled customer needs.