Section 1: What is accessibility?

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is a topic being addressed by an increasing number of businesses. In summary, the term ‘equality’ relates to ensuring that everyone can access the same opportunities, ‘diversity’ means valuing the differences between people and their identifying characteristics, and ‘inclusion’ is a measure of how safe and welcome people feel in their environment. These are important, big-picture concepts that accessibility is embedded into.

Simply put, accessibility is all about removing barriers (whether physical, digital, relating to information and content, or attitudinal) to promote positive and equal experiences for all. It is the ‘actionable’ part of ensuring that EDI is on the agenda for disabled people in particular, but can also provide great benefit to customers and colleagues who might identify differently.

For example, providing audio tours and large print versions of exhibit information at museums are a great way of removing content barriers for people who are blind or partially sighted. Ensuring staff are well trained and equipping them with useful resources can really aid the removal of attitudinal barriers for disabled people as well as those with other protected characteristics related to age, race, and sexual orientation. Similarly, making an entrance more accessible to a wheelchair user is likely to involve the provision of step-free access and a lowered height section at a welcome desk, which would remove certain barriers within the built environment.

To truly be effective, accessible tourism should involve the delivery of accessible products, services and environments and enable people with impairments and accessibility requirements to have independence and autonomy over their experience.

Taking you step by step, this toolkit – and the actionable checklists, technical design requirements and persona deck – will show you how to improve your accessibility offering for both your customers and staff and ensure that a great tourism experience is available to all.