Laying the foundations: Provide accessibility information
Top Tips
Providing accurate accessibility information is important for your LVEP and the businesses you support
Ensuring that your LVEP website meets website accessibility guidelines is also key
Disability and Health awareness days can be used as part of your marketing strategy
Provide accessibility information
Information is important for us all when making travel plans. For disabled visitors, having access to relevant accessibility information is often a vital element which guides destination choice.
The Euan’s Guide Access Survey, 2024 found that 62% of people will avoid visiting a venue if there is no accessibility information because they assume the venue is inaccessible. This is reinforced by a 2023 survey by AccessAble which found that 95% of disabled people will check accessibility in advance, and 87% will expect to find this information on a venue’s website.
The first step a business can take to improve their accessibility is to ensure they have provide accessibility information, e.g. via an AccessAble Detailed Access Guide, which you should encourage. You can also actively encourage your visitors to look for businesses which provide these guides.
Partner with AccessAble
Since 2024, VisitEngland has been working with AccessAble to support hospitality and tourism businesses across England to provide detailed descriptions of their venue accessibility for visitors.
In recognition that LVEPs can play an important part in the success of this initiative, VisitEngland has made a number of free opportunities available to all LVEPs including:
- A branded version of the business-facing Your Accessibility Guide portal for your businesses to sign-up
- A consumer-facing landing page on AccessAble.co.uk featuring Detailed Access Guides from across your destination
- Discounts for participating businesses.
Partner with AccessAble to provide a dedicated, LVEP-branded landing page for both your businesses and visitors.
The need to provide relevant, accurate information alongside effective marketing also applies to LVEPs. This principle is at the heart of the Kick-Start programme, which enables you to maximise accessibility information for your destination using few resources.
As a first step, you will need to ensure that your LVEP website meets W3C / WCAG website accessibility standards. You will also need to create an ‘Accessibility’ section on your LVEP website which potential visitors can find with ease. The Kick-Start development programme will help you to populate this section with your destination’s existing accessible tourism products.
Case Study
“In July 2023 Parallel Windsor, a festival of inclusivity, with events for all ages, health conditions & abilities, was held in Windsor Great Park. We were keen to ensure that people had the information they needed to make informed choices for their visit.
We reached out to the businesses that are leading the way in the borough such as Legoland Windsor, Ascot Racecourse, Windsor Castle and The Crown Estate and asked then to support our initiative, which they were all keen to do. Access Guides were developed for Windsor & Eton by AccessAble and a free Disability Essentials e-learning programme was made available for any local businesses wanting to improve their welcome and customer experience. This was accompanied by a webinar highlighting the opportunities of the accessible tourism market, hosted by AccessAble, Parallel Windsor and the local Disability & Inclusion Forum.
We created a section on our website dedicated to providing information for disabled travellers and added a link to the Access Guides along with other useful information to support visit planning.
We really feel that this not only improved the accessibility of the Parallel Windsor event, but also the destination as a whole.”
Julia White, Visitor Manager, VisitWindsor
Utilise disability awareness days
The Business Disability Forum (BDF) highlights how disability and health awareness days can be useful for organisations as part of their accessibility marketing strategy. You could utilise these to help you raise awareness about your work on accessibility and inclusion. Knowing about these key dates well in advance will help you to prepare relevant communications or activities. The BDF’s advice is:
Before you decide to focus on a specific day, week or month, you might think about:
- whom you want to engage with and what you want to achieve?
- how will you ensure your activities are informed and driven by disabled employees or users of your products or services?
- what the lasting legacy might be afterwards?’
The BDF also has a calendar on their website which you can check to see which awareness days and dates are planned.
One which is strongly recommended to help give a boost to your work on accessibility is Purple Tuesday. This annual event, of which VisitEngland is a Founding Partner, gives another route to help amplify your voice and showcase your work.
Communicating some of these key dates with your businesses will encourage them to take part too.
Case Study: Purple Tuesday
What is Purple Tuesday?
Purple Tuesday is a national initiative that aims to improve the customer experience for disabled people and their families 365 days a year. It calls on organisations to improve their services, remove barriers and make their experiences accessible to all.
Each year, Purple Tuesday recognises all the positive changes that organisations have made to improve the disabled customer experience on a global disabled customer celebration day, held on the first Tuesday of November.
In 2024:
- 7,000 organisations participated from across all sectors and of all sizes, from well-known corporates to micro enterprises;
- over 8,000 improvements to accessibility were made;
- nine countries participated;
- 36 million people were reached by the initiative.
How to get involved
Your LVEP can sign up to be a Purple Tuesday participant for free. To get involved, you will need to:
- complete this registration form;
- make one commitment that will improve your accessibility;
- implement the change during the year;
- recognise your disabled visitors and the improvements you have made as part of the global celebration day held in November.
Participating organisations are sent marketing assets to promote their participation in the movement, as well as learning resources to support their employees to become more disability aware.
Marketing campaigns
While the Kick-Start programme provides guidance on how to populate your accessibility information for promotion on owned and earned channels, the Enhanced Programme provides more detailed guidance on creating a specific marketing campaign, including:
- commissioning inclusive photography and videography;
- planning your campaign;
- determining your target market;
- selecting appropriate marketing channels;
- creating relevant content.
