Kick-Start programme: Provide accessibility information on your LVEP website
Top Tips
Ensure that your website meets current website accessibility standards
Create an ‘Accessibility’ section on your website which is easy to find
Populate this section with your existing accessible tourism products, including suggested itineraries
Create an accessible LVEP website
The provision of accessibility information is at the heart of this programme. It is important therefore that your own website is accessible, to provide information for potential disabled visitors and demonstrate best practice to your businesses.
Further information on creating an accessible website can be found in the Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses and there are various sources of guidance on the accessibility of apps, including W3C and from the UK Government
- ask a web developer to carry out a technical accessibility review of your website against the current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standard and develop a plan to improve it, where required.
- ensure that the requirement for your website to meet WCAG standards is part of the specification when commissioning any new website or digital software such as an app.
Identify existing accessible tourism products and services
Identify existing accessible tourism products and services across your region through desk-based research. This should involve working with stakeholders from transport, the public realm and the natural environment, as well as disabled people’s user groups and any existing community initiatives.
Many of your businesses, and your partners, will already have products and services which are accessible and inclusive. Some will also already be providing online information about their offering.
This step in the Kick-Start programme is to identify these venues and services, as well as to connect with providers whose services are important to visitors with accessibility requirements. This will enable you to start populating an ‘Accessibility’ section of your website.
Using the information checklist
An information checklist has been developed to help you identify and collate your destination’s existing accessible tourism products and services ready for showcasing them on your website.
Identify relevant businesses in your destination whose accessibility information you can use to populate the Accessibility section of your website. The information checklist in the downloads section of this toolkit will assist you with this process.
Sources of information include:
- AccessAble Guides for businesses in your destination;
- third party websites showcasing accessible accommodation;
- accessibility information in your region provided by transport providers including:
- railway stations;
- coach companies;
- local bus companies;
- ferries and hovercraft;
- airports.
Consider your membership policy
Within this information gathering process there is a potential challenge. Some of the accessible tourism businesses and services you identify may not be members of your LVEP. Yet, if you only highlight members’ products, you will not be offering the widest choice for potential visitors and reducing the opportunity to fully develop the accessibility of your destination as a result. You may wish to consider the implications of this and the challenges this presents to your aim of improving accessibility. How do you overcome this challenge if you are to offer real choice for potential visitors with access requirements?
Identify how you will address the challenge of finding accessible tourism products in your region which are not currently members of your LVEP. Could you offer a level of free membership? Is there another approach you could take?
Case study
“Since 2020, Enjoy Staffordshire has offered a free membership package to tourism and hospitality businesses in the county.
Our main objective was to support the sector’s recovery post-pandemic, but it has also helped us become a more inclusive organisation, opening access to SMEs who had struggled to engage with our DMP’s activity.
The package includes a free listing on the Enjoy Staffordshire website, with a short description of their business, an image, contact details, and a link to the member’s website.
Membership lasts 12 months, at which point they can upgrade to one of the other packages or renew at the same level.
For consumers, opening our membership to as many businesses as possible has ensured we can present a full picture of the facilities available for visitors – including information on accessibility.”
Richard Swancott, Digital Marketing Executive, Enjoy Staffordshire
Create an ‘Accessibility’ section on your LVEP website
You may already have an ‘Accessibility’ section on your website - if you haven’t, you will need to create one. Pulling the accessible tourism products in your destination into a dedicated section will enable visitors with accessibility requirements to plan visits more easily.
In summary, your destination accessibility information should:
- be easy to find from the homepage of yourwebsite within an ‘Accessibility’ section;
- include a ‘welcome’ paragraph;
- be incorporated within any search or filter functionality, if you have one, enabling visitors to find accessible tourism products by product type and/or accessibility features;
- include photography that represents the diversity of your visitors;
- ensure the website has information sections for each element of the tourism ‘value-chain’ including:
- transport and parking (‘Getting here’ and ‘Getting around’);
- accommodation;
- food and drink;
- attractions;
- activities and experiences;
- festivals and events;
- award-winning venues;
- useful links and local initiatives;
- accessible toilets and Changing Places toilets;
- meeting, wedding and conference venues.
List key accessibility features
In 2024, VisitEngland (facilitated by Access and Inclusion UK) led a UK and Ireland-wide project to identify the features people with accessibility requirements search for when looking for places to stay and visit.
The project created a list of key accessibility features that would drive greater consistency in how top-level accessibility information is presented on both tourism listing websites (such as online travel agents, search aggregators and local destination websites) and tourism business websites. The list was informed by new robust consumer research, conducted by XV Insight, with 800 disabled travellers in Britain and a focus group in Ireland.
In addition to key accessibility feature questionnaires produced for businesses to use to inform their own websites, a version of the questionnaires is also available for tourism distributors such as LVEP websites to use to gather data for their business listings.
Displaying these features on your venue listings, and incorporating them within existing search options, will help users shortlist potential places to stay and visit. It is not intended to replace detailed accessibility information, which should be provided via individual business websites.
If you have a search functionality on your website, the key accessibility features should be incorporated into this to allow potential travellers to easily filter on venues that may be suitable for them. Some destination websites, such as Visit Peak District & Derbyshire and Discover Yorkshire Coast already offer the ability to search for tourism products based on accessibility criteria. A web developer will be able to advise you on this and a search function should be part of the specification for any new website.
The distributor versions of the key accessibility feature questionnaires to help you gather information for your product listings is available on request. Please email [email protected].
Populate the ‘Accessibility’ section of your website
Once you have gathered as much relevant information as you can, you can begin to populate the ’Accessibility’ section of your website. Remember, this is not a one-off exercise, and it will be useful to have a process in place to ensure that any new accessibility information is identified and added accordingly. Ask your partners to keep you informed of any new developments or initiatives they may have.
Use the accessible tourism products, services and experiences you have found during your desk-based research to populate the ‘Accessibility’ section of your website.
Remember to:
- check the accuracy of this information regularly;
- test any links provided to ensure that they are working and signpost to relevant information;
- ask for feedback from your users;
- deal with any problems or inaccuracies identified as soon as possible;
- provide a date when the section was last updated. This will help to give reassurance that the information is current and therefore more likely to be accurate.
The links below provide some examples of how others present their accessible tourism products:
Commission inclusive imagery
Ensuring that the imagery used in your marketing and on your website reflects the diversity of your potential visitors will help everyone to feel welcome. Ask your accessible businesses if they can share any inclusive assets with you. Guidance on commissioning inclusive photography can be found in the Enhanced programme.
Create itineraries
By using all the relevant information that you have identified, you can create suggested itineraries for visitors. These may be made up of a mix of places to stay, visit and eat or based around themes such as ‘food and drink’, ‘heritage’, ‘walking trails’, ‘Changing Places toilets’ etc.
When creating itineraries, it is worth considering pace: visitors with accessibility requirements may require extra time, so consider spreading an itinerary over more days to allow for this.
The following list highlights a selection of accessible itineraries which you may want to browse for inspiration:
- VisitKent – Accessible Itinerary
- North York Moors National Park - Seven amazing accessible experiences
- Visit Lake District – Inspiring Itineraries project
- Visit Peak District and Derbyshire – Accessible days out and places to visit in the Peak District and Derbyshire
- Euan’s Guide, Scotland – Castles and Battlefields, part of the Accessible Highlights series
- VisitEngland – Accessible Breaks
Support business information provision
Your businesses also have an important role to play in enhancing your destination’s accessibility by providing relevant accessibility information. This includes:
- providing online accessibility information/producing an AccessAble Detailed Access Guide;
- utilising photos to clearly showcase their business;
- ensuring that any videos have subtitles;
- providing floorplans, where appropriate;
- including maps, where relevant.
Remember to include this guidance in any training you provide. Further advice on how businesses can maximise their accessibility information is included in the Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses.
