The West Midlands Destination Development Partnership (DDP) has teamed up with leading national disability organisation, AccessAble, to enable tourism and hospitality businesses to develop quality assured accessibility information.
The partnership – which involves the Birmingham, Solihull & Black Country Local Visitor Economy Partnership (LVEP) and Coventry & Warwickshire LVEP – is part of a national initiative led by VisitEngland. The national tourism agency is working with AccessAble to support tourism businesses across England to provide detailed descriptions of their venue accessibility for visitors.
For almost 25 years, AccessAble has worked to support organisations on their accessibility journey and to bring a positive impact to the lives of disabled people. A disabled person led organisation, AccessAble helps businesses publish detailed accessibility information on their user-facing website www.AccessAble.co.uk, which is used and trusted by more than six million disabled people a year.
Through AccessAble’s new Your Accessibility Guide portal, businesses in the West Midlands can book and pay for either a Guided or On Site assessment of their venue, where a professional surveyor will create a quality-assured Detailed Access Guide. AccessAble has designed the process to be simple and easy, recognising that many venues are short of time. Using the portal, businesses and venues can ‘self-serve’ their own tailored quotation and use an automated service to place an order.
Detailed Access Guides are full of all the facts, figures and photographs disabled people have said they need to plan their visit, covering everything from parking and step-free access to assistive listening and toilets.
Becky Frall, Head of Tourism at West Midlands Growth Company, the strategic lead for the region’s DDP, said:
“The West Midlands’ partnership with AccessAble is crucial to reaching as wide an audience of current and future visitors to the region as possible.
“The Purple Pound – the spending power of disabled consumers – is worth £274 million to the UK. It makes economic and social sense as a region to work proactively with the leading national disability experts to provide a welcoming, inclusive and enhanced experience for everybody who visits the West Midlands’ destinations.”
VisitEngland Director Andrew Stokes said:
“Our research confirms that today’s travellers with accessibility requirements want detailed descriptions of venues’ accessibility to help make decisions.
“These new Guides provide clear, quality-assured information, supporting disabled people to make the best choices. By making these user-friendly Guides available on AccessAble’s website, attractions, accommodation providers and other tourism businesses can tap into this valuable market further. I encourage tourism businesses in England to sign up via the portal.”
Dr Gregory Burke, Founder and Executive Chair of AccessAble, added:
“For 25 years, listening to the lived experience and expertise of disabled people has been at the heart of everything AccessAble does. With the Your Accessibility Guide portal, we aim to tackle the postcode lottery facing disabled people and to help businesses and venues, regardless of size or location, provide the accessibility information disabled people have told us they need.
“We are thrilled to be working in partnership with VisitEngland and the West Midlands DDP to enable tourism and hospitality businesses to provide quality assured accessibility information.”
VisitEngland is providing discounts to tourism businesses who wish to sign up via the new portal, which will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
Tourism venues and businesses can visit westmidlands.youraccessibilityguide.co.uk/ to find out more about Detailed Access Guides and to book their assessment.
