Welcome Yorkshire were delighted to have us present to their members at their Y-Business Hub annual event held at Wetherby Race Course on the 8th November.
Philippa Kelly of Welcome Yorkshire was delighted we were able to share our vision for accessible tourism and point out the huge opportunity for organisations by making their businesses inclusive for employees and their clients.
Visits Unlimited is proud to link up with Rachel Harrison, Soprano. Rachel advocates our work and is excited to collaborate with us in future events we run. Thank you Rachel!
Sarah Evans is Creative Director of Manchester based ArtwithHeart Theatre company. Sarah advocates the need for artistic performance to be accessed by all communities.
Visits Unlimited is keen to promote their philosophy and work as many theatres and production companies need to consider accessibility at their venues and in their performances. Please click on the link and check their up and coming events and find out more….
It’s a shocking statistic for some but real nonetheless; more than one in six people in England and Wales have an ‘activity limiting’ health problem or disability.
£3 billion is spent a year on overnight tourism trips in England each year by visitors from within the UK and also from international visitors. The bottom line for any tourist focused business is that if you focus on, creating, enhancing your accessibility could improve your business.
Accessible tourism is being seen as not just positive business sense but also for it’s core purpose – to allow for all people to enjoy, experience and contribute to these amazing places that the UK is so enriched with.
Accessible days out, experiences, travel focused areas and other related segments provide family, an individual or care services great opportunities and will be advertised on areas such as review guide; Euan’s Guide where other families will go to as a trusted source of information to spread the word.
Ultimately, it just makes great business sense.
Our training and support package on accessible tourism focuses on 4 areas:
Visit England have published latest research highlighting the impact disabled visitors and those with impairments contribute to the UK tourist economy. Click on the link for the data.
http://www.visitengland.org/
Visits Unlimited support the work of Changing Places. We know that our families with disabled children rated lack of personal care facilities at venues in the top three of issues prohibiting them visiting an attraction. We also know that venues that invest in a Changing Places toilet reap the rewards in higher visitor numbers.
Mike at Changing Places provided this statement.
“Many vulnerable people in society, including people with disabilities, do not have the opportunities that most of us take for granted. I work in the campaigns and policy team at national learning disability charity “Royal Mencap Society” on a project called “Changing Places” ( www.changing-places.org ) . Changing Places are toilet facilities that have a bench and hoist for anyone who need extra assistance with their personal care. Without these facilities many people would not be able to access their local communities, shopping centres, music venues etc. Without these facilities, families have to change the person they care for on a cramped and dirty toilet floor. The alternative is to limit outings to a few short hours – or to not go out at all.
We now have over 650 registered Changing Places toilet across the UK and we are now working with our campaign sponsors Aveso (www.aveso.co.uk ) to look further afield. This year we have registered Changing Places with our sponsors at Arsenal and Brighton & Hove Albion Football clubs alongside many other public places. My colleague Leroy Binns opened the Arsenal Changing Places with Alex Brooker from Channel Four’s “The last Leg”.”
Mike.
Visits Unlimited February 2014 survey of Yorkshire attractions highlighted the key issues for venues in becoming accessible to disabled visitors. Major challenges included:
1) No evidence of planning strategically for accessibility – budget planning, training, targeted marketing.
2) Little or no training completed by staff at attractions surveyed.
3) Staff expressed interest in training to improve the service they offered to disabled guests.
We understand that accessibility at venues must start with management buy-in. Emma Manners, Learning Officer at Fountains Abbey states,
“We recognise that all our Project planning needs to include disability access and awareness. Management training will be crucial in rolling out a programme of change. From event planning to playground development, signage and pre-information, disability access and awareness needs to become a part of all our projects to transform equality and the visitor experience for the long term.”
BBC coverage and recent report from Vitalise highlight some of the key challenges faced by disabled visitors.
http://www.vitalise.org.uk/about_us/press_office/shocks-findings-of-new-accessibility-survey/
In February Visits Unlimited commissioned a survey of fifty popular Yorkshire tourist attractions. We asked them for their opinion on their understanding of the term accessible, the current provision they offered for disabled visitors and finally the challenges they faced in becoming fully accessible for disabled children. The results were quite an eye-opener.
See the survey presentation findings by clicking on the link.
VU Yorkshire Attractions Accessibility Survey
Analysing the responses it is clear many attractions focus their attention purely on physical barriers yet the results of family surveys we have conducted stated the priority for families was in fact improvements in visitor information, service provided in the visitor welcome and management at the attraction. These priorities came ahead of physical access issues.
Isn’t it about time you considered some affordable quick wins in making your attraction more accessible for disabled visitors? The benefits outweigh the costs.
At last mainstream news coverage of the issue of UK tourist venues not providing adequate access for disabled visitors.
Visits Unlimited have found increasing demand for our short course face-to-face disability awareness training, key for attractions in providing improved service for disabled visitors whilst gaining a competitive advantage and increased visitor numbers.
Is your venue one of the 13% of venues making inroads into the accessible tourism market valued at £11bn? If not, but you wish to, contact us.
Full news story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28804914
“very useful to discuss difficult scenarios”
“knowing how to approach disabled people and the importance of the first contact”
“Personal description of the visitor journey for families with disabled children was incredibly eye-opening – if it could be bottled and sent to all organisations the access would be so much improved”
“I am going to think about access champions at each venues to advocate for families with disabled children”
“wonderful, thank you”
“Hearing from experienced families with disabled children was most interesting. And the practical discussions”
“Fantastic, REAL experiences, knowledgeable and active trainers, well engaged in the heritage community and local community groups”
“this training gave me awareness of disability and culture and the impact of families”
“I now am now more confident and certain how to make people with disabilities welcome and for me to be as helpful as possible”
“I honestly think this training was fantastic”
“I found this training very useful and engaging. It made me understand how families with disabled children live their every day lives”
Thank you for this feedback and we look forward to rolling out our training to more venues keen to improve their accessibility offer.
Kenwood House training day, what can we say? It was brilliant.
We received a positive and warm welcome with staff eager to learn how to make adaptions, feel more confident when working alongside colleagues and visitors who are disabled.
Kenwood House in Hampstead, London is part of the English Heritage and is a property first built in the 17th century. If you haven’t been before and enjoy stunning gardens with beautiful trails, architecture and art work as well as some scrumptious food then this definitely needs to be on your list of places to go and visit.
The team feel confident and empowered in providing outstanding service when engaging with disabled visitors to their property. We worked as team to generate and deliver usable ideas and recommendations during the training day that will attract more disabled visitors to Kenwood House.
Visits Unlimited are delighted to be working collaboratively with the award winning Euan’s Guide.
Put simply, Euan’s Guide is an easy to navigate website where you can leave or read disabled access reviews. The website aims to ‘remove the fear of the unknown.’
As diligent as we are with planning our family days out to ensure as many bases are covered, there can be so much that websites don’t tell us. The bits that we really need to know such as steps, disabled toilets, dining places and other areas that may create obstacles. This guide is well known, well used website where we can share our experiences, top tips and the bits that websites don’t tell us. Euan’s guide achieves what it sets out to, it helps remove the uncertainty therefore the fear of the unknown.
I personally have used Euan’s guide and found it invaluable and not just at home in pre planning mode, we were out and about on the go, an opportunity came up to visit an attraction and I figured i’d have a quick look on the guide and it was green light for us. An awesome day out was had and I felt it was a valuable resource for me to use at that time so it’s a definite recommendation from.
The community spirit is positive and valuable but requires our input as parents, loved ones, family, friends and carers to put our experiences on there. You can also help out by spreading the word so that more and more people sign up and share.
A recent survey of Yorkshire attractions carried out by Visits Unlimited in March 2014 concluded that disabled access information on many tourist attraction websites is inadequate in making a confident choice to visit, citing lack of photos, appropriate information and poor formatting.
Kyle Norman, Business Support Co-ordinator, York Cluster National Trust Properties concurred with this view.
We hope many attractions consider the information they provide pre-visit to really help families dare to take the step out and have a great day.
Matt Riley, Director.
