Accessible tourism

Extreme Auditing (working through the Pandemic)

29 October 2020
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Categories: Accessibility, Blog, News

Access Audits. Extreme auditing, working through the pandemic. Chris is out and about even through the difficult times…

Well, I certainly can’t remember a year anything like this one – it seemed to come to a grinding halt in March, and it’s certainly not back on the rails yet.

For the team at Visits Unlimited you might think that would be the end of things for the foreseeable future, no one going anywhere, no one meeting up with anyone, not a bit of it.

We’re far more resourceful and resilient to accept that!

True – work did drop off a cliff for a few weeks, audit dates in the diary were cancelled, people didn’t know what could or should happen, but that didn’t last for long at our Accessible Calderdale Project.  After a few weeks of hiding away, people started peeping over the parapet and gingerly climbing over.

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What’s in a name?…….and the name is “accessible”……..

30 April 2020
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Categories: Accessibility, Blog, News

Accessible, Well, we all know what that means now, don’t we? Read on…..

Accessible? A few weeks ago my partner and I were feeling a little stir crazy and thought we deserved a weekend away, so that’s what we planned.
(Ironically this was the weekend just prior to hearing Government advice not to travel unless totally necessary. So, we had a lovely three days of gorgeous villages, artisan markets, great weather, excellent meals and too much to drink, to return to a different world. If we thought we were stir crazy then….?)

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How accessible is your business/venue?

22 July 2019
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Categories: Accessibility, Blog

Disability Access Training. How accessible is your business/venue?

Are you meeting your legislative requirements?

Did you know that being accessible can help your business grow?

Visits Unlimited is a Halifax-based organisation working with attractions and businesses locally, regionally, and nationally. We collaborate with colleagues in the tourism industry to help reduce the physical and non-physical barriers often experienced by disabled people.

Also we offer a range of professional and friendly services to help you become more inclusive and disabled-friendly. We also aim to improve your customer service through our Access Audits, specialist advice, and Disability Training.

All trainers have lived experience of disability and have worked across the country delivering training to a wide range of organisations for many years. We are members of the England Inclusive Tourism Action Group.

OUR ACCESS AUDITS

With the help and support of Chris Cammiss, our Access Auditor, Specialist Advisor, and Disability Trainer, Chris will visit your premises to carry out an access audit. He will then write a report on what you are doing well and what you can improve on.

Did you know that nearly 1 in 5 people in the UK are disabled? That could be a large percentage of your target market. Ensuring you provide suitable facilities and services for disabled people should be high on your priority list.

It doesn’t have to cost the world to provide a welcoming and accessible environment for everyone. Sometimes making small adjustments can make a big difference. Good customer service is priceless!

AWARENESS RAISING AND OUR TRAINING

Attitude towards disabled customers is everything. We can deliver training to members of your staff. It’s as easy as starting with a smile!

“People will forget what you said. They will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

We run training and access audit programmes across England. Our clients include the National Trust, English Heritage, countryside attractions, football and cricket grounds, large tourist attractions, small businesses, retailers, theatres, music venues, museums, and hotels.

Providing the best service for disabled people will benefit all of your customers. Feeling welcomed goes hand in hand with meeting current legislation. Attractions focusing on disabled customers see rapid growth in their customer base, revenues, and profit. This opportunity provides businesses and attractions with a competitive advantage.

Visits Unlimited promotes the Purple Pound. We want you to take advantage of bringing in more income and attracting extra visitors and local people to your business.

“When everyone is welcome, anything is possible. Businesses that cater to the needs of all customers are most likely not only to survive but to flourish.”

THE PURPLE POUND

Disabled people contribute £12bn to the UK tourism industry1; a market which no business can afford to ignore. Research shows businesses can potentially benefit from longer stays and more spend from the group where a member of the party has a disability. Watch the animation and get inspired to unlock the purple pound.  https://www.barclayscorporate.com/insights/industry-expertise/unlock-the-purple-pound/

1Great Britain Tourism Survey 2015”

OUR HISTORY IN CALDERDALE

Visits Unlimited ran the Accessible Hebden project thanks to a grant from the Community Foundation for Calderdale (CFFC) in 2015. Working with disabled people, we completed over 40 access audits and surveys on small businesses to support them in becoming more accessible.

This project is now embedded in local strategic work. The Hebden Bridge Disability Access Forum continues to roll out the work and be a key player in new planning and designs.

“Our disability survey was extremely useful as we did not appreciate the things that needed doing. Chris gave us lots of useful, simple ideas, including changing the door knob on the toilet facilities, which we never thought about.” –

Pennine Heritage.

OUR CURRENT WORK IN CALDERDALE

Accessible Calderdale is building on the successful work in Hebden across the whole of Calderdale together with Disability Partnership Calderdale. Our aim is to promote Calderdale as a place that welcomes all people and offers an accessible and inclusive area for those living, working and visiting here.

Free audits and training are available to the voluntary and community sector thanks to funding from CFFC and we are offering all businesses a discounted rate within Calderdale for an access audit and training.

“The audit actually exceeded our expectations. Chris was very encouraging, straight-talking about areas where change is needed and really positive about the nature reserve as a destination for days out. He even pointed out assets we didn’t know we had!”. Cromwell Bottom Nature Reserve

The project has developed two working groups which meet regularly ‘How to get there’ with a focus on accessible transport, and ‘Places to go’ which focuses on accessible tourism, local events, organisations, the countryside, small and large businesses throughout Calderdale.

The groups are integral to the project and working to ensure that we can promote Calderdale as an Accessible Destination.

ACDAF (Accessible Calderdale Disability Access Forum)

Visits Unlimited have established the Accessible Calderdale Disability Access Forum who are a group of disabled people and those with lived experience of disability who will be setting the priorities, goals and working closely with services and organisations who can make a difference and improve the access needs of local people and tourists.

For more information on our access audits and costs for businesses please contact lorraine@visitsunlimited.org.uk

Or, complete an online Expression of Interest form – Click Here

ACCESSIBLE CALDERDALE PROJECT

11 January 2019
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Categories: Accessibility, Accessible Hebden Bridge, Blog, Calderdale Project Update, Events, News

Calderdale Gets Major Accessibility Boost!

Visits Unlimited, a Halifax-based user-led organization, has secured 3 years of funding from the Community Foundation for Calderdale. This exciting development allows them to build upon their successful work. With disabled people, local voluntary groups, and various stakeholders like the local authority, visitor attractions, transport companies, businesses, and Visit Calderdale.

Their ultimate goal is clear: to transform Calderdale into a fully accessible and welcoming environment. In essence, they want everyone, including people with disabilities and their families, to fully enjoy the area and create lasting memories that will make them want to return.

But who exactly are Visits Unlimited?

A leading force in accessibility, Visits Unlimited works collaboratively with tourism industry colleagues, both locally and nationally. Their expertise extends to a comprehensive training and access audit program offered across England. Their impressive roster of clients includes prestigious names like the National Trust, English Heritage, various sports grounds, major tourist attractions, small businesses, theaters, music venues, museums, and hotels.

Locally, Visits Unlimited has already made a significant impact. Funded by a 2015 grant from the Community Foundation for Calderdale, their Accessible Hebden project proved highly successful. Through collaboration with disabled people, they conducted over 40 access audits and surveys on small businesses, empowering them to become more accessible. The positive legacy continues! This project is now an integral part of local strategic work, and the Hebden Bridge Disability Access Forum actively promotes accessibility by influencing new planning and designs.

Accessible Calderdale

Firstly Accessible Calderdale is building on this work and will be working across Calderdale. Together with Disability Partnership Calderdale to ensure that we have the voice of disabled people, their families and carers, organisations working with people with a range of impairments to have a say in how the project runs.

“Visits Unlimited have been a catalyst for us on the Hebden Bridge project.  We had identified access issues with our Access Group but just turning up was not good enough. Visits Unlimited did a report on the train station and to have their report under our arm has given strength to our argument every single time we have met and we were able to go to Network Rail and the highway authorities   – it has made a big difference.  I have learned a lot – things I did not know or what was available.” Hebden Bridge Partnership.

 “Our disability survey was extremely useful as we did not appreciate the things that needed doing.  Chris gave us lots of useful simple ideas including even changing the door knob on the toilet facilities that we never thought about.”  Pennine Heritage.

The project has developed two working groups which convened in December 2018, ‘How to get there’ with a focus on accessible transport and ‘Places to go’ which focuses on accessible tourism. The groups will meet four times a year and are integral to the project in developing Calderdale into an accessible and inclusive place.

Calderdale Disability Access Forum

In essence, Visits Unlimited are establishing a Calderdale Disability Access Forum. So any organisation or individual wishing to get involved can contact the project coordinator, Lorraine Beiley.   The group will meet in March 2019. We are delighted to have already made some good alliances with voluntary and community sector. The local authority and Visit Calderdale, and are holding an event at Square Chapel on February 26th 2019. Guest speakers include Visit England, our own Eureka and Accessible Derbyshire.  

#wewelcomeeveryone.   We will be doing free access audits and there will be opportunity for community organisations. To apply for a small grant from Community Foundation for Calderdale.

Contact details

For more information contact Lorraine@visitsunlimited.org.uk or rob@cffc .co.uk

Making Hebden Bridge into an Accessible Destination

7 September 2016
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Categories: Accessible Hebden Bridge, Blog

Creating an accessible destination.

When you have a beautiful and sensory rich town like Hebden Bridge we want people to come and experience it. We know that when people enjoy it they then share it.  It isn’t easy for everyone and Visits Unlimited have been invited to support the local community and business to make Hebden Bridge a more accessible destination. We want to make Hebden Bridge an even greater experience for everyone because we know Hebden Bridge cares.

Improving accessibility improves the economy.

Saturday 3rd September was the launch of our new project #AccessibleHebden at the Hebden Bridge Town Hall.  We are truly delighted to be working in close partnership with the ‘Hebden Bridge Partnership’ and Calderdale Community Foundation. We will be working together over the next 6 months to help make Hebden Bridge an attraction for everyone to enjoy.

As a national Community Interest Company we have delivered both disability awareness and customer service training across the country for a number of years to many small businesses, venues, attractions, museums and heritage sites within the tourism sector.

We know that supporting a venue to become accessible to a wide range of impairments is much more than doorways and ramps.  It is about a positive can-do attitude; finding solutions to participation and inclusion; and imbedding a warm welcome approach throughout the organisation, its staff and volunteers.

 

What are the benefits of becoming a more Accessible Destination

More than one in six people in England and Wales having an ‘activity limiting’ health problem or disability. British and international visitors from this market segment currently spend over £3 billion on overnight tourism trips in England each year and UK disabled people spend up to £12bn on trips out this is especially relevant for businesses. In short, improving your accessibility could improve your business. Being an Accessible Destination will raise the profile of Hebden Bridge through social media and will really put you on the map of places that are going that are going that extra mile and are welcoming to people with a range of impairments.

Long term vision

It also goes beyond being good for business. It supports your own members of staff/volunteers who may themselves have a disability or one of their friends or family. The Hebden Bridge and Calder Valley community will hugely benefit, as will the elderly and families with buggies chance we have placed a community focus on this project.

What will businesses gain?

There are three aspects all businesses need to address to provide access for all:

  • Customer service and training – being disability aware with the right attitude and confidence to serve all customers
  • Information and marketing – providing detailed information on the accessibility of your facilities and services and making this information easy to find
  • Physical facilities – making reasonable adjustments to buildings and facilities so they are easy for everyone to enter and move around

 

The cost of becoming an Accessible Destination

It may be surprising to know that some of challenges can be resolved in a low cost and creative way and this we have great experience with.

Each organisation will be able to apply for a grant of around £2000 to help with some of their challenges around meeting the needs of not only disabled tourists but also their families, their friends and of course local disabled people.  The results of creating these changes will affect the whole community and the results can only be beneficial.

Do you want your local business to support your town to be an Accessible Destination?

If the answer is yes then please contact myself; Katie Clarke by email; Katie@visitsunlimited.org.uk for a copy of the expression of interest for the FREE Access Audit.

Or you can pick up a hard copy at the Watermark or the Town Hall in Hebden Bridge and return it there or post it to:

Katie Clarke

Visits Unlimited

15 Savile Park Gardens

Halifax

HX1 2XL

Our auditor Chris Cammiss will be meeting many people on his travels whilst doing our Access Audits. He will become a familiar face in the community.         Chris is a very experienced auditor and will offer practical and reasonable recommendations for you.

Calderdale Community Foundation will administer the grants and their aim is to make this as easy as possible. What this means is there are no long-winded forms to fill consequently this making it an easy process.  Businesses and organisations can give a phone call to the Foundation and someone will help with the process.

 

Thank you

We are pleased to give something back to the Hebden Bridge community. Each member of our team were involved in supporting friends and the community during the boxing day floods 2015.

We love the motto of the community and the Watermark Fund. We are very proud to be working with so many good people including the new Disability Access Reference Group, Hebden Royd Town Council’s Mayor Tony Hodgins, the Neighbourhood Planning Committee, and businesses, organisations, venues and local people.

Accessible Tourism – The Bottom Line

1 August 2016
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Categories: Blog

Accessible tourism, is it worth it in a business model?

Is your business part of today’s competitive tourist industry within the UK? Are you achieving your accessible tourism status?

Are you looking at raising your profile, getting a head of the game and being competitive with others?

Good, because accessible tourism is a multi million pound industry.

 

Are you in the market of accessible tourism?

As a business owner myself I understand the main goals of any business and that is growth and sustainability.  As a business owner I work hard to achieve these goals just like you do because I want my business to grow.

There are many ways to grow a business and many ways to make it sustainable. A business coach and they’ll show you the way around the markets and how to focus your attention on attracting the current customers.

Professional Marketers will show you round the latest trends of products, services or technology. Still there’s one section many are still missing out on.

Every year new tourist attractions are opening up, each applying contemporary designs within their buildings and updated customer care experiences.

This runs the risk of leaving current and outdated businesses and tourist venues behind. Either businesses modernise to meet their customer’s needs in today’s market or they risk missing out resulting in lower turnover. .

What I’d like to do is bring your attention to why this section of the market – accessible tourism – is so powerful:
  • 65 million people in the UK (source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs).
  • There are around 12 million registered disabled people within the UK (that’s about 1 in 5 people), DWP 2014.
  • There are 2 million people with sight problems in the UK (dlf.org.uk). Is your business and visitor attraction able to support people who are visually impaired?
  • 9% of the UK population is a wheelchair user (www.disabled-world.com). Have you made adaptions both on the outside and within your building?
  • There are 770,000 registered disabled children under the age of 16 in the UK. Does your attraction welcome children? dlf.org.uk
  • More than 11 million people within the UK experience some form of hearing loss that equates to 1 in 6 people (actiononhearingloss.org.uk). Have you considered this at your reception, service or support desk as much as supporting your visitors around the attraction to remain orientated, involved and comfortable?

 

Accessible tourism is a big market so how do you get in on it?

  • Does your first point of contact which could be your website or over the telephone information service, give clear information around your accessibility information?
  • Is your car parking and queuing for entry managed well?
  • Are your disabled toilets accessible? Clearly signed? Well managed and a good size?
  • Are your signs clear and are they in brail?
  • Do you have different levels? Do you have lifts and if so are they well maintained? Do you have ramps available? There may only be a couple of steps between one floor and the next but this proves to be a huge obstacle for someone in an electric wheel chair.
  • Are rails provided along the stairs?
  • Are door handles at a height that can be accessed by wheel chair users?
  • Are your reception desks at a height that wheel chair users can write on if needed? If not can an area be provided for this?
  • Are your fire, health and safety policies all up to date?

 

Yes, there’s so much to think about and that is why we at Visits Unlimited provide an excellent service to support you to make the changes to your venue. We are a specialised team brought together to support venue’s and businesses to match their service and environment provisions with visitors disability access needs.

From access audits to training within customer service and the visitor’s journey, our approach is designed to provide you with the complete package.

 

What you focusing on accessible tourism means to people like me.

For me as a parent it goes deeper than a business model, as a parent of a child with learning and physical disabilities; finding a venue or attraction that allowed us to have a fun family day was always our top priority and in the early days, this wasn’t easily achieved. The result of us finding one where we felt respected as a family unit and supported was when we found an attraction that really worked for us we did the obvious, we returned. We went back because we knew it and we knew it worked. Then we did the second obvious thing, we told our friends. We weren’t passing tourists, we went back and we would use that mighty powerful marketing tool called word of mouth.

 

Yes yes yes to accessible tourism

So the question I asked at the beginning was; is the accessible tourism market worth it for a business to invest in?

Businesses are required by law to make fair adjustments to ensure that accessibility for disabled people is provided and fairness must always be at the centre of any business model, however you can’t ignore that accessibility makes good business sense regarding profit.

An attraction is built to provide an experience and the power of word of mouth. Word of mouth through groups, social media and reviews in this current climate is beyond powerful.

It doesn’t take a moment to type into my browser to see poor reviews of attractions written by those who’ve experienced a lack of accessibility.

Going back to the statistics at the beginning of this post, if you don’t make you’re visitor centre accessible you’re potentially excluding around 1 in 5 visitors.