Accessibility is something that is really important to our organisation. We want to figure things out for people and projects, and part of that is figuring out how to do that for the widest range of people possible!

We are a disability led organisation which is one reason we are passionate about being inclusive. We try hard to follow the social model of disability where we understand that we need to adapt the world around a person’s disabilities and access needs rather than expect them to adapt. We recognise that disability is more than wheelchair access, it’s a wide range of adaptations, many of which are easy and free. We try and include as wide a range of access needs as we can think of in each project and are always willing to adapt to make sure our processes and materials suit the client and participant needs.

We are still learning and imagine we will be for all time, we know we don’t have all the answers but here are some of the ways we try to be more inclusive, all of which are actions we have carried out.

• When we run 1:1 interviews we can offer to send questions in advance, plan in comfort breaks and run these at times that suit people – including evenings and weekends
• We can use large font sizes on emails or text clients or schedule regular zoom calls
• We use easy to read fonts on our surveys and our infographics and use contrasting colours in graphs as much as possible
• We are happy to communicate however people prefer – whether that is by email, by text, by zoom, by phone call – or even mixed methods, for example mixing text and video call by using zoom captioning
• We can run sessions when people have supporters or interpreters available and make our timetable flexible
• We provide large print versions of our final reports and executive summaries on request
• We have worked hard to ensure all our visuals are compatible with screen readers, use alt-text as much as possible and break reports into sections using headings and subheadings for clarity
• We can provide surveys in alternative ways – for example using Google Forms or as paper copies
• We worked with a client to use sign language videos on our surveys to make sure people understand the questions asked and adapted our questions to suit British Sign Language (BSL) rather than expecting BSL to adapt to our questions
• We offer adaptations to our interview processes when hiring and offer flexible working conditions and hours

We have three current and recent clients who have taught us a lot about being more accessible.

1. Attitude is everything

Attitude is everything have been passionate about including people with disabilities for a long time now. They have a few cultural approaches which we love and which we have tried to follow. Their overarching tag line is ‘nothing for us, without us’ and therefore we have learned to test materials and not make assumptions without asking. It helps us keep flexible. The other way AisE work is to help people make changes from where they are now, not to criticise what they have or haven’t done. Again, that’s something we use now with all our clients, and try to embody ourselves – helping them to make positive progress from wherever they currently are, using data driven decisions of course.

We particularly love their ‘how we think about disability’ approach, which you can read here. 

2. Deaf Rave

Troi Lee from Deaf Rave was a great client to work with, and we adapted our communication styles, using zoom on mornings when a sign-language interpreter was available. We learned about the Deaf Culture, and attended an event in person to communicate with sign language interpreters therefore adapting our style. Troi described working with Kirsty Rose Parker from The Evaluator as “if you need a evaluator report done.  She the one!  I have not seen any better report than anyone else has done.”

Troi is a passionate advocate for Deaf music and regularly works with the BBC, most recently taking part in the BBC music introducing festival to put on London x Deaf Rave. You can see more about that festival here.

3. VocalEyes

VocalEyes are a charity who work with people with many different disabilities including visual impairments and people who use screen readers. This has meant making a number of changes to our project evaluation including software changes, allowing for access needs such as emailing questions and using zoom captioning. This has allowed us to learn more about inclusion and practical methods to adapt our styles.

To provide an evaluation report which can be understood by the widest possible range of people, we are currently learning how to make the best accessible report we can and are working on developing spoken video versions of our executive summaries in final reports. Please do ask us if you would want a version of this!

VocalEyes have just produced ten ways to attract deaf, disabled and neurodivergent visitors to heritage sites which is well worth a read. Click here to look at those ten tips.