The future of Access for All
This month we closed the charity Access for All and moved the brand under the Partnership section of the Guernsey Disability Alliance (GDA). I founded the charity more than 5 years ago with the fantastic Tony Yates - our physical access guru, Ben Jones on digital and content lead and convinced Richard Evans to chair us and all our amazing volunteers as we increased awareness around all areas of accessibility.
Due to pending retirements, increased conflicts of interest and the increased complexities of running a small voluntary charity, we decide to close last year and held our final EGM in April. When I started the group I thought the Government, the States of Guernsey Equality Body would be well up and running by now and it was a short term fix until they took on the flag waving re access.
We are still waiting the Discrimination Legislation late 2022 and Equality Body (now Employment and Equal Opportunities Service EEOS) but things are closer than they have ever been, but I couldn't let access fall away entirely.
Fortunately we have a brilliant Disability Officer Gill Evans, we partner closely with Gill focuses mostly on the Government work and me on the community (third sector, businesses and all).
Access in its widest form (physical, digital, content, services, activities etc) is key to removing barriers for people affected by disability and age. We do our best to redesign the environment to ensure all member of the community have the greatest equality of opportunity to take part in island life. It is also critical to an increasing ageing population and our tourist market.
The benefits of increased accessibility are widely understood - i'll write a separate blog on that but for now I wanted to share our focus for the 2021.
April, May and June we are focusing on Digital Accessibility. We Partnered with Guernsey Training Agency (GTA) to run a course on Technology for All with the brilliant Adi Latif of Ability-net in April. May 20th we will run our first Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD) with a drop in at Digital Greenhouse where you can meet our members and hear first hand about the how increased accessibility tools positively impact on their lives. We will also be updating our website to include more resources, factsheets and links to tools.
For the end of the year, September to December, we will focus on the retail and hospitality sector. Sharing insights into physical accessibility, customer service tips, our hidden disability lanyard training and more. 13th-14th October will see the return of our CAE Access Audit course with UK guru Vin Goodwin, we expect the course to be over subscribed and my target is for 100 access auditors by the end of 2022! (we currently have 47 since 2016)
I am focused on raising awareness and changing attitudes around accessibility and inclusion locally. I hope to reduce any concerns about reasonable adjustment, accessibility plans and the legislation through our training, resources, coffees and other projects. Please do not hesitate to get in touch via [email protected] to learn more.
We welcome your support on our journey to make Guernsey more accessible to all