How to make your organisation accessible

While many organisations use Disability Pride Month to focus on raising awareness, it’s also important to reflect on how to make your organisation more accessible.

Accessibility is about giving equal opportunities to people with a disability or health condition. When workplaces and services are accessible, it’s easier for people with a health condition or disability to take part in society and live good lives.

Keep reading to find out how you can prioritise accessibility in your organisation.

1. Adopt accessible hiring practices

When it comes to accessibility in the workplace, it’s best to focus on it from the start.

Accessible hiring practices can help level the playing field for people with health conditions and disabilities, as well as people who need to juggle things like childcare.

You could make the hiring process more accessible by:

• Giving clear instructions about how to apply and providing information in accessible formats like Large Print or Easy Read.

• Sharing what the recruitment process will look like. For example, how many rounds of interviews there will be and when they will take place.

• Offering a range of interview dates and times for people to choose from.

• Using the job description to outline what kind of reasonable adjustments your organisation could make to help people apply or attend interviews.

• Offering support with filling out the application for people who need it.

Many people - disabled or otherwise - will be looking for an employer that cares about their needs. So making your hiring practices more accessible isn’t just the right thing to do: it can also make it easier to attract the best people for the job!

2. Make reasonable adjustments

Reasonable adjustments are changes that your organisation can make to help disabled people take part like everyone else. Many people can benefit from reasonable adjustments, including employees, clients, service users and anyone else you interact with.

Examples of reasonable adjustments could be:

• Flexible working arrangements. For example, allowing employees to work from home or adjust their working times to accommodate their needs.

• Holding in-person meetings and events in accessible venues. This could include making sure there is nearby parking and ramps for wheelchairs.

• Providing noise-cancelling headphones or quiet spaces where people can do their work away from the hubbub of the office. (As a person with ADHD, this can be game-changing!)

• Paying for assistive technology like speech-to-text apps or mobility aids.

You can find out more about reasonable adjustments on the government website.

3. Share accessible information

Sharing information isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s important to provide information in different accessible formats, especially if your organisation employs or works with disabled people.

Accessible formats can include:

• Braille.

• Easy Read.

• Audio.

• Large print.

• Web-accessible documents that are compatible with speech-to-text software.

For some more tips on the best way to share accessible formats, check out our recent blog post about making your information more accessible.

4. Educate yourself and others

Leaders should take the time to learn about different disabilities and the kinds of reasonable adjustments people might need. Doing your research makes it easier to build accessibility and inclusivity into your organisation.

It’s not just decision-makers who should learn about accessibility. Sharing information with staff members and volunteers can mean they feel more confident about making reasonable adjustments for the people they work with and support.

There are countless training courses, articles, books, podcasts and videos that can help you educate yourself and others about disabilities and accessibility. Disability charities like Mencap, Mind and Scope have lots of information co-created by people with disabilities and health conditions, making them a great place to start.

5. Work with people with disabilities

Who knows more about accessibility than the people who need it the most? Working with disabled people is key to making your organisation more accessible.

You can work with disabled people in lots of ways, like by:

• Listening to individuals and taking their lead when it comes to what reasonable adjustments they might need.

• Making sure that disabled employees have the opportunity to help shape policies that affect them.

• Creating surveys to find out what your disabled service users think about a new service you want to provide.

At Easy Read Online, we work closely with independent groups of people with learning disabilities, like our local Mencap group. Their members routinely check our Easy Read documents, and their feedback helps us with the quality of all our work.

But remember - you should always be conscious of how much you’re asking of people. For example, if a disabled employee agrees to help produce a policy, make sure that their involvement doesn’t result in an unmanageable workload!

We create all kinds of accessible resources, from surveys and consultations to safeguarding policies and job application forms!

Click here to Get a quote for your Easy Read document today to find out how we can help make your organisation more accessible.