ACCESS AUDITS 

An Access Audit is an assessment of a building, an environment or a service against best practice standards to benchmark its accessibility to disabled people.  The Access Audit helps you to understand your obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and forms the basis of a plan of action to enable you to improve accessibility.

The Equality Act 2010 is not compliance based and not prescriptive in its requirements; however, it does refer to Reasonable Adjustment. It can be difficult for service providers to determine what is reasonable and what is not.

Our Access Audit will generally cover all elements of your building and environment following the ‘journey’ of a disabled user. Typically, an audit would cover:

  • Approach and Car Parking
  • Entrances
  • Receptions
  • Horizontal Circulation – corridors
  • Lifts and Stairs
  • Internal Doors
  • Toilets
  • Signage and Way-finding
  • Communication
  • Means of Escape for Disabled People

Our Access Audits set out clear recommendations with priority ratings to enable you to plan and budget for any necessary adjustive works. Unlike many of our competitors, we focus on reasonable adjustments and best practice standards, as required by the Equality Act 2010, thus avoiding unnecessary and costly measures.

The process begins a systematic appraisal of a building measured against an agreed set of standards, such as those outlined in British Standard BS 8300-2: 2018 “Design of Buildings and their Approaches to meet the Needs of Disabled People Code of Practice”.

We then carry out a thorough survey of the building. Staff and other users of the building, including people with disabilities will be consulted and the audit will embrace the needs of all disabled people and use the appropriate ‘best practice’ standards.

Businesses lose approximately £2 billion a month – A MONTH – by ignoring the needs of disabled people (Ref from Purple Pound). Loss of money per business, per month as follows:

  • High street shop – £267 million
  • Restaurant / pub / club – £163 million
  • Supermarket – £501 million
  • Energy company – £44 million
  • Phone / internet provider – £49 million
  • Transport provider – £42 million
  • Bank or building society – £935 million

The purple pound refers to the spending power of disabled people and their families. Estimates show that the 4.3 million disabled online shoppers who click away from inaccessible websites, have a combined spending power of £17.1 billion in the UK alone.

If you make your business more inclusive, you will make more money. It really is that simple. Right there is your business case.

If you want help with this contact us today.
#Diversity #Inclusion #Accessibility

The power of the ‘purple pound’ explained – BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-39040760

Around £249bn
In the UK, it is thought that some seven million people of working age have a disability, which all adds up to an awful lot of spending power. This is known as the “purple pound” and is reckoned to be worth around £249bn to the economy.