Helping you improve disabled access

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 places a legal responsibility on businesses and organisations to take action to make their services and premises accessible to disabled people.  This means that service providers must do what they can to make sure that disabled people can access all their services without experiencing disability discrimination.

It is best practice to involve disabled people in identifying improvements required to premises.

Capability Scotland’s Equality Unit provides a User Access Consultation service to help you do this.

Having a User Access Consultation carried out on your premises involves a team of disabled people with different impairments and conditions visiting and commenting on the accessibility of your premises.

After the visit you receive an access report detailing any barriers and making recommendations for change, while also highlighting best practice. 

We consider:

• Physical barriers that could affect wheelchair users, people with reduced mobility and visually impaired people

• Communication barriers that could affect people with hearing impairments, and

• Information barriers that could affect visually impaired people.

The findings and recommended action points can help you meet your legal obligations.

How it works depends on you and your premises.

Each organisation is different, so we design the User Access Consultation around you.  We have experience of surveying a diverse range of venues including police and fire stations and football grounds. The Equality Unit is here to help.

We will spend a few hours touring your venue.  We can concentrate on areas that the public access – this is the area in which the Disability Discrimination Act requires you to anticipate potential barriers that could be experienced by disabled people accessing your services.  Or we can look at the staff areas of your buildings too.  This will help you plan improvements for potential future disabled employees - whatever is best for you. 

You can see a list of some of the organisations we have worked with  here.

For more information please contact Elspeth Molony or complete the form on the main Equality Unit page.