As the madness of the kids six-week holidays continues we stop to look at attractions across the UK and how accessible they really are.
Revitalise, a national charity that provides respite care in a holiday setting for disabled people and carers has released its 2019 Accessible Tourism Report.
The report looks at the top 100 most visited UK tourist attractions. The most important factor considered when constructing this report was the overall accessibility of each venue for wheelchair users. Other key factors were:
- Whether the venue was free or offered concessions for disabled people and carers
- The number of disabled toilets
- The availability of hoists
- The number of disabled parking spaces
- The accessibility of the approach to the venue
- Numbers of staff with disability awareness training
- Whether all the essential accessibility information is available on the venue’s website
The UK attraction that came out on top was the Museum of Liverpool. The Museum of Liverpool scored “excellent” across the board, returning an impressive accessibility score of 95.5%. They were closely followed by three attractions from the capital, the Science Museum, V&A Museum of Childhood and the Tate Modern.
The report shows a great landscape of how accessible venues are across the country but one thing that a large number of venues lack and need to address is accessibility online.
Over 11 million people in the UK have a disability and 3 in 10 people have a learning disability, so accessing important content online can be a real struggle. UK attractions who don’t address online accessibility are shutting out people with disabilities, lowering their ability to book tickets online, taking advantage of seasonal offers and generally find out more about their potential visit.
To support customers online Leeds Playhouse use, Recite Me. Recite Me is a Cloud-based web accessibility solution that allows website visitors to customise a site in a way that works for them.
This award-winning software includes text to speech functionality, neurodiversity software, an interactive dictionary, a translation tool with over 100 languages, including 35 text to speech voices and many other features.
Nick Hallam, Marketing & Communications Director at Leeds Playhouse 208/19 commented. “Recite Me arrived at a very opportune moment as part of our rebrand. For us, it was one of the easiest decisions that we’ve had to make in terms of accessibility. If the solution is not Recite Me, I don’t know what it would be, because it’s such a useful and easy to use accessibility widget.”
100’s of organisations including many leisure companies use Recite Me to make their websites more accessible and inclusive…call 0191 4328092 to find out more or book your free demo now. You can also try our WCAG compliant accessibility checker.
