Ensuring Accessibility For All Employees And Clients: Your Guide To Success
Having a reputable business goes beyond simply having an excellent product or service to offer. Indeed, those things are vital, too, but ensuring that accessibility for all employees and your clients is essential. Times have changed and it is no longer acceptable, although some will still attempt to say this, to pass off a lack of access as being one of those things.
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Ways to Increase Accessibility For All Employees And Clients
If you realize that things in your business need to change in order to be accessible to all, here is your guide to success.
Text, Images, and Videos
All text, images and videos should be edited to ensure that everyone can access the information without problem. When training your staff, be sure to include all staff members and take any disabilities into account. If you hire a member of staff with a hearing impairment who signs and lip reads, start an initiative whereby all employees learn sign language and avoid any potential discrimination. In fact, this could be a wonderful thing to do regardless as could benefit some of your clients, too.
Your website represents your business and thus your brand. If it is inaccessible for a considerable proportion of people, this will affect your reputation. Sit down and reflect on your website, looking at what works and what does not. There are a few simple fixes that you can make, such as ensuring that all images, charts, videos, and presentations, for example, have alt text. If you have videos on your website giving key information to your customers, ensure that there are captions.
Building
When people hear the term accessibility, the building is often the first thing people think about. In particular, an ability to enter the building without issue will spring to mind. Before embarking on any kind of construction, seek advice from Building Consultants to ensure you are doing the absolute best you can. From lifts and handrails to ramps and designated toilets, you need to think about every little detail.
Doors should be automatic or a button available to press to open them, from a sensible height. Too many disabled people have found themselves waiting outside a store, waiting for someone to come along and allow them access. Taking these measures and being forward-thinking will support you in creating a strong reputation and increase customer and staff satisfaction.
Parking
Arriving at work or at a store, for example, and being unable to find a parking space close to the store can fuel someone’s anxiety. This is especially problematic when someone knows that there will be no designated parking spaces for disabled people. As well as the spaces tending to be closer to the location, there is also extra room on the sides and at the back to ensure getting a wheelchair out, for example, is easier.
While there are, of course, other measures that would be sensible to take, the above three are the most important and will help you to make a start towards being disabled-friendly.
