There are many ways in which your organisation can improve its inclusiveness to disabled people.  A good starting point is to ensure that inclusiveness is enshrined in your organisation's values and aims: developing a long-term strategy without this foundation can be difficult to sustain. As with any improvement plan, you will need to ensure that the right kind and the right amount of consultation is done beforehand.

Some important questions to ask are:

• Who are the changes for?
• Who benefits? Target groups such as audiences or employees? Everyone?
• Who is driving the change?
• Who will ensure that it happens? [i.e. are key decision-makers involved? If not, why not?]
• Whose views are you taking into consideration before initiating any changes?  
• What, if any, quality standards are you working to?
• How will you know when the changes are taking place with the desired effect?

Increasing inclusiveness within an organisation often involves changing unhelpful or negative behaviours and attitudes. This is because attitudes often form more deeply ingrained barriers to improving inclusiveness than physical barriers.  

Shape has many years of experience in helping organisations to tackle these kinds of issues, and in helping both large and small staff teams in the process of improving inclusiveness and accessibility for disabled people - with benefits that can improve relationships with audiences, visitors and employees overall. For more information about our consultancy services, please click here.

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Banner image: Participating Graeae workshop at Inspiring Futures Open Day, Royal Opera House.