We don’t have a ramp – sorry! | Linkability

But did you know there are a lot of other things you can do to improve access to your premises?  Many of them won’t cost you a cent.

Disability access isn’t just about wheelchairs and physical access.  One in five people living in the Wheatbelt have a disability of some description.

Here are our top five tips for improving disability access today – and if you’re a business owner, that means increasing the number of customers who access your business by twenty percent.

1. Think about what people with all kinds of impairments might experience when using your service.  Does your advertising flyer on Facebook have an image description so blind people can read it too?  How will a Deaf person communicate with the staff at the front counter?  Are there a lot of boxes cluttering up your store that make it impossible for a wheelchair user to access it?  Is all the information you provide written in easy to read language?

The best way to find out about how to make improvements is to ask disabled people.  You’ll often also be meeting your responsibilities around occupational safety to employees and making your business accessible to other groups, like people who don’t speak English, too!

2. Consider the little things.  If you know there’s a guide dog that comes by your store on a hot day, provide a bowl of water – non working dogs will love you too!  A pen and piece of paper at your counter with a ‘Better Hearing Card’ will help Deaf people communicate their needs to you and signage that lets people know you have an accessible toilet or a ramp at the back of the building will cost nothing but increase your customer base.  It’s all about thinking about the diversity of your customer base.

3. Find out what your obligations are under the law.  A lot of Wheatbelt business owners assume that they do not have to make physical alterations because a building is heritage listed.  Under both state and federal law, the Disability Discrimination Act ‘trumps’ the Heritage Act.  Registration or claim of heritage value in a building doesn’t create an exemption from the DDA and is not in itself a defence.

The only defence for discriminating against a disabled person in Australia is ‘unjustifiable hardship’.  Heritage listing may come into it – if a business can prove in court that making alterations to a building would involve destruction or removal of significant heritage value, the alterations may be found to involve unjustifiable hardship.  You can read more about this on the Australian Human Rights Commission website.

4. Learn about disability access by googling ‘Disability Access’.  There are a number of good resources that will come up – they’ll help you think about access issues you may not have considered, like painting the edges of your steps a contrasting colour, captioning videos or finding out how to provide an Auslan interpreter for your event.  The Australian Network on Disability provides a very good event accessibility checklist and organisations like the Youth Disability Advisory Network and People With disabilities WA also have a suite of resources available.

5. Finally, take the time to learn about disability etiquette.  That might mean that staff know to come around to the counter to assist a wheelchair user rather than forcing them to look up if it is not at a suitable height, or using literal and plain language to people who are autistic or who have an intellectual disability.  Your staff should know not to pat guide dogs and assistance animals and to speak directly to a disabled person, not their carer.  

These are actions that signal to disabled people that your business is a welcoming environment.

Welcoming disabled people to your premises makes good business sense and increases your bottom line.  Let’s get competitive about who has the most welcoming business in the Wheatbelt.

Sam Connor is the Linkability project manager at the Wheatbelt Health Network.