Create your Accessibility Guide

A small change can make a big difference

When we talk about accessibility and tourism businesses, even small changes can make a big difference to the visitor experience. It may be as simple as providing good accessibility information in your promotions and on your website, to empower visitors and enable them to make personal choices.

VisitEngland is working with AccessAble to support hospitality and tourism businesses across England to provide detailed descriptions of their venue accessibility for visitors.

VisitEngland is providing generous discounts to tourism businesses who wish to sign up via the new portal, which will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Through AccessAble’s new Your Accessibility Guide portal, businesses can book and pay for either a guided or on-site assessment of their venue, where a professional surveyor will create a quality-assured Detailed Access Guide.

The aim of Detailed Access Guides is to give anyone who needs to know more about accessibility – disabled people, carers and those with long term health conditions – the information to decide if a place or space will work for them.

VisitEngland Director Andrew Stokes said:

“Our research confirms that today’s travellers with health conditions and impairments want detailed descriptions of venues’ accessibility to help make decisions. These new guides provide clear, quality-assured information, supporting them to make the best choices. By making these user-friendly guides available on AccessAble’s website, attractions, accommodation providers and other tourism businesses can tap into this valuable market further. I encourage tourism businesses in England to sign up via the portal.”

Dr Gregory Burke Founder and Executive Chair of AccessAble said:

“For 25 years, listening to the lived experience and expertise of disabled people has been at the heart of everything AccessAble does.

“Disabled people have been contacting us to say they are facing a postcode lottery when it comes to accessibility information. At the same time, we have had significant numbers of venues across the UK asking to join our service.

“The Your Accessibility Guide portal is our answer. We are thrilled to be working in partnership with VisitEngland to enable tourism and hospitality businesses to provide quality assured accessibility information.”

The guides will be published and searchable on AccessAble’s website, currently used by more than six million people a year, with businesses also receiving an Accessibility Improvement Report.

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Tourism is one of England’s largest and most valuable industries, supporting hundreds of thousands of small-to-medium sized businesses, employing 2.6 million people and, in 2022, generating £66 billion for the economy in domestic visitor spending.

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If you qualify as a Micro or Small Business (see below) you may be able to to book a Guided Assessment for a nominal fee of just £1 + VAT :  email [email protected] (do not book via the portal).

• Shop or café – single floor or 1 to 2 rooms;

• Restaurant or bar – single floor or 1 to 2 rooms;

• Bed and breakfast or guest house with 1 to 3 bedrooms;

• First or single self-catering unit with 1 to 3 bedrooms;

• Visitor attraction – a single building without additional assets such as a café or shop, e.g. a small art gallery or museum.

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Watch a recording of  the VisitEngland  webinar on new accessibility information initiatives, recorded on 13 February 2024. Password: sTv33Yfa

Find out how tourism businesses in England can provide high-level accessibility information, supplemented by a Detailed Access Guide from AccessAble.

Speakers include Anna Nelson, AccessAble’s CEO, and Ross Calladine, VisitEngland’s Accessibility and Inclusion Lead, who also led a Q&A session.