Reasonable Adjustments

Whilst we cannot anticipate the specific needs of everyone who wants to use our services, here are some examples of reasonable adjustments that we have previously made. They include, but are not limited to:

• Providing an interpreter, including British Sign Language, free of charge for our meetings with you or at events/meetings we host.
• Setting up live captions during online calls.
• Giving self descriptions when we introduce ourselves.
• Communicating via your preferred specific channels, e.g. WhatsApp, email, text, letter or phone.
• Arranging to meet in person if possible.
• Flexibility in meeting days, locations and times where possible.
• We can extend or spilt the length of support sessions or meetings.
• Take extra breaks during sessions or meetings.
• Slow down, lower or raise voice, or simplify our language when speaking.
• Follow up our conversations with notes or provide information ahead of meetings to help you prepare.
• Making minor adjustments to lighting, heating or seating/room layout at events or meetings.
• Setting up hybrid meetings with third parties and/or member meetings, so that you can join online if you are not able to attend in person.
• Selecting wheelchair accessible venues with accessible loos for any events we host.
• Providing comprehensive accessibility information in advance for any events we host.

As a charitable organisation, unfortunately, we do not have access to unlimited funds or staff, and we are not always able to help everyone. For example, we could not pay legal fees  or for personal assistants and we wouldn’t usually be able to provide taxis to our events.

But please always ask if you are not sure, and we will try to find a way to make things work if we possibly can.

Other measures we take

Visiting our office

We have included some detailed information with photos on our website contact us/visit us page. Please note that many of our staff continue to shield and work from home, therefore you must make an appointment before attending the office.

Our website

You may have noticed the accessibility tool on the right-hand side of the screen on our website pages. It is a blue square with the symbol of a person on it.

Click on the symbol to adjust the way clickable links are shown, change fonts, colours, contrasts and size of screen text. Our website is also compatible with universal screen readers.

We also always use ALT text on our website images and have taken advice from various peer sources to ensure we only include relevant and useful information in the descriptions.

PDF files

We know that some assistive technology does not recognise pdf files so we only publish them on our website and social media if accompanied by an alternative Word document version.

Events and meetings

As of May 2022, we have returned to hosting some face-to-face events. However, we are aware than many of our friends, members and staff continue to shield and we don’t want to leave anyone behind. We now have the technology to allow you to join our in-person events from the comfort of your own home via a zoom link. It’s still not perfect, but for a small charity on a budget, we know it will make a difference to many of you. Our set up has a 360 degree camera, speaker and microphone so you will be able to hear and see the participants attending the event as well as the presenters and be heard clearly by them if you wish. We do our best to provide BSL interpreters at our events when requested, though if you are familiar with this service you will be aware that most times a minimum of six weeks notice is required by many interpreter services. For Zoom calls we always switch on the captions.

Providing adequate information about events

We know that a whole range of information can be required to help you make an informed decision about whether a venue is accessible to you or not. We typically include details on our booking forms about wheelchair access and accessible toilets, and where possible will also include details about parking, lighting, acoustics, ambience, explicit directions and distances, and what to expect at the event. We also provide a named contact for each event to discuss accessibility information should you need to. We don’t think you should have to phone ahead to check these details if it can be provided up front, but please do get in touch with us if we have missed anything or find that you do need more details.

British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters

Due to the cost of hiring qualified BSL interpreters we do require prior notice so that we can book this facility on a demand basis.

When making our funding applications we always include costs for this resource and usually our estimate is about right. However, we cannot guarantee funding for unlimited use BSL interpreters for all our day-to-day interactions with you.

Videos

All videos we produce, or share have subtitles. For our text videos an audio version of the text is standard. We do not permit the use of flashing or strobe effects in any of our videos.

Social media

We include ALT text on all images used across our social media channels. We also avoid overuse of emojis as we know these can be very frustrating for people using screen readers.