Address access barriers

These guidelines are designed with the social model of disability in mind. In these guidelines, we address any attitudinal, physical, communication, and social barriers people with disability may experience during an inaccessible engagement, rather than focusing on a medical grouping of participants’ conditions.

Disability is a part of human difference. We know that disability can be situational, temporary, or permanent, and provide unique experiences for everyone. By considering permanent and temporary disability, people who are situationally disabled or in an environment where they cannot use all their senses often also benefit.

We have created 11 categories to describe the needs you should cater for. These categories expand on those laid out by the Washington Group Conceptual Framework. Each category contains prompts to test the accessibility of your proposed activity and to help you think of ways to improve accessibility.

Ensure your activities work for people who may experience the following challenges:

• hearing
• immunity
• interacting socially
• moving (upper body)
• moving (lower body)
• regulating emotions
• remembering and/or concentrating
• seeing
• sensing
• speaking
• understanding information.

By catering for these needs, more people can effectively engage in your activities.

Relevant pages

Washington Group Conceptual Framework

Hearing

People can experience functional barriers because activities are not catered to hearing challenges. They may:

• have temporary, permanent or situational hearing loss
• have a sensory condition that affects their hearing
• be triggered by aural stimuli
• experience impacted or delayed auditory processing.

This could include people:

• who are D/deaf or hard-of-hearing
• who are deafblind
• who are autistic
• with learning disability
• with sensory disability
• with sound sensitivity.

Ask yourself how your activity works for people with hearing challenges

• Does your activity require participants to hear?
• Does your activity require or encourage participants to speak quickly or at low volumes?
• Will your activity create lots of background noise?
• Do you require people to listen for long periods of time?
• Do you expect people to interpret or translate information quickly?

Increase accessibility for people with hearing challenges

• How might you present your activity or information a different way? For example, using sight or touch?
• In what ways can participants contribute without needing to hear audio material or other people?
• How might you encourage and ensure participants speak slowly and clearly?
• In what other ways can participants contribute instead of speaking?
• Can you provide materials before the session to reduce time-based barriers?
• How might you ensure mask-wearing does not obstruct communication?

Immunity

People can experience a weakened or reduced immune system that limits their ability to fight infections and other diseases, or sensitivities to certain substances, including but not limited to:

• allergies
• autoimmune conditions
• chronic disease or illness
• damaged tissue or organs
• underlying conditions
• suppressed immune response due to medication or medical treatment.

Ask yourself how your activity works for people with immunity challenges

• Does your activity require participants to be physically close to each other?
• Does your activity require participants to share or be in close contact with objects?
• Will your activity require participants to have contact with common allergens?

Increase accessibility for people with immunity challenges

• How might you design the activity to reduce immunity risks based on food, physical distance, or other immunity-based considerations?
• How might you remind participants to be considerate of immunity throughout the activity?
• Could your activity be carried out online or through another medium/platform?
• Can people wear masks?
• Can you make sure people in attendance are not sick or infectious?

Interacting socially

People may experience anxiety or other difficulties navigating social interactions, including but not limited to:

• interacting with other people
• understanding non-verbal communication
• communicating non-verbally
• identifying and respecting social boundaries
• providing appropriate amounts and detail of information
• identifying and interpreting non-literal statements.

This could include people who have:

• autism
• intellectual disability
• learning disability
• psychosocial disability
• neurological conditions.

Ask yourself how your activity works for people with social interaction challenges

• Does your activity require participants to engage in rapid, one-on-one, or small-group discussions?
• Does your activity require participants to speak in front of or share their thoughts or work with a large group?
• Does your activity require participants to touch each other? For example, shaking hands or hugging?
• Could your activity make participants feel pressured to answer ‘correctly’?

Increase accessibility for people with social interaction challenges

• In what ways can participants contribute without rapid, one-on-one, or small-group discussions?
• How might you support participants during rapid, one-on-one, or small-group discussions? How might you make them feel more comfortable?
• What alternative methods can participants use to share with the group?
• How might you design the activity so participants don’t need to touch each other?
• How might you encourage participants to feel safe to make mistakes?
• Could you enable participants to contribute to the event anonymously?

Moving (upper body)

People who experience barriers to moving their upper body may have challenges with:

• generalised upper body movement
• gross or fine upper body motor skills
• upper body strength or fatigue
• otherwise impacted upper body movement.

This could include people with:

• temporary injuries
• acquired brain injury
• physical disability
• neurological conditions
• a need for medications that may affect their movement.

Ask yourself how your activity works for people with moving (upper body) challenges

• Does your activity require participants to move their upper body or use upper body motor skills?
• Does your activity require participants to handwrite?
• Does your activity require participants to move rapidly?

Increase accessibility for people with moving (upper body) challenges

• How might you support participants during activities where they need to move their upper body or use upper body motor skills?
• In what alternative ways can participants contribute without needing to move their upper body or use specific upper body motor skills?
• What alternatives to handwriting can you provide?
• How might you slow the activity down?
• How might you help participants prepare for the activity?

Moving (lower body)

People who experience barriers to moving their lower body may have challenges with:

• generalised lower body movement
• gross or fine lower body motor skills
• lower body strength or fatigue
• otherwise impacted lower body movement.

This could include people with:

• temporary injuries
• acquired brain injury
• physical disability
• neurological conditions
• a need for medications that may affect their movement.

Ask yourself how your activity works for people with moving (lower body) challenges

• Does your activity require participants to move their lower body or use lower body motor skills?
• Does your activity require participants to move around a venue or location?
• Does your activity require participants to move rapidly?

Increase accessibility for people with moving (lower body) challenges

• How might you support participants during activities where they need to move their lower body or use lower body motor skills?
• In what alternative ways can participants contribute without needing to move their lower body or use specific lower body motor skills?
• How might you make the space easy to move around in?
• How might you make sure everyone has equal, barrier-free movement?
• How might you help participants prepare for the activity?

Regulating emotions

People who experience a functional barrier to emotional regulation may have challenges regulating their emotions or emotional responses. This could include people who have:

• acquired brain injury
• autism
• experienced trauma
• intellectual disability
• learning disability
• psychosocial disability
• neurological conditions.

Ask yourself how your activity works for people who have challenges regulating their emotions

• Does your activity require participants to share something that may be sensitive or make them feel vulnerable?
• Could your activity touch on topics that may be sensitive or traumatic for participants?

Increase accessibility for people who have challenges regulating their emotions

• How might you encourage participants to know it is safe to share sensitive information that may make them feel vulnerable?
• How might you ensure participants feel supported when they do share sensitive information that may make them feel vulnerable?
• How might you offer participants a choice not to participate or to opt-out of activities that could include sensitive or traumatic topics?
• How might you offer participants a choice not to participate or to opt-out when they feel overwhelmed?
• How might you support participants when the event includes sensitive or traumatic topics?

Remembering and/or concentrating

People who experience barriers to remembering and/or concentrating may have challenges:

• remembering information in general
• remembering specific kinds of information, such as recent information, long-term information, names, faces, or time
• concentrating for periods of time
• concentrating on a particular activity
• staying awake.

This could include people with:

• acquired brain injury
• intellectual disability
• learning disability
• neurological conditions
• psychosocial disability
• a need for medications that may cause memory loss
• other memory impairment.

Ask yourself how your activity works for people who have challenges remembering and/or concentrating

• Does your activity require people to remember information shared before or during the session?
• Does your activity require participants to recall events, facts, experiences, or other information from the past?
• Does your activity require participants to concentrate on one thing for a long period of time?
• Does your activity require participants to focus on complex information?

Increase accessibility for people who have challenges remembering and/or concentrating

• How might you help participants remember information shared before or during the session?
• How might you help participants prepare for the session?
• How might you shorten or break-up topics/activities?
• How might you allow for participants leaving and coming back to the event as they need to?
• What opportunities can you offer participants to take breaks or rest during the session?
• How much variety is in your activities?
• Are all participants able to actively participate?

Seeing

People who experience functional barriers because activities are not catered to seeing challenges may:

• have permanent, temporary or situational blindness or low vision
• have a sensory condition that affects their sight
• be triggered by visual stimuli.

This could include people who:

• are blind or have low vision
• are deafblind
• are autistic
• experience light sensitivity
• experience photosensitive epilepsy
• experience sensory disability.

Ask yourself how your activity works for people with seeing challenges

• Does your activity require participants to read text?
• Does your activity require participants to look at images or video?
• Will your participants need to navigate an unfamiliar area or location?
• Does your activity use flashing lights or images that change quickly?
• Will your activity require participants to be in a dark or overly bright space?

Increase accessibility for people with seeing challenges

• How might you present your activity or information a different way? For example, through sound or touch?
• How might you make sure everyone has equal, barrier-free movement?
• In what ways can participants contribute without needing to see or interact with visual material?

Sensing

People may process sensory stimuli (such as a smell, taste, or the way something feels to touch) with greater or lesser strength than others or may have reactions to certain stimuli. Sensitivities may cause people to experience pain, discomfort, strong emotional responses, or other negative reactions. This could include people with:

• autism
• learning disability
• experience of trauma
• intellectual disability
• neurological conditions
• psychosocial disability.

Ask yourself how your activity works for people with sensing challenges

• Will your activity require participants to touch, taste, or smell something?
• Will there be strong smells in the venue for your activity?

Increase accessibility for people with sensing challenges

• How might you reduce the chance participants will encounter strong or uncomfortable textures, tastes, or scents?

Speaking

People who experience speaking challenges may:

• have hearing loss
• have disrupted speech
• be slow-speaking or non-speaking
• currently be non-verbal or have trouble speaking
• have difficulties regulating tone or volume of speech
• prefer not to communicate verbally.

This could include people:

• who are autistic
• who are D/deaf or hard-of-hearing
• who are deafblind
• with complex communication needs
• with psychosocial disability
• with speech disability.

Ask yourself how your activity works for people with speaking challenges

• Does your activity require participants to speak or vocalise?
• Does your activity require or encourage participants to speak quickly or for long periods of time?

Increase accessibility for people with speaking challenges

• In what ways can participants contribute instead of speaking?
• How will you ensure non-spoken contributions are given the same amount of attention as spoken contributions?
• How can you give enough time and space for people to think about the questions or topic and respond at their own pace?
• How can you give participants more time to consume/analyse information before or during your session?

Understanding information

People who experience barriers to understanding information may have challenges with:

• information in general
• specific types of information
• specific formats of information, such as written or verbally presented information.

This could include people:

• who are autistic
• with intellectual disability
• with learning disability
• with neurological conditions
• with print disability
• with psychosocial disability.

Ask yourself how your activity works for people who have challenges understanding information

• Does your activity require participants to take in information?
• Does your activity give people enough time and a variety of ways to understand the information?

Increase accessibility for people who have challenges understanding information

• How might you present information so it is quick and easy to access, read, or understand?
• How might you present information in different ways? For example, through images, icons, words, or non-verbal cues?
• How and when will you check-in with participants?
• Have you asked for questions?
• In what ways can you support participants to analyse information during the session?
• How can you give participants more time to consume/analyse information before or during your session?