In the realm of stadium facilities management, accessibility for spectators, staff, and players is an area of increasing focus that aims to ensure equitable access for all. While modern stadiums are designed to facilitate physical access, disability is diverse, encompassing a range of needs.
Accessibility consultancy Direct Access demonstrated a range of access tools this March at an accessibility event at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium. Craig Acton, Head Coach for Nantwich Town Disability Football was on hand to demonstrate the range of large print materials, Braille formats, and audio descriptions, ensuring that every fan, regardless of their visual or auditory abilities, can fully engage with matches.
These include:
- Braille – transcribing documents or text into Braille for match day or event programmes.
- Accessible menus – designed for neurodiverse, visually impaired or dyslexic customers, large print and Braille menus allow onsite F&B outlets to provide vital information about food and drink products in a simplified, accessible format removing the requirement for a family member or member of staff to read out the selection.
- Tactile map boards providing wayfinding information in tactile, pictorial and Braille formats with QR links to audio description and sign language videos, these enable people to navigate around with ease.
Their dedicated recording studios and tactile production facilities are stationed within an Accessible Media and Innovation Centre, managed by a team of disabled people with a mission to empower other disabled people through equity of information.
As of 2024, the NHS reports that approximately two million people in the UK are affected by sight loss, which equates to one in 34 individuals overall. Of this number, around 340,000 are officially registered as blind or partially sighted. When we consider how many of which are likely to be sports fans, offering accessible media such as menus, seasonal guides, and newsletters in accessible formats makes sense.
Furthermore, there is a growing use of innovative accessible technologies – such as the Give Vision headset, a piece of tech that is helping its users with far-sightedness. Serving a similar function as a cochlear implant but for visual acuity instead of hearing, the device made the news recently for allowing a long-time Crystal Palace fan with deteriorated vision to watch football games from a distance by stimulating some of the photoreceptor cells in his eye’s retina (the device requires some use of vision to work, again, like a cochlear implant for hearing). The fan in question, said that without it, he would otherwise have to stay home and just listen to games on the radio.
While some of these solutions can be expensive in the short term, such as VR headsets – many of the technological solutions to accessibility issues within built environments (like stadiums and football grounds) can be easily rectified and require less extravagant solutions.
For instance, providing a good amount of pre-visit information so that disabled people can anticipate their experience on your site can also demonstrate your willingness to accommodate their needs. You can do this through your website and social media channels (while ensuring that alt text is provided, and hash tags are written in camel case) and by providing an accessibility and sensory guide
Accessibility and Sensory Guides are fast-becoming a standard of the overall visitor experience in public recreation and entertainment settings. Working very much in the same way as a traditional leaflet or brochure, Access and Sensory Guides provide details of what there is to see and do at a particular space, while also offering information to visitors about inclusion and access. Typically, this would include provisions and modifications available that allow disabled people to participate, such as:
- Accessible walking routes provision
- Changing Places and Accessible WCs
- Cafes and refreshment areas
- Split-height information desks
- On-site staff availability
- Wayfinding and signage
- Accessible Parking
- Hazard identification
As a team of disabled people, Direct Access understands what it’s like to want to go somewhere, arrive on site, and realise that due to a lack of accessibility issues we are unable to participate, effectively wasting time, money, and in some extreme cases risk affecting health and mental wellbeing.
Whether your site or facility could be considered truly inclusive or not, providing an Access Guide allows site owners to be transparent with their audience about the realities of their on-site accessibility provision, respecting the time of both existing visitors and new potential visitors.
Since navigation through space is a multi-sensory “problem solving” task, which requires the use of four out of our five senses (smell is not often utilised but remains a way many people associate themselves with a particular place), it goes without saying that one wayfinding approach will not be suitable for everybody.
Broadly, wayfinding should comply with the Equality Act 2010 and the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act by removing physical barriers to access for all disabled people. Signs and wayfinding should be easily interpreted by all, lighting must be good at all points of interest, and areas where navigation will be required such as information desks, corridors, external pathways, fire exits etc.
Some key considerations to make (which apply specifically to site signage) are;
- being well lit for legibility (without glare, no matter the time of day)
- have a matt finish or gloss factor of no more than 15%
- have a high contrast between text and sign background
- have a high contrast between the sign and its surface
- be positioned consistently
- use a larger type size for signs suspended from the ceiling than
- signs positioned at eye level (to compensate for viewing distances)
- be able to withstand weather conditions if out in the elements, and replaced in circumstances where it takes damage
- interpretable, regardless of the time of day
These wayfinding resources should be detailed enough to provide a good overview of a site but be designed in such a way that a person can easily locate a point of interest and quickly decide on a direction to get to said point of interest (even if it’s at a considerable distance away). This applies to everything from the location of WCs and Changing Place facilities to on-site cafes, car parks, and lifts.
For more information contact Keir Welch on:
kwelch@directaccess.group or 0845 056 4421
https://directaccessgp.com/uk/
