Summary

Create the practical conditions for participation by anticipating barriers, understanding individual support needs, improving accessibility and providing reasonable accommodation. The aim is to progressively shift from reacting to access needs to anticipating and removing barriers by design. Enabling involves actions to address:

• Inclusive design (6.1)
• Information on support needs (6.3)
• Physical accessibility (5.1)
• Information accessibility (5.2)
• Digital accessibility (5.3)
• Communication accessibility (5.4)
• Sensory accessibility (5.5)
• Accommodations and support (6.2)

Bolded actions are required for the corresponding level of YO-IN Quality Label Certification.

Inclusive Design (6.1)

Actions

• Basic: Discuss what barriers could prevent participation before planning an activity and make simple changes early.
• Intermediate: Establish or use a consistent accessibility check during activity design and assign responsibility for addressing barriers.
• Advanced: Apply inclusive design systematically, suing evidence and lived experience to anticipate diverse needs before individual accommodations are requested.

Milestones

• Accessibility is considered before delivery of an activity or event.

Considerations and Decisions

• What activities can be designed inclusively and what others may require individual accommodations?
• How can the organisation move towards more inclusive design while staying in scope?

Information on Support Needs (6.3)

Actions

• Basic: Provide a voluntary way for beneficiaries to tell the organisation about access or support needs before an activity.
• Intermediate: Establish or use a template questionnaire for event and activity registrations where beneficiaries can state support needs.
• Advanced: Include the provision of support measures in evaluation processes for activities and events.

Milestones

• Support needs are known in time to act.

Considerations and Decisions

• How will the organisation ensure the security and privacy of support information?

Physical Accessibility (5.1)

Actions

• Basic: Ask venues and providers about the physical accessibility of the spaces the organisation uses and communicate known measures and limitations to beneficiaries.
• Intermediate: Establish or use a venue checklist or comparable process covering, venue access, toilets, navigation and safe participation.
• Advanced: Systematically audit or verify venues, procure accessible spaces, and address recurring infrastructure barriers including for the office of the organisation.

Milestones

• Venue selection includes accessibility criteria.

Considerations and Decisions

• What are essential criteria for venue selection to ensure physical accessibility?

Information Accessibility (5.2)

Actions

• Basic: Avoid acronyms and use plain language for priority information.
• Intermediate: Establish or use a basic guide to creating accessible documents, in form and content.
• Advanced:
  • Audit organisational communications to improve the accessible information guide.
  • Consistently provide alternative formats for information and documents when requested (e.g., Braille, Easy-to-Read, Word or PDF versions, etc.).

Milestones

• Core information adheres to basic information accessibility practices.

Considerations and Decisions

• Which formats will be provided standard versus on request for core information?

Digital Accessibility (5.3)

Actions

• Basic: Apply basic practices to digital content including automatic captions for videos, alternative text for images, readable fonts, and good colour contrast.
• Intermediate: Establish or use a digital accessibility checklist to ensure the organisation’s website, social media, digital documents, and other digital forms and channels are accessible.
• Advanced:
  • Integrate digital accessibility into procurement, content workflows, and quality assurance processes.
  • Conduct a formal, external audit of the organisation’s website with a digital accessibility expert.

Milestones

• Main digital channels are consistently applying accessibility measures.

Considerations and Decisions

• Which barriers to digital accessibility can the organisation address internally and what must be externalised?

Communication Accessibility (5.4)

Actions

• Basic: Proactively share what communication accessibility measures are and are not included for an event, meeting, activity (e.g., automatic captions via webinar platform, sing language interpretation, plain language summaries, etc.).
• Intermediate: Arrange communication supports such as captioning or interpretation when requested and troubleshoot budget friendly alternatives as needed.
• Advanced: Plan for communication accessibility in operational and activity budgets (e.g., sign interpretation and captioning for events, sing language video for the executive summary of a publication, etc.).

Milestones

• Communication needs do not prevent the participation of persons with disabilities.

Considerations and Decisions

• What kind of communication accessibility measures can be provided routinely, on request, or through alternative measures?

Sensory Accessibility (5.5)

Actions

• Basic: Consider noise, lighting, predictability and quiet-space needs when planning activities.
• Intermediate: Routinely provide support for sensory needs for activities and events. This can range from low budget, low effort options such as pre-event site visits, quiet corners or times, and alternative networking options to high budget, higher effort options such as established quiet rooms.
• Advanced: Make sensory accessibility a criterion for venue selection, activity design, working arrangements, and evaluation.

Milestones

• Sensory and psychosocial barriers are anticipated for activities and events.

Considerations and Decisions

• What are the essential criteria for venue selection and activity design to ensure sensory accessibility?

Accommodations and Support (6.2)

Actions

• Basic: Try to respond to individual accommodation needs using available resources and identify likely cost areas for the future.
• Intermediate: All new activity and project proposals include a budget provision for reasonable accommodations and accessibility.
• Advanced: Collect and use data on accessibility and accommodation resources to forecast needs.

Milestones

• Accommodation is resourced rather than improvised.

Considerations and Decisions

• Will the organisation fund accommodations and support through organisational or project-specific resources, or both?

Go to Step 5: Empower