#accessible environment

[enbycrip]

Your ongoing reminder that small local coffee shops, restaurants and other venues are frequently less accessible than large chain ones.

Yes, there is absolutely a structural issue to this; large chains have the ready finances to build new locations, whereas small businesses very rarely do, and in many places accessibility in existing shop fronts is horrific.

But this leads into the fact that small businesses, while they do absolutely often have narrow profit margins, also make choices based on what they see their customers valuing. And they do not see abled people valuing accessibility.

If you have a physically inaccessible venue you like to visit, please *ask* them about accessibility. Mention that you are choosing not to spend time and money there with friends due to their inaccessibility.

Certain councils in the UK apparently *do* offer grants to help small businesses increase their accessibility, though the information I could find about it online was spotty at best.

If they specifically identify cost as why they are not providing an accessible bathroom or a ramp into their store or venue, it’s always worth volunteering your time to help set up a crowdfunding campaign. Remind them that small businesses live and die based on their local community, and that by inviting the community to help them become more accessible to more of the community they are increasing their engagement with them and showing who they value.

Abled people having these conversations with other abled people and volunteering to take on some of the work of increasing accessibility is praxis.

[enbycrip]

If you have any local business you enjoy visiting, please let them know that an *incredibly* helpful thing they can do to increase their accessibility at almost no cost is to put their accessibility information on their website and post it outside their venue under their menu.

There are many guides online that would help them put together a guide in about half an hour. Ask them to do that, put a copy where it is easy for staff to access when asked (hard copy or digital) and post it on their website and outside. If they want to be incredible they would pay a disabled consultant to do an accessibility assessment, but even a free-from-an-online guide version is still incredibly valuable.

Even if their venue is totally inaccessible, and the cost to rectify that *far* beyond their means, doing this still increases their accessibility enormously.

Businesses posting this information where it is easy to find, and giving their staff the tools to give accurate information swiftly and easily on the phone, would save so many disabled people an enormous amount of time and energy.

If you own or work at such a business, please ask about doing this. Abled people having these conversations with other abled people and volunteering to take on some of the work is a piece of praxis that helps in multiple ways.