P-05-806 We call for all premises in Wales to be awarded an Access Certificate number – Correspondence from Legacy International Group to the Committee, 11.09.18

Good evening, we have received an email from a colleague regarding your consideration of a disability access certificate along the lines of a food hygiene rating badge.

We are a Welsh based not for profit company work to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. We are very new to the disability arena in terms of the age of the company but given both directors live with disabilities themselves, we both feel able to commit to input in on this agenda.

We have ourselves looked at a similar type scheme but feel that a rating of accessibility would  show prejudice to retailers and other hospitality outlets. We believe this would be detrimental to building community relationships.

We would put forward a suggestion of a badge scheme where businesses and traders could work with people from disability groups to earn their badges such as a deaf friendly badge, an adult changing space space badge, that can all be dissolved on a simple yet bright card In their windows.

We believe that this project needs to be led by people with disabilities advising local businesses on how to make this happen. Accessibility Group has set up a user lead consultancy that could lead the way in this arena. Disabled people would attend a local business and gives a review focused on their disability. If the local business is deemed to have met basic criteria regarding this disability they would be awarded a badge relating to this disability. This would mean an ongoing relationship of building the badges so that businesses could represent many different types of disability for exam Paul autism friendly.

We strongly believe that local business wants to be disability friendly but need support help guidance and finance to make this happen. We have looked at the Canadian government model that has given a funded budget to local businesses in order to create more disabled access to their businesses and to their services.

We believe that a full disability access type card could only go ahead with the funding whether that be from a funded third-party such as a disability foundational trust or whether Welsh government could release the funding to make something like this happen. We would like to stress that we do not agree with a hygiene type rating which discriminate businesses that are less disabled friendly we believe this is an opportunity for businesses to learn and grow via the support of disabled people within the community.

We would very much welcome any feedback from your committee regarding this subject and if you require any further information or would like to meet with us on the work that we have done to date we would be happy to make that happen with yourselves.

Kindest Regards

Sara Flay

Chief Executive

Legacy International Group