What Is an 'Access Rider'? How Do We Produce One for Community Participants?

What is this advice about?

GOV.UK figures show that heritage participation levels are lower for disabled people, whether working, visiting or volunteering. Barriers include a lack of physical access to buildings and places, societal attitudes to disability, and a lack of awareness of the accommodations that could be put in place.

This advice is for heritage organisations of any size or scale that work with community participants on projects or programming. It demonstrates how organisations can help tackle barriers for individual participants by developing individual 'access riders' to ensure their individual barriers are recognised and tackled and, by doing so, develop organisational knowledge and practice.

What are the key points?

What is an 'access rider'?

An 'access rider' is an access document tailored by an individual disabled person to detail their access needs and the specific barriers to their participation in a given setting or project. It details recommended steps to tackle these barriers.

Access riders are confidential documents that may detail an individual's health to inform an organisation of accommodations they can implement to remove or tackle barriers. They are written with and by disabled people so they can state their personal requirements.

It is important to note that an access rider needs to be an optional document for participants/ Though many disabled people would welcome recognition that an organisation will make an effort to tackle their participation barriers, others may be concerned about sharing information on their health and about the potential for stigma and discrimination.

Why is offering access riders good practice?

Instead of a blanket policy or generic access plan, access riders demonstrate a commitment to an individualised approach to disability access, treating disabled people as valued rather than an issue or a challenge. Developing an access rider should be seen as a learning process for an organisation as well as an opportunity for the participant to share their knowledge and experience.

Offering access riders as a standard procedure, detailing this in all information when recruiting participants and promoting projects and opportunities, is important. It demonstrates your commitment to including disabled people and dismantling barriers to participation.

The heritage sector has many barriers to participation for disabled people. It is important to recognise that the Social Model of Disability places the onus for disability on society, not on the disabled person. They are disabled by a lack of accessibility in places and spaces, a lack of knowledge and awareness among non-disabled people, and a lack of funding for accommodations.

An access rider recognises these factors and asks disabled people to identify what accommodations can be implemented to tackle them. Heritage sites, historic buildings and historic landscapes can often have many barriers for disabled people – physical, environmental, and social – that organisations can recognise and work towards tackling.

Access riders should be developed in conversation with participants rather than given to them as an administrative task or set as a condition for their participation. Developing an access rider with project leads or organisation staff means they can address the specific places and activities likely to be experienced by participants, making them feel genuinely heard in the process.

What information should an access rider contain?

An access rider should be an at-a-glance document that contains as much or as little detail as the participant wishes to share. Participants should note if they wish to disclose any elements to other participants and staff, if they feel this would help with making accommodations, such as wearing a specific lanyard or badge, to state their conversation or interaction preferences.

At its most basic, an access rider should contain:

• The nature of an individual’s disability or health conditions
  • There should be no requirement to share specific disabilities or health conditions; a participant could state “I have a disability that impacts my daily life” or “I have a chronic health condition” rather than share specifics of either of these. An access rider is not a medical questionnaire and should not be treated as one
• How this impacts them and what their access requirements are in order to have equal access to participation
  • Use headings that detail the kind of environment and tasks they will experience, so they can give relevant answers
  • This may include physical accommodations, such as ergonomic equipment, adjustable desks, level access to all activity areas, doors of a specific width to accommodate powerchairs, specific width seating
  • It may also include environmental accommodations, such as adjustable or low lighting options, scent-free spaces or spaces away from strong smells such as coffee machines, access to dedicated quiet spaces, offering noise-cancelling headphones, providing spaces with sensory elements
  • Finally, it may also include social accommodations, such as offering online meetings, having cameras off during meetings, no mandatory social activities, allowing crafting or fiddle toys during meetings and sessions, regular and consistent break times, consistent scheduling
• Any medical equipment they need to have with them or have easy access to
  • This can include needing access to a fridge to store medication, ensuring there is room for different types of walking aid, making sure there is room for oxygen tanks and related equipment
• Their emergency contact information
• Any brief additional notes they wish to share
  • Participants may wish to add background information or links to information on good practice they have seen, training or information they feel is relevant, or supporting information
• An explicit consent to store and process this data for the sole purpose of making accommodations and tackling their barriers to participation, which must be signed and dated

How should the data from an access rider be held?

It is important to reassure participants in any project that their data will be secure and kept and processed in accordance with GDPR.

The information held in an access rider is regarding an individual’s health and is classed as special category data, meaning it needs to be treated with extra care. As well as a standard GDPR policy, you should have a separate policy in place for handling data, which makes the process of gathering, holding and processing the data explicit.

The information on an access rider should only be accessed by those in direct need to do so, likely to be the person managing the participant programming. This should be laid out in your policy document. However, the person with the access rider may choose to state some aspects of it more openly to ensure others make the correct accommodations or to ensure the requirements of their access rider are met.

Where can I find more information and examples?

The Arts sector has more developed practice around inclusion for disabled people, so many existing examples and guidance relate to artists and creative practice settings. These can be tweaked to look at specific heritage-based settings and places.

• Musician’s Union access rider template
• Shape Arts brief guidance and template