Disabled Access Day is an annual event that encourages people with disabilities to get out and try something new. In their own words “It’s super simple. Just visit one new place that you’ve never been to before, whether that’s a café, a museum or a football stadium – the choice is entirely yours!”
Not only is this great for people with disabilities and their families, but it encourages venues and businesses to take notice of what is really needed or those with various disabilities to access and use their establishments – and also allows those businesses to access the enormous spending power of those with special access requirements that might otherwise spend their money elsewhere.
Obviously it would be great if there were no need for such an annual event – if everywhere and every business accommodated those with limited mobility or other access requirements by design, every day of the year. Sadly, that is not the world we live in, so for one day a year we can all do our bit and raise awareness by visiting somewhere new that has an Access Day event arranged, or even contact a venue that doesn’t and encourage them to arrange one.
This year, 2016, Access Day is on 12th March and it is a global event. BlueBadgeParking.com wants to help you get involved either as a venue or a visitor.
Helping Venues
If you are hosting an Access Day event and are promoting it via your website or social media (or even in printed materials), BlueBadgeParking.com has tools to help you.
You may have arranged ramps to access areas with steps, you may have arranged guides to help those with visual impairments. Whatever you have done to prepare for Access Day, one key consideration for a lot of visitors is access to suitable parking.
BlueBadgeParking.com can provide you with links for your website that direct your visitors to a map showing your venue and any disabled parking locations nearby. You can even personalise those links with the name of your venue, or the name of the event you are holding.
Creating a link is as simple as searching for your venue on the map and clicking the share icon in the Info Window, or right clicking and dropping a Share Marker on the location you wish to share. The sharing popup gives you loads of ways to share from simple links and images to social media sharing etc. We’ve even integrated bit.ly link shortening. More info on how these links work can be found here on the feature launch announcement.
Try clicking here for an example showing the Lyric Hammersmith’s audio described performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
(If the disabled parking locations near your venue are not shown on our map, it is very easy to add new spaces to the map so that your visitors can arrive informed.)
Help for visitors
We are encouraging venues and review websites to include links to our free, global online map of disabled / handicap parking spaces so that you can find parking easily.
Our website is mobile friendly and even integrates with your SatNav to give you driving directions straight to your chosen parking close to your destination venue.
Even if a venue hasn’t provided BlueBadgeParking.com links, you can still search our map by venue name, address, postcode or even just an area to see what parking is available near the venue.
Our database isn’t exhaustive by any means, but it is growing all of the time – and if spaces are missing from the map you could always add them to help out future visitors.
BlueBadgeParking.com relies on people just like you to help build our database of parking locations and visiting a new venue is the ideal time to help us to grow that database thereby sharing that information instantly with others around the world.
A date for the diary & a bookmark for your browser
Access Day 2016 is just around the corner now so put 12th March in your diary and plan a day out. The Access Day website has a searchable database of accessible events to help you find something in your area.
While you are at it, bookmark BlueBadgeParking.com and always have access to our latest disabled / handicap parking maps from home or on the move.
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