Accessibility Services

Accessibility consulting services

DEOC can provide you the following infrastructure and services accessibility consulting services:

Making your buildings and services accessible to your customers and employees

Do you know that a vast amount of your customer-base and talent-pool might be lying untapped simply because your business is inaccessible to people with disabilities and senior citizens?

Whether people are unable to access your e-commerce website or your retail store or your commercial office or your transportation service or your restaurant, there are hundreds of thousands of prospective customers and employees who don’t do business with you simply because, well, they cannot do business with you.

They would like to, but they cannot.

With The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016, all public buildings and services are to become accessible. The Act also recommends compliance with Universal Design Standards while developing products and services.

What implications do universal accessibility and inclusion have for your business?

It means you will see more persons with disabilities not just joining the workforce but also mainstream public places like entertainment centres, cinema halls, shopping malls and commercial complexes. They will be travelling in trains, they will be riding in the buses, and they will be hailing cabs. A big chunk of the population that was up till now forced to remain inside or at a particular location, will suddenly become mobile. This further means they will need to use the services of different businesses.

At that time we are sure you would like to have your business establishment accessible to persons with disabilities. You would like to make your workplace inclusive of employees with disabilities.

Why it makes sense to make your business accessible to your customers?

  1. Get more customers – older persons as well as persons with disabilities
  2. Enjoy word of mouth promotion
  3. Get more recommendations and referrals on social media as well as on review and feedback websites
  4. Become a more socially responsible business, attracting praise and appreciation
  5. Enjoy better search engine rankings because both Google and Bing preferred accessibility-compliant websites
  6. It’s legally mandated

Forget about the legal requirements for the time being, but think it this way: when a person with disability visits your business establishment and does business with you, in most of the cases it isn’t just the person with disability who comes to your place. She or he will bring friends, relatives, colleagues and classmates, people who don’t necessarily have a disability. This is more business.

When all these people have a good experience with you, they will spread the good word about you, bringing more customers to you.

Many persons with disabilities spend a lot of time online interacting with other people. They will leave good reviews about your business. On social media they will talk about your business and they may even become your evangelists.

There is another good thing about having an accessible business for your customers: it becomes easier for older people to visit your place. So, families having elder members would prefer to come to you rather than a place that makes it difficult for their loved family members to visit. This brings more customers to you.

The same holds true for your website. Most of the persons with disabilities who can use the Internet prefer to shop online or access information and other business services via the Internet because it’s more convenient and quicker. How accessible is your website or mobile app? Does your website or mobile app comply with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)? Are your digital documents accessible?

Just imagine, there might be hundreds of thousands of customers (with disabilities) who could have done business with you through your website bringing you more money, but they can’t simply because you haven’t made your website or mobile app accessible.

So, creating an inclusive environment for your customers isn’t just a question of doing something socially good; it also makes business sense, in fact, a lot of business sense.

DEOC can help you make your business accessible to customers with disabilities

Being a premier inclusion and accessibility consulting company in the country, we have helped many businesses turn accessible.

Accessibility and inclusion aren’t just about replacing a couple of steps in front of your office or restaurant with a ramp (although it’s a good start). There are accessibility standards to be followed in order to have a certified accessible business establishment.

Accessibility and inclusion from the perspective of a customer with disability means she or he should be able to enter/ access your business establishment/website/app, move/navigate around freely and do business with you without facing obstructions. The more accessible your place/website/app is, the less intervention would be required on your part.

DEOC can help you:

  • Evaluate how accessible your business establishment is right now from the perspective of your customers and employees.
  • Audit your premises/website and make the appropriate recommendations to make it accessible to persons with disabilities.
  • Give recommendations according to international and national accessibility standards.
  • Resolve compliance issues.
  • Train your existing staff.
  • Formulate staffing policies.
  • Formulate and set in place a disaster management plan for your customers and employees with disabilities.

Our experienced team will carry a detailed audit of your customer policies as well as the physical and digital environment, and then give recommendations accordingly.

Studies undertaken by DEOC

Frequently asked questions on Disability Access Audits for built environment