Checking for Accessibility    

To assist in event-planning, accessibility awareness, and future property and building accessibility needs, the Accessibility Committee is making available a number of different guidelines. Reading through them may help you understand the many things that have implications for accessibility by people with disabilities.

The Committee hopes that you will use one or more of these guidelines, and let our members know — in detail! — what you find helpful, and why. We’ve made guesses and assumptions about usefulness, but it will be your actual experiences that will help us now.       

You may notice that accessibility has three main flavors. There’s architectural accessibility, physical details like door widths or positioning of electrical outlets. Program accessibility has a lot to do with the “where” and “how” of making programs and events open to everybody; for example, moving a meeting to a wheelchair-accessible room so a wheelchair user can attend. Sometimes accessibility for another person depends directly on you — your attitude and behavior: keeping your mustache trimmed to help someone lip-read what you have to say, or purchasing and using a nonscented laundry detergent so a person with chemical sensitivities can remain near you and share in your activity.  

Presently there are three accessibility guidelines, or checklists, available here for your use:

• Accessibility Guidelines for UUCE Events

• UUCE Accessibility Survey

• National Organization on Disability Guide to Accessible Meetings

• Principles of Universal Design (simple and short)