Blue Badge Style (BBS), the first app and website guide to a stylish lifestyle for the less-physically-able, has signed-up the award-winning Hoxton Hotel for its first Pictorial Access Description (PAD). The new PAD will give The Hoxton Hotel opportunity to show its level of inclusion with a high-quality, pictorial journey through the venue, highlighting the disabled facilities in the public areas and rooms.
Timothy Griffin, General Manager at The Hoxton Hotel commented:
“Our hotel was designed with inclusion in mind, so we definitely want to be able to show potential clients how easy it is to stay at the Hoxton, from the front entrance to our eleven fully accessible rooms.
“Blue Badge Style’s offering means we can offer peace of mind to people with mobility issues. They can see how the hotel looks before they arrive and understand how accessible we are, as well as work out any potential problems. This isn’t just about access compliance, but demonstrating our cool, comfortable facilities easily on our website.”
Social media-ready tool
The Blue Badge Style PAD arrives as a social media-ready tool, matching the style of the venue and can be posted to a website, Facebook or Pinterest. The PAD will appear on a website as a button and once clicked, takes the customer visually through the access points before their visit. It includes overlay photos and narrative of facilities and is placed on an easy to find area of a website.
Founder of Blue Badge Style, Fiona Jarvis explains:
“We’re really delighted that one of our favourite hotels, with three Blue Badge Style Ticks, has become the first to have a PAD. Hotels and restaurants have often made significant investments in creating a stylish and accessible place for disabled people, but too often the information is hidden, not available on the website, or in one case, hidden beneath a paragraph about the hotel accepting dogs!
“People with mobility issues will check out a hotel, restaurant or bar online before they go, but it’s often very difficult to work out what the obstacles are for your particular type of disability. For example, a walking stick user will want to know if there’s a handrail on the stairs, whilst a wheelchair user needs to know how easy it is to get up a ramp. It’s all about knowing what to expect. Blue Badge Style’s pictorial descriptions will be as cool as the venue’s website, allowing potential customers to make an informed choice before going out and having a good time!”
The Hoxton Hotel will receive a link to the images so they don’t have to reconfigure their website, it is hosted by BBS. The PAD will also be published on the Blue Badge Style website, and accessed via the app.
Blue Badge Style is the only company that looks at disability from the point of view of style & design, taking a stylish, pragmatic and cost-efficient approach to inclusive access, working with venue management teams, designers and architects to improve the awareness of disabled facilities. “Style is the overriding premise of Blue Badge Style, along with a positive outlook” says Fiona Jarvis, “disability need not stop you from enjoying the good things in life!”
About the Stylish Less-Physically-Able Market
The Family Resources Survey (FRS) 2010/11 states that 19% of the UK population suffer from some form of long-term disability (11.5m). There are also an estimated 6 million carers. This does not include temporarily disabled people, their families, friends or unregistered carers. The Blue Badge Style PADs are intended to give venues a competitive edge in the growing market of affluent, less-able individuals, estimated at £1.8bn a year in the UK.
The annual spending power of disabled adults in Britain covered by the DDA is estimated at £80 billion per year (DRC – Disability in Scotland 2004: Key Facts and Figures – 2005).
33% of people aged 50-64 in Britain have a disability (Labour Market Trends report, April 2005). 80% of UK wealth is in the hands of people aged over 45 (Age Profiling: Monitoring the make-up of your workforce”, DWP, 2006).
The Blue Badge Style network is estimated to have a potential on line community of 1.5m stylish, cash rich and loyal visitors, spending £1.7Bn per year on restaurants and hotels alone (FRS 2010/11). Some figures put the disability market value at £86Bn in 2012. The disability equipment market is valued at £1.46Bn (DLF/ Plimsoll figs 2008). We estimate 10% of these markets are people who regard themselves as ‘stylish’.
About Blue Badge Style
The unique Blue Badge Style Tick Rating System is designed to encourage venues to provide Equality of Access to Goods & Services for less-able people. The organization rates out of 5 for each category: 1. Access, 2. Facilities and 3. Style. The scores are then aggregated to a number of Blue Badge Style Ticks from 0.5 to a maximum of 3. Our aim is for ‘as recommended by Blue Badge Style’ to become an aspirational goal for any item, organisation or establishment. BBS is affiliated with the National Register of Access Consultants (NRAC), ensuring the company is up-to-date with changes in legislation and equipment. It also has relationships with relevant Local Authorities and their particular access policies.
For more information click here
For our Twitter page click here
The Blue Badge Style app is available on iPhone/iPad, Android, and BlackBerry.