Activity Alliance have created this tool in partnership with Club Matters to see how inclusive and accessible your organisation is when meeting the needs of disabled people.
Being a successful organisation means being inclusive and accessible to everyone. All participants and volunteers need to feel valued and have equal access to participation or volunteering opportunities. Ensuring an organisation meets its participants’ and volunteers’ needs means that people may then share their experience and encourage others to join, helping the organisation to grow and become more sustainable.
Disabled people can face additional challenges and barriers to participating and volunteering. These barriers are explored in more detail on our ‘Engaging with disabled people’ page. Guidance can also be found on our ‘How to create an inclusive environment’ webpage. It provides information on how to make your organisation’s offer welcoming to everyone.
Activity Alliance’s Annual Survey 2021-22 shows that the majority of disabled people would be more active if given the opportunity to do so. Clubs, groups, and coaches play an essential role in ensuring disabled people’s experiences of sport and activity are positive and meaningful. Inclusive organisations can reach and engage more of their local community by creating better, more welcoming environments for everyone.
Activity Alliance’s research highlights a number of improvements that can be made to support disabled people to feel more comfortable in a club or group environment. These can be found on their ‘Understanding the barriers to participation’ webpage. The recommendations include being open towards disabled people, exploring the level of support needed to be able to take part in activities, and making small changes to traditional practices. The research also identified that the main way disabled people find out about sporting opportunities is through word of mouth from other disabled people and those they trust.
If an organisation communicates and promotes how inclusive and accessible they are, it can help to reduce the anxiety of attending sessions. It’s important to remember that being inclusive is not just for the purposes of disabled people, but also about shaping the organisation to reflect the needs and wants of the community it serves. For more information on becoming more inclusive for other under-represented groups, explore the ‘Understanding different audiences’ section on our website.
Developed with Activity Alliance, the link below takes you through a few key questions designed to help organisations understand how inclusive they are, and where changes can be made to improve their offer.
What do I need to know before using the tool?
Using the tool is quick and easy and is likely to take around 10 minutes. All users will complete the questions about your organisation, your promotional activities and your coaches and volunteers. Each question will have a yes or no answer so pick the one that best reflects your current position.
Accessing the tool
In order to access the tool you must be logged into a Club Matters account. If you are not signed up, you will prompted to do so when you access the tool using the link below:
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