Visual accessibility
To ensure that visitors who are visually impaired and therefore blind or visually impaired can also participate in an event, there are various provisions you can make. Think of things like using blind interpreters or walking routes that can be felt. On this page you will find information about the possibilities to ensure that this target group can visit your event.
Furnishing
To make the site or venue accessible to visitors with visual impairments, there are a number of measures you can take:
- Make sure walkways are easily visible and tactile for visitors with visual impairments. Learn more here.
- Mark thresholds and height differences with contrasting signal colors.
- Cover cables and pipes, and ensure that cable trays comply with the standards for tactile paving and are also marked with contrasting signal colors.
- Slabs over grass and sand are often not wheelchair accessible and pose a tripping hazard. It is better to use rubber mats instead. Even better are floor boards that are anchored to each other and into the ground, such as hexafloor. Using rubber mats or anchored floor boards immediately creates a tactile and visible route for people with visual impairments.
- Provide stairs with proper handrails, and mark them with contrasting signal colors.
Plan
- It is especially important for people with visual impairments to be able to get a picture of how the grounds are laid out before the event. Therefore, it is important that a map with good contrasts is available, on which the most important routes are clearly indicated (e.g. from the entrance to the restroom, stage and catering)
- People who are blind cannot see the map. By describing the terrain in text, they can still prepare themselves. Create a virtual audio tour of your event grounds, so to speak. For example, "You enter, follow the path straight ahead for the stage. The path that turns left at the entrance first passes by the catering and then it ends up at the restrooms.'
Menus and price lists
Visitors with visual impairments often have difficulty reading printed menus. By posting menus and price lists as accessible PDFs on your website, people with visual impairments can use their phones to hear what they can order and how much it costs. Alternatively, you could provide a menu in large print or in Braille.
Audio description and 'meet & feel'
Live audio description by a blind interpreter makes theater performances and events accessible to visitors with visual impairments. To do so, approach Foundation Comes to See: https://www.komthetzien.nl/audiodescriptie
Doing even more for visitors with visual impairments? By means of a "meet & feel" they can get acquainted with the decor, performers and, for example, costumes beforehand.
A Focus on Accessibility in Arnhem in 2024
In 2024, Cultuur Academy, Apcg, and the City of Arnhem will join forces to give a boost to efforts to improve accessibility at events and festivals.
Do you have a plan to make (part of) your event in Arnhem more accessible and could you use some extra support? Then enter our giveaway! Send us your plan for a chance to win a €2,500 voucher.