Overview
How accessible are social advisory services for people with disabilities? What needs to be considered to ensure the accessibility of a service? What tools are available to implement measures that promote accessibility?
An overview
On behalf of the Federal Bureau for the Equality of People with Disabilities (EBGB), an interdisciplinary team from the Departments of Social Work and Computer Science, in collaboration with the association Sensability, is developing an online tool. This tool is aimed at providers of social advisory services as well as institutions responsible for service planning. The online tool is designed to help them assess the reachability and accessibility of their services with regard to people with various disabilities, identify concrete needs for action, and prioritize, plan, and implement measures to improve accessibility based on identified needs and available resources. In this way, the tool serves both to raise basic awareness of barriers and accessibility, and as practical support for the planning and implementation of measures.
The project is based on a comprehensive understanding of accessibility (Krüger et al., 2022), viewing barriers as relational (WHO, 2011). An intersectional perspective is applied, and people with disabilities are involved in all phases of the project. The online tool itself will be developed as an accessible and user-friendly website, in accordance with the principles of universal design.
