Most writing about disability and leisure venues focuses on ramps, and ramps are the smallest part of it. The bigger part is arrangements: how a session is run, what is required of a customer, and whether a business is willing to do something differently.
What the duty is
The Equality Act 2010 requires a service provider to take such steps as it is reasonable to have to take to avoid a disabled person being put at a substantial disadvantage compared with people who are not disabled.
Three parts of that are worth pulling out.
It is anticipatory. A business is expected to think ahead about what disabled customers may need. It cannot simply wait for somebody to ask and then decide. That is the part most often misunderstood by businesses, who tend to treat it as a request handling process.
It covers more than buildings. The duty applies to provisions, criteria and practices, to physical features, and to the provision of auxiliary aids. A policy can be a barrier just as effectively as a step.
Reasonable does real work. What is reasonable depends on the size and resources of the business, the practicality, the cost, and the extent to which it would achieve anything. A small independent venue is not held to the same standard as a large chain, which is a feature of the law rather than a loophole.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission publishes guidance for service providers, and the Act itself is public. What follows is a description of how this generally works, not advice about a particular situation.
| Kind | Examples in a play centre | Typical cost to the venue |
|---|---|---|
| Changing a practice or policy | Entry before opening, not queueing, an exception to the sock rule, permitting safe food | None |
| Providing an auxiliary aid | A visual timetable, a quiet corner, a card a child can hand over instead of speaking | Very small |
| Altering a physical feature | A ramp, a wider gate, a changing bench, a ceiling hoist | Capital, sometimes substantial, with a long life |
| Running a different session | A capped, quiet, unamplified session at a fixed time | A trading slot, repeatedly |
| Telling staff | A five minute briefing so everyone can answer three questions | None, and it is the one most often skipped |
A working frame put together by this desk from published guidance and from the plain wording of the standards named on the page. It is not a survey, not a measurement and not drawn from any venue.
The adjustments that cost nothing
The useful insight for a parent is that most of the adjustments that make a visit possible are free, which makes them much easier to ask for and much harder to refuse.
- Entry before the session starts. Ten minutes in a quiet room so a child can settle before it fills. Costs nothing and transforms the visit for a great many children.
- Not queueing. A child who cannot queue can be let through, and it takes nothing from anybody.
- Music down. Free, immediate, and frequently agreed on the spot in a quiet session.
- Bringing safe food. Where a child cannot eat anything on the menu, the alternative to permission is exclusion.
- Keeping shoes on. For a child who wears orthotics or cannot tolerate bare feet, an exception to the sock rule costs the venue nothing.
- Not requiring the child to speak. Staff who accept a nod or a card from a child who is not going to answer a question.
- A carer going free. Common practice, materially changes the cost of a visit.
- Somewhere to leave a wheelchair or a buggy safely. A corner and a bit of willingness.
Every one of those has been refused somewhere and agreed somewhere else, usually depending on whether the person asked had ever considered it.
How to ask
Two practical points, learned by families the hard way.
Ask in advance, and ask a manager. The person on the till at a busy moment is not empowered to agree anything unusual, and being told no by somebody who could not have said yes is a bad start.
Ask for the specific thing rather than for accommodation in general. Can we come in ten minutes before you open is a question with an answer. Is your venue suitable for a child with additional needs is a question that will produce a reassurance and no arrangement.
And write it down if it is agreed, even just in a confirmation email. Staff change, shifts change, and the person who agreed it may not be there on Saturday.
- Could we come in ten minutes before the session starts?
- Can the music be turned down during a quiet session?
- May we bring food for a child who cannot eat anything on the menu?
- Can my child keep shoes or orthotics on in the play area?
- What is your carer admission policy?
If you are refused
Take the refusal at face value first. Sometimes a thing genuinely is not possible: a building may not have the space, a session may be booked to capacity, a hoist may not exist.
What is worth probing is whether the refusal is about this request or about not having thought about it. Asking what would be possible instead frequently produces something workable, because it turns the conversation from a yes or no into a problem to solve.
If you think a business has failed in its duty, the route is not a regulator, because there is no regulator that inspects leisure venues for this. The Equality Act is enforced through the courts by individuals, which is a real barrier. In practice the useful steps are a complaint in writing to the business, which many resolve, and advice from Citizens Advice, which is free and knows this area.
The Equality Advisory and Support Service, funded to advise on discrimination, is the other route, and the EHRC publishes information about how the duty works even though it does not take individual cases as a matter of course.
The case a venue should hear
It is worth putting the commercial argument, because it is genuinely strong and because managers respond to it.
Families with a disabled child do not visit alone. They travel further, they come at quiet times, they book in advance, they return to the small number of places that work, and they tell each other in considerable detail. A venue that becomes the one that works for a local group of families acquires a customer base that does not shop around.
Most of the adjustments cost nothing and the largest ones, a changing bench and a hoist, are a capital cost with a very long life. Set against the number of families locked out of leisure venues entirely, the arithmetic is not as unfavourable as it looks from behind a counter.
What good looks like from the outside
The venues that do this well share a set of characteristics that are visible without asking. They publish specifics rather than adjectives. Their staff know the answers without checking. They run a quiet session and it is a real one. Their accessible toilet is empty rather than full of high chairs. And when asked for something unusual, the first response is a question rather than a refusal.
That last one is the tell. A venue whose instinct is to ask what would help is a venue that is going to work.