Making Your Office More Accessible
It’s so important that we do all that we can to make life inclusive for everyone. As a business owner, it’s more important for you than for anyone else that you create an accessible environment for others. It doesn’t take too much to do this because all you need to do is look for a way to make your office inclusive for all who come through the doors. Equal-opportunity employers are those who are sought out by others. If you are the type of employer that includes everyone and opens the doors with better inclusion policies, people will flock to you.
From ensuring that you keep up with lift repairs in the building to making a point of adding ramps and low light switches for those in wheelchairs, you can do so much to ensure that your office better serves those with disabilities. With that to consider, here are the simple ways to make your office more accessible for others.
- Push education as much as possible. You can add all of the disability options through the office, and all you’ll have is a few lifts and ramps. You also need to educate those without disabilities to ensure proper integration into the office. This means arming all of your employees with the right knowledge about interacting with those in wheelchairs and with physical disabilities in the office. There is a chance that people don’t realize that they hold bias, and training and education will prevent that.
- Invest in good office and car park lighting. If you have people on the staff with partial vision, you have to ensure that you are appealing to their needs, too. Accessibility is about so much more than wheelchairs – it’s about all disabilities and ensuring that you are inclusive of all of them.
- Upgrade your office furniture . Your office furniture needs to be uniquely tailored to your employees but that’s to be the case for your employees that require accessibility. So, lower desks or desks that move as you need them, moveable chairs, and desks that can be easily navigated around are all important. You need to ensure that you have the right flooring, too, to make movement easy. Adding a lift into your office will also help as you can ensure that your office is accessible, too.
- Declutter. Having too much stuff lying around is a danger to everyone, not just those with high accessibility needs. You should try to make your office as clear of clutter as possible, in whatever way you can. There are a lot of things you might want to think about here. It might be wise, for instance, to make use of some self storage facilities so you can store items elsewhere. And generally make sure that you have a place for everything. If you can do that, it’s going to help a lot.
- Hire cleaners. This may not be the first thing that springs to mind but hiring cleaners for a more accessible office is important. You want to ensure that you don’t have to worry about clutter and trash everywhere, and you don’t want to have to worry about dirty floors and desks. Organization and cleaning is all-important so that you can keep everyone from having accidents as they move around the workplace.
Accessibility and inclusion are both important for your business. If you make sure that you have the right policies in place, you’re going to appeal to more candidates who want to work with employers that truly care.

