The Disability Discrimination Act underlines the importance of ensuring equality of access and opportunity to North Lanarkshire Council’s services by disabled people and is viewed in the context of North Lanarkshire Council’s Equal Opportunities Policy, budget planning process and Venues’ Service Standards.
The Access Policy within venues focuses on improving service delivery to:
- promote social inclusion
- deliver responsive and relevant services and opportunities and
- develop an ongoing process relating to good equality practices
The Access Policy recognises the social model of disability as creating barriers, which ‘disable’ many North Lanarkshire residents from fully exercising their rights as citizens. These barriers include: –
- buildings and facilities that are inaccessible
- information that is not given in an accessible format and
- prejudice, negative attitudes and stereotyping
Our intentions as a service provider are to: –
- provide high quality relevant arts opportunities in accessible and appropriate community facilities;
- maintain an open dialogue with a wide range of community groups and individuals to ensure we provide accessible and appropriate services
- provide information on our services in a range of accessible mediums and suitable formats
- identify staff training needs in relation to equality issues and
- apply North Lanarkshire Council’s Equality Policy in all aspects of our service.