A field team focused on “accessibility”.
hub.brussels has a duty to increase its skills and the quality of its services in relation to its public, companies and shops, in order to provide advice and support in terms of mobility and accessibility. Accessibility is a key performance criterion for companies. This theme is fully integrated into European and regional policy. hub.brussels, the link between stores/enterprises and public authorities, can play a unifying role around this theme, in order to mobilise private actors and encourage coherence between private and public initiatives.
Collect, support and promote! Given the number of stores in the Brussels region, hub.brussels has targeted new stores that have requested the support of hub.brussels for their opening. hub.brussels has joined forces with AMT Concept (handy.brussels). Field staff have been trained, through disability simulation and practical training, to audit the level of spatial, visual and auditory accessibility of shops, in order to give them advice and references. Their work not only compiles the level of accessibility for customers, but also provides advice to merchants.
A field team is authorised to carry out audits of shops. The encoding tools, tested over 4 years, are now being redesigned to enable them to be more efficient, or even to offer the possibility of pre-encoding by the merchant himself. Initial observations were made on recurring problems, making it possible to refine solution proposals and tools. In general, new investors are made aware of the issue of accessibility. They need financial assistance and concrete advice to improve the design of their business. Gradually, the theme is attracting a wider audience.
The training in the situation of "Persons with Reduced Mobility", a wheelchair, blind, was very significant. Already, it is sometimes difficult to travel to Brussels in a normal situation, but in a PRM situation, it is a real headache. We are more aware of the accessibility problems in the city. We are becoming more conscious that we can all, from one day to the next, loose mobility. We didn't ask ourselves the question before.
