The Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses

In this Skip the Queue podcast episode, I speak with Emily Yates, Head of Accessibility and Inclusive Design, at Mima.

“Probably the most important thing was making sure that we’d co-produced this information and consulted with the correct people. So we’ve consulted with over 30 disability charities and disabled people’s organisations, also trade associations as well as independent reviewers.”

Emily Yates is a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy living in Glasgow, Scotland. She loves to write, travel and is a real pink hair enthusiast. Emily has over a decade of experience as an accessibility consultant. Now the Head of Accessibility and Inclusive Design at Mima, Emily has worked with large transport, culture and heritage and global events organisations such as Heathrow Airport, COP28, the Science Museum Group and the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games to further their physical, social and digital accessibility measures.

She has also worked with the Council of Europe, international travel networks, and sat on equality boards advising various sporting, transport and travel organisations on their access and inclusion agendas.
Emily frequently presents and writes on disability issues, having fronted several documentaries for BBC Three and written for the Guardian, the Independent and Telegraph Travel. She also authored the Lonely Planet Guide to Accessible Rio de Janeiro.

What will you learn from this podcast?

• VisitBritain Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses
• How it aims to act as THE resource for travel, tourism and hospitality organisations
• How it was co-created
• Why it is such a vital resource
• How it will evolve over time

To listen to the full podcast, search Skip The Queue on iTunes, Google Podcasts and Spotify to subscribe. You can find links to every episode and more at www.rubbercheese.com/podcast.

You can also read the full transcript below.

The interview

Your host, Kelly Molson

Our guest, Emily Yates

Kelly Molson: Hi, Emily. It’s lovely to have you on the podcast today. Thanks for coming on and joining me and at very short notice, too. Appreciate it. 

Emily Yates: Not at all. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a real pleasure to be here. 

Kelly Molson: Well, we’re going to have a good chat today. I’m looking forward to this. Right, I am going to start my icebreakers with this question for you. Have you ever been told off by a security guard for touching anything in a museum that you should not have been touching? 

Emily Yates: What a great question. I don’t think I have, but something that immediately comes to mind. It was a very embarrassing moment that I had at the Museum of the Future in Dubai a few months ago, where I touched something that I shouldn’t have done. And what it was there was an interactive kind of tabletop interactive going on, and there were groups of people from all over the world who were visiting this museum and there was this one couple who were trying to sort their wristband to make this interactive work and I just figured that they couldn’t do it.

So I put my wristband on to help them and I changed all the information to me and they were so annoyed to me, in a massive grump. Yeah, they just thought that I’d, like, nicked all of their information and their opportunity to do this activity and I was just trying to be helpful. 

Kelly Molson: That’s the actual digital version of skipping the queue, basically. You wristbanded them out of the way. 

Emily Yates: I totally did. And the worst thing was that were on this group tour, so I had to stay with them for the rest of the tour.

Kelly Molson: They were with you. That’s a little bit awkward, those group tours, aren’t they? Because you never know if you’re going to like anyone or if ones are going to get on your nerves. So you just made it even more awkward than it needed to be. 

Emily Yates: There you go. 

Kelly Molson: Right. I love it. Okay, there’s a three parter to this question, but it’s a good one. And actually, thank you, whoever sent this one in, because I genuinely can’t remember who sent me this one, but I really like. It’s the first time that I’m using it, too. Okay. So they say the formula for visitor attractions is one, a great view, two, a great brew, and three, a great loo. So I want to know where you’ve encountered your best three of these. They can be different. So best view? 

Emily Yates: Best view, I would have to say. Can it be international? I would have to say Sugarloff Mountain, Rio de Janeiro. 

Kelly Molson: Wow. 

Emily Yates: Absolutely incredible view. Yeah. Like nothing else. Best brew. Oh, I’m trying to think of somewhere that has a great cafe, the V&A Museum in Dundee has a brilliant cafe that also has a great view, I have to say.  That would be my best brew.

Kelly Molson: We like that one. And then three best loo. 

Emily Yates: Best loo. It would have to be somewhere that has a changing places toilet. And of course, I need to say that being an access consultant, I’m trying to think where does. But I know for certain that a client I’m working with, the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, has one about to be kind of refurbished and all sorted. So I would say there. 

Kelly Molson: Excellent. Good choices as well. I love that you’ve got a Dundee one in there that was like two out of the three. I mean, there you go. There’s a challenge for them. If they can up their game, they can get that third one from you as well.

Emily Yates: Yeah, absolutely. 

Kelly Molson: Nice. All right, what’s your unpopular opinion? 

Emily Yates: Oh, my unpopular opinion? Both heels and handbags are overrated. As a wheelchair user, I have never, ever worn a pair of high heels in my life. I’m 32 years old, so I think that’s quite an accomplishment. And also pushing all the time. Unless it’s a cross body one, I can never hold a handbag, so, yeah, I’m a Converse and rook sack girl all the way. 

Kelly Molson: Right. Because, yeah, it would get in the way, wouldn’t it? You need to kind of have it across and then, I guess, tucked in a little bit and then what’s the point of having something fancy if you’re going to just.

Emily Yates: Exactly. 

Kelly Molson: I mean, I’m kind of with you. I’m not a wheelchair user. However, my feet were not designed for high heels at all. I’m a flat scale all the way. 

Emily Yates: Maybe not. Unpopular opinion. Maybe there’s just two camps, two very distinct camps, isn’t there? 

Kelly Molson: I think probably two camps, but I don’t think this is an unpopular opinion. Even in a camp of people that could actively wear those heels and might want to. I still think that there’s a.

Emily Yates: There’s a secret loo. Wish we didn’t have to. Maybe I’m in a lovely position, that I’ve got a lovely excuse. 

Kelly Molson: Never had to think about this. Never had to squeeze your tiny feet into those awkwardly pointy, evil contraptions. Right, let’s see. Well, let’s see what everyone on Twitter has got to share with us on that. Thank you, Emily. I want to find out a little bit about. Well, I want to find out a little bit about your role and your background and then tell us a little bit about Mima as well. 

Emily Yates: Yes, sure. So, I am a wheelchair user. I was born with cerebral palsy. I’m, as you can probably tell from my accident, from a little town called Skipton in North Yorkshire. And I’m also a twin, and my twin lives in Spain now, so she’s got the sunshiny life. There’s definitely a tan difference between the two of us now, for sure. And I’ve always worked in the world of accessibility and inclusive design, from leaving a university, really. And it’s led me to amazing opportunities to be able to travel a lot, to be able to see, I guess, the importance of my capabilities as a disabled person, rather than just my limitations as a disabled person. And I’ve brought that into my professional work as well as my personal life as well. So I now work for an amazing human centred design agency called Mima. 

It stands for Micro and Macro, so details and then zooming out into the big picture, looking at that end to end journey. And I head up the accessibility and inclusive design team there. So whether you’re talking about airports or train stations or of course, museums and galleries or even global events and sporting events, we look at auditing, facilitating lived experience, user groups, standards, policies, disability awareness training, all of that good stuff, and bring our design expertise into wider projects with us as well. And it’s brilliant. 

Kelly Molson: That’s how we got chatting, isn’t it? Because you’ve worked with a really broad. We work with a hugely broad range of clients, as you’ve just said. But I think David and I started talking somebody I can’t remember, it was a good friend of mine, it was Jo Geraghty. She introduced us because we had visitor attractions and kind of heritage and culture organisations in common. So we had a brilliant chat about this and then we had a chat and then this project happened that you’ve all been involved in, which is amazing. So this is what we’re going to talk about today. Now, you’ll probably agree with this, but I think when it comes to accessibility and inclusivity, I think it’s fair to say that kind of travel tourism organisations, they want to do the right thing. 

There’s a real desire to be able to do the right thing, but they often don’t really know what that is and where to go and find the support to be able to do those things, like where do they start looking to kind of understand the checklist of things that they need to go through to make sure that their venue is accessible. The VisitBritain Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses aims to change that. 

I saw Ross Calladine, who’s the Accessibility and Inclusion Lead at VisitEngland, speak about this a while ago, before it had launched. He was speaking at a Visit Hearts networking event that I went to. It is an incredible resource for the sector. Like, absolutely incredible. I’ve had a really deep dive into it and it is so useful and so full of incredible information. But you and Mima have been involved in putting this together with them? This has been a joint project. 

Emily Yates: Yes, absolutely. So we were the toolkit authors and I feel very honoured to have worked with Ross and Hannah at VisitEngland for the last year know. They’re just a wonderful client and we’ve got on really well. And Ross, as you will probably know from hearing him speak, absolutely has his heart in the right place when it comes to accessibility and inclusive design. But I think really importantly as well, has his finger on the pulse of the business benefit of this, which of course is really important. And you very rightly said there that a lot of especially small to medium sized businesses want to do the right thing, but often don’t know where to start. And quite a lot of the time that’s to do with budget, it’s to do with time, it’s to do with resourcing constraints, all of that stuff. 

And what we really wanted this toolkit to do was to provide some holistic tips and advice for those businesses that actually says, “We understand the limitations that exist. We understand that it’s not possible to just click your fingers and magic up a changing places,” for example, that were talking about earlier. But it is possible to think about your staff training, your recruitment, your policies and your processes. Things like making sure that your access routes are clear of seating and clutter. Simple things that make a huge difference. But of course, I said seating clear of access routes, but of course there needs to be seating somewhere as well. That’s really important. But these quick wins that you can make, that will make a huge difference to people. It’s not always about just installing a really expensive piece of equipment. 

It’s understanding those holistic changes that you can make that will make a huge difference. And the toolkit covers so many different sections. It provides some information about the purple pound. So the spending power of disabled people in their households, which is worth, I think, 274,000,000,000 pounds per year to UK businesses alone. So that’s what you’re missing out on if you’re not physically or digitally accessible. And then the toolkit also covers the different impairments and medical conditions that you might need to know about how to best provide that inclusive welcome that can often not cost anything at all. It’s just about changing your mindset. 

And then we talk about the importance of inclusive marketing, changes in the built environment, employing more inclusively, and then the next steps to kind of continue the all encompassing journey that can never really be finished, but will hopefully provide people with stand them in good stead for a future that’s a bit more accessible. 

Kelly Molson: I guess that goes for the toolkit as well. This is going to be something that is never finished too, because it’s always going to change and evolve depending on what the needs and requirements are. How was it created in the first place? What was the process that you had to go through? Because this is, know what you’ve just described. I mean, the resource is phenomenal, it’s vast, the things that you can understand and go through with this documentation. So that in itself will have been a mammoth task to have pulled together. How did you work with VisitBritain to do that? 

Emily Yates: So the first thing that was quite important was thinking about what each of the resources were going to look like. So what I’ve just gone through there is the more holistic toolkit, the main piece, if you like. But in addition to that, we’ve also got documents that have 20 top tips for businesses. We’ve got action checklists where people can almost say, “Right, I’m going to make sure I’ve provided something in particular for an assistance dog, for example”, and put a timeline of when they’re going to do that, give ownership to a certain member of staff, of appeasing that checklist, and then carry on that way. So there’s also some action checklists and there’s also some technical guidance as an appendix as well. 

So the first thing was really thinking about what information do we want to provide and how are we going to segregate that information, so it isn’t awfully overwhelming and is actually actionable. And then the second thing was making sure, and probably the most important thing was making sure that we’d co-produced this information and consulted with the correct people. So we’ve consulted with over 30 disability charities and disabled people’s organisations, also trade associations as well as independent reviewers. So everybody from the Business Disability Forum who gave us some great advice in terms of inclusive employment, to self catering trade associations, to museum trade associations, theme parks and things like that, there’s so many people that got involved with this and gave us some advice. 

And also we wanted to make sure that the information wasn’t just actionable, but it was really relevant as well. So we’ve also created lots of different case studies within the toolkit. So whether that’s more independent small farms who’ve done something amazing in terms of their volunteering and how that can be more inclusive to a local pier, for example, that’s made something that, let’s face it, in the built environment, isn’t all that accessible sometimes. They’ve made changes to help that out. 

We’ve added those case studies. So as you’re reading through the information and learning lots, you’re hopefully able to also read something that’s quite relevant, that almost sparks that interest and that aspiration and gives you an opportunity to think, “Okay, I can do that. This might be who I might get in touch with and this might be the action I take.”

Kelly Molson: Yeah, I love that. The case studies make it so relatable to different scales of organisation. And I think what I found was it was quite inspiring, actually, that, okay, it’s a pier. There’s always going to be some challenges with accessibility. However, we have gone to these efforts to do these things. So you might have a checklist of 30 things you might be able to cover off, 20 of them, ten of them you’re never going to be able to do. But to be able to read and go, “There’s still so much that I can do. Even though I don’t have something that’s all 30, I can still do these things and make it significantly better for a much wider range of people that will be able to come and use these facilities now.”

Emily Yates: Absolutely, 100%. And we wanted to make sure that people really got that feeling and they were encouraged by the information rather than overwhelmed by it. And I think one thing that’s also really important is that, let’s be honest, when it comes to accessibility, we all think about wheelchair users and we all think about step free access, which is great for me as a wheelchair user. But actually it’s not always about providing step free access or installing that really expensive lift.

How can you think about the colour palettes that you’re using to make sure that there’s enough tonal contrast for somebody who’s visually impaired, but it also provides an appropriate sensory environment for somebody who’s neurodivergent? These are things that are so often forgotten or put down the priority list. And these are the things that we wanted to say, “Okay, you can do these in a way that doesn’t break the bank, that doesn’t take all the time, but makes all the difference to a certain group of people.”

Kelly Molson: Do you think that they are harder to associate with because you can’t see them? I mean, with the wheelchair it’s a very obvious. You can see that person has a disability, you can see that they will need something very specific from you to be able to use your platform. But with some of these other things, you just can’t see that trigger. So you don’t think to think about it? 

Emily Yates: Absolutely. Yeah. I think one of the really pivotal points that we have in the inclusive design industry now is thinking about things that are less visible. So somebody who has dementia, for example, that might find really dark flooring looking like a black hole and might really struggle to go into that museum environment that’s particularly dark. Thinking about that is just as important as how wide your doorways are. But as you’ve very rightly said, are so often not thought about or not correctly understood is probably the more correct way of saying it. 

Kelly Molson: You mentioned earlier about some monetary value for organisations to do this, but why is this such a vital resource from someone like you who has lived experience of this as well? Why is this so vital? 

Emily Yates: I think it’s really vital because it’s specific. First of all, so we’ve created something specific to people within that tourism travel attractions industry. In fact, we’ve focused specifically on accommodations, attractions, food and beverage and events. There are four main areas that we focused on. So what I really like about it is you read through as somebody who works in one of those businesses and everything is relevant to what you do, and I think that’s really important. So often you look at accessibility resources and they’ve tried to cater to a huge audience and actually made a bit less relevance by doing so. I think that makes it really vital and a really innovative resource actually. By doing so, I think another thing is it allows you to focus on that end to end journey in its entirety. 

So if you feel like you’re doing really well in the accessibility that you offer your customers, for example. But you want to focus now more internally on, “Okay, what’s my culture look like? How inclusive can I be as an employer? What about my marketing? What about my website? I focused on the built environment, but what about what the information I’m putting out there?” All of that information is in there as well. So regardless of where you are on that accessibility journey, I’d like to think that there’s something for you within that toolkit. 

Kelly Molson: There absolutely is as well. You definitely need to go and download it. So we’re going to put a link directly to it in the show notes for the show as well. So don’t worry about rent searching for it, just go to the show notes. You will find it very easily. How is it going to evolve? Because we said this is not a static thing. It’s out there now. Needs requirements are going to change, policies are going to change. What does the roadmap for it look like for the next kind of couple of years, five years down the line? 

Emily Yates: So I’m doing quite a lot of work with Ross at the moment to think about how we’re making sure that people are aware of it and they know exactly how to use it as a tool. Because, of course, with anything like this, it’s all well and good writing it, but really it’s only as successful as its uses. So we’ve gone already to the AA and the VisitEngland assessors who go into different hotels and restaurants and review these, and we’ve made sure that they’re aware of the toolkit. We’ve given them a bit of a presentation and a few exercises on how to use it. We’re going to do similar with visitor attractions as well. And then Mima. We’ve got a bit of a contract with VisitEngland for the next couple of years that focuses on providing updates to this toolkit. 

So we will be going out and training different people, but also we really want people to write into us and give us feedback and tell us where they think certain improvements could be made or if they’ve got a great case study of something that’s only happened a couple of months ago. All these things, we want to hear about them so we can make sure that it continues to be an updated, best in class resource. 

Kelly Molson: Oh, that’s good. I love that little shout out. Right, if anyone’s listening and something good has happened, you’ve got something to shout about. You know how to contact Emily. We’ll put a link to Emily’s LinkedIn profile on here so you can give her a shout out and about. And what do you hope that it’s going to achieve? What do you hope that this will bring? 

Emily Yates: Oh, that’s a great question. I think the number one thing I hope, and this is probably quite a personal, selfish plea, is that I hope it encourages businesses to be honest about where they are in their journey. By that, I mean it is no good somebody calling you up and saying, “Hi there. Do you provide step free access and accessible parking?” And you going, “Oh, yes, we do. That’s absolutely fine.” And somebody like me getting there, and there’s five steps up to the front door. There’s nothing heroic about not being honest about where you are in your journey. It just complicates matters. 

So what I would really love businesses to have the confidence to do is have a statement on their website that details exactly where they are on that journey, is really honest about the things that they’ve done well, the things that they’re still improving, and therefore gives disabled people, older people with access requirements in general, that autonomy to be able to make the decision for themselves, whether this place is suitable for their needs or not. And I think if we can master that and if businesses can do that would be an incredible thing for the industry in general. 

And it puts, as I say, that autonomy back on disabled people, back on the audience to say, “Right, this is great, I’m going to go here, I’m going to tell all my friends about it, and this could be a great case study for this business to learn a little bit more from, et cetera.”

Kelly Molson: That is such an important message, isn’t it? The message of honesty? Because that seems like a really simple thing to do. Okay, look, none of us are perfect. None of us are perfect. We all have a long way to go to make things as accessible as they need to be. However, this is where we’re at. We’ve got this. We’re back to our checklist again, aren’t we? This is our 30 step checklist. We’ve got ten of those knocked off already. And these are the things that we’re doing.

This is what we are hoping to achieve, and this is the time frame we’re looking to achieve them. And I’ve just been through this process with the fire safety regulations that were brought out last October. So making sure that I’ve got. Yep, okay. I’ve got 90% of those. There’s 10% that need to be looked at. This is what we’re going to do. And this is when we’re going to do it by. It’s exactly the same message, isn’t it? 

Emily Yates: Exactly. 

Kelly Molson: Do you not see that from many kind of tourism and attraction organisations then? Do you find that is quite a challenge for them, to be quite honest about where they’re at? 

Emily Yates: I still see being very honest with you, I still see quite a lot of fear surrounding disability and accessibility and this real desire to do the right thing. All of this is coming from a good place. There’s a real desire to do the right thing, but as you said right at the very beginning, no idea of where to start. And I think sometimes it’s very easy to over promise and under deliver, and that is the worst thing that you can do. Equally what I want to say to caveat all of this is if you offer something that’s amazing, please shout about it, please tell people about it.  Because equally outside of the coin, I see actually museums in particular that for all of these amazing things, be as a sell tours, touch tours, tack tile objects, nobody has clue that they even exist. So I’m asking really for both things.

Kelly Molson: Balance. 

Emily Yates: Absolutely. Be honest about what you don’t have. Celebrate what you do. 

Kelly Molson: Another great message, Emily. Okay, what are your top tips? Like I said, this is lived experience for you. What are your top tips around disability awareness? What would you shout out and say these are the things that you need to be looking at. 

Emily Yates: Okay, first thing, it’s quite a philosophical point, but it’s quite an important one. I think we need to change our mindset when it comes to accessibility and inclusive designs, especially in the disability space, because each and every one of us at some point in our lives will have experience of disability. Hopefully it’s just through old age, but it may be through injury, through something else. And it’s important to think about not disabled people and nondisabled people, but disabled people and not yet disabled people. And I think if we changed our mindset around that, suddenly there’d be a lot more movement when it comes to accessibility and inclusive design. So I think that would be my one top tip, my one plea, if you like. I think the second one is to think bigger than wheelchair users. Start thinking about how to design for neurodiversity. 

Start reading documents such as the new PaAS 6463, design for the mind. If you are, for example, a contractor or a designer working in these kind of spaces, that’s really important too. And I think wherever possible, bring lived experience into your work. If you are working in a gallery and you’ve got this amazing new exhibition coming out in the next couple of years. Think about how you can represent deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people within that exhibition. Can you have a space where you have an access hub that has BSL, tactile maps, portable stools that people can take round with them? And even more so, can you have part of the exhibition where some of your interpretations, some of your objects are to do with deaf, disabled, neurodivergent creators? That would be incredible too. 

Kelly Molson: So making sure it’s woven through every part of that experience and not seen as an add on at the end. 

Emily Yates: Absolutely that. Absolutely that. 

Kelly Molson: Great tips. Thank you. Let’s talk quickly about the podcast. So at Mima there’s a podcast called Re:Design. Actually episode five does feature Ross. Again, he’s the Accessibility and Inclusion Lead at VisitEngland, and he comes on and talks about how do you create a seamless customer experience. So again, this comes back to a lot of the points that we’ve covered today. I mean, great topic. Congratulations on starting the podcast. In the first place there, what are the hopes and aspirations for Mima? What are they looking to achieve by putting this podcast out there? 

Emily Yates: I think what we’re hoping for is that multidisciplinary design, human centred design, inclusive design, really gets its place on the map a little bit more because it’s something that, especially inclusive design, it’s spoken about a know you will read articles a lot, I’m sure, Kelly, that mention it and the importance of it. But there’s a difference between mentioning it and knowing what to do with it and actually speaking to people that have done it.

And I think that’s what we’re trying to do, really pull out some pearls of wisdom from different individuals that have gone through different scenarios, whether they’ve travelled a lot for their work, whether they’ve focused on inclusive internal culture change as one of our episodes focuses on, whether they focus specifically on the importance of inclusion within aviation, whether they’re looking at a seamless visitor experience. 

We want to hear from people that have experienced that and been through it, and are able to then give a bit of advice to people that want to learn more about a subject that everybody should at least have a bit of a basic understanding of. 

Kelly Molson: Amazing. Right. We will link to that podcast as well. So that is definitely one for you to go over and subscribe to. Emily, it’s been so good to have you on today, and I know that we’ve had to keep this one short because everyone’s got appointments that they need to get to. But this is such a key topic. 

My aspiration is that everybody that listens to this episode goes and downloads that accessibility toolkit and shares it with their network as well. Please. So that’s a personal plea from me to you listeners. Go and download it and please give it a little share because it needs to get out to as many different people as possible, as many organisations that it is relevant for as possible. What about a book that you love, that you’d like to share with us today? Emily, I’m intrigued if you’ve gone on topic or not. 

Emily Yates: I think I have gone on topic about this. Sorry if I’ve been a bit one dimensional. 

Kelly Molson: Not at all. 

Emily Yates: My book of choice is one that I read recently and one, funnily enough, that I’m running a bit of an internal workshop on at Mima in a couple of weeks. We’ve started a bit of an inclusive book club and it’s called the View From Down Here by Lucy Webster. Lucy is an amazing journalist. She’s disabled. She used to work for the BBC before going freelance, and she writes this incredible memoir about what it’s like growing up disabled, but really importantly as a disabled woman. 

 And she talks about so many different scenarios from trying to get into a nightclub on a Saturday night when the difficulty of doing so in terms of the gaze that you so often experience as a woman, but as a disabled woman as well, her thoughts on motherhood and how complex and nuanced that is as somebody who’s disabled, friendships, professional lives, all of these different things. And I think it’s just such an incredibly powerful, confident, but also very vulnerable account of the realism of what it’s really like. And the thing that it made me realise, or the thing that it made me remember, should I say, is that we’re not going to solve accessibility by just making sure that all of our train stations are step free. It’s much more holistic and nuanced and complex than that. 

And it’s about human nature and human design and all those holistic things that we so rarely think about. And I would just urge everybody to read it. It’s angry, it’s sad, it’s beautiful. It’s just a wonderful book. 

Kelly Molson: Wow. What a book. I feel quite moved by just hearing your account of it, let alone reading it. Right, that’s going top of the list. Listeners, if you would like to win a copy of that book, which, I mean, let’s face it sounds like everybody needs to read that anyway, so do throw your hat into the ring for this one. If you head over to our Twitter account and you retweet this episode announcement with the words I want Emily’s book, then you will be in a chance to win it. But aside from that, go and buy it and absolutely head over to the show notes download the VisitBritain Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Toolkit for Businesses. You will not be disappointed, I can assure you of that. Emily, it’s been brilliant to have you on today. Thank you. I’m sorry it’s short and sweet. 

I’m sorry that you’ve got to dash off to an appointment and you’re leaving me, but it’s been so amazing to chat. I would love for you to come on and talk about some of the case studies, maybe with some of your clients at some point, because I think that would be a really interesting discussion to talk through some of the processes and the steps that they went through and just showcase that this is for everybody. This really is for everybody. 

Emily Yates: I would absolutely love that. Thank you. We’re working with the National Railway Museum at the moment on their Vision 2025 master plan. So maybe when that’s starting to wrap up next year, maybe that would be an amazing opportunity to talk about that. 

Kelly Molson: I think that would be brilliant. I’d love that. All right. Thank you ever so much Emily. 

Emily Yates: Thank you, Kelly, thank you so much. 

Do you know someone we should be talking to?

Do you know someone fascinating we should be talking to?

If so, email us at hello@rubbercheese.com – we’ll get back to you shortly.

Author:

Kelly Molson Managing Director

Host of the popular Skip the Queue Podcast, for people working in or working with visitor attractions, she regularly delivers workshops and presentations on the sector at various national conferences and universities including The Visitor Attractions Conference, ASVA and Anglia Ruskin University.

Read more about me