Strategic accessibility planning: 5 steps for a community

For every community, accessibility should be part of overall development planning. It is therefore important to include relevant goals and objectives in the Community Development Strategy.

At the same time, these should align with the six areas of the National Strategy for Creating an Accessible Environment through 2030 and reflect the real needs of people in the specific community.

Step 1. Understand what barriers exist in the community

Start with a simple question: what exactly prevents people from making full use of the community’s spaces, services and opportunities?

This requires analysing the results of annual accessibility monitoring, data on infrastructure and service accessibility, and residents’ enquiries.

It is important to hear from people themselves — civil society organisations, people with disabilities, veterans, older people, parents with young children and others who face barriers regularly or from time to time.

The community accessibility officer coordinates this work: collecting proposals for the plan and strategy, monitoring their implementation and reporting results to the Local Accessibility Council.

Step 2. Set priorities together with the Local Accessibility Council

The information collected helps the community determine what needs to change first.

The Local Accessibility Council is a forum where representatives of local government, civil society and other stakeholders can jointly identify the main challenges and priorities.

This approach helps take account of people’s real needs before the community makes decisions.

Step 3. Include accessibility in the Community Development Strategy

Accessibility goals and objectives in the Community Development Strategy should correspond to the six areas of the National Strategy:

▪️physical;

▪️information;

▪️digital;

▪️social and civic;

▪️educational;

▪️economic accessibility.

At the same time, each community decides for itself what to focus on first, depending on its needs and circumstances.

Step 4. Turn goals into specific projects and allocate funds

Each goal should become specific actions: what to do, when, who is responsible, how to measure the result and the funding sources.

It is important that the Development Strategy, action plan, local programmes and budget are linked. Accessibility will then become concrete change rather than remain merely a declared goal.

Communities can use the DREAM ecosystem to attract investment.

Communities can also receive practical support from the Expertise Centre, which draws on the experience of the first and second phases of the “Movement Without Barriers”.

The Centre helps at every stage, from planning and designing accessible routes to finding grant opportunities to implement projects.

Requests can be sent to the Expertise Centre at: [email protected]

Step 5. Check results and improve solutions

It is important not merely to count how many measures have been completed, but to check the key question: has it actually become easier for people to use the community’s spaces, services and opportunities?

The Local Accessibility Council, accessibility ambassadors, civil society organisations and residents themselves should be involved in assessing results.

If monitoring identifies new challenges or shows that a solution is not working properly, the community can update its priorities and measures.