Festival Place has become the first shopping centre to rollout an exciting new movement designed to create a more inclusive shopping experience for visitors with hidden disabilities.
Deaf campaigner Simon Houghton, from Basingstoke, created the Unseen Aware movement to help improve retailers’ understanding of unseen disabilities.
Around 80% of all disabled individuals have an unseen disability or condition such as MS, hearing loss, vision impairment, ADHD and autism and often find it difficult to get the support they need when shopping.
The Unseen Aware movement is more than just training – it is designed in such a way to embed behaviour change over time, and includes introducing the principles of how to engage with someone who has an unseen disability (such as communicating respectfully, avoiding assumptions, and always speaking up), as well as ongoing education and weekly interviews with individuals living with unseen disabilities or conditions, designed to really create understanding and empathy.
On completion of the initial “Becoming An Unseen Disabilities Ally” online course, staff receive a physical badge to wear which helps identify them to customers and colleagues who might need support.
The online training has been rolled out for participating retailers in Festival Place throughout the summer launching on 2 September.
More than 40 retailers have already enrolled on the course including Starbucks, Next, Lush, Tesco, HMV, Hotel Chocolat, The Body Shop and Goldsmiths.
FP Business Performance Manager Rachel Carter said: “We’re delighted to be the first shopping centre to pioneer this movement. We’re always looking for ways to improve our customer experience and believe Unseen Aware will really benefit lots of our visitors and staff.”
Simon Houghton added: “I’m thrilled Festival Place have embraced the Unseen Aware movement. They are constantly striving to offer a more inclusive customer experience, and I’m delighted to be able to rollout Unseen Aware to their retailers and staff. The feedback from the staff who have completed the initial training has been excellent, and I can’t wait for the launch.”
Festival Place retailers that have completed the training are:
3 Store
Afrizi
Aimy Beauty
Apple
Baggage World
Basingstoke Discovery Centre
Blacks
Brewdog
Bubble Citea
Build-a-Bear Workshop
Card Factory
Cards Direct
Chaplaincy
Chopstix
Cool! Merchandise
Cosy Club
Delta Cars
EE
Enterprise
Festival Street Kitchen
Fig & Fox
Goldsmiths
HMV
Hotel Chocolat
Lovisa
Lush
Mobile Bitz
Newbury Building Society
Next
Office
ProCook
Rymans
Shakeaway
Slim Chickens
Stagecoach
Starbucks
Tesco
The Body Shop
Typo
Wimpy