Dear Jenny,
We are just finalising our DisabledGo site and expect it to be live in the next month or so. I think they provide very good value for money in terms of the service over three years and that you might struggle to provide it in house, as good at that cost. The benefits will be felt for all disabled students and staff but also for visitors and potential applicants. I am happy to chat to you about it next week if helpful.I also have some past internal rationale papers I would happily share.
Mel
Mel Landells
Head of Secretariat and Equality
Governance, Secretariat and Registry
University of Plymouth
PL4 8AA
01752 582059
www.plymouth.ac.uk/equality
-----Original Message-----
From: HE Administrators equal opportunities list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jenny Ratcliffe
Sent: 08 April 2011 11:06
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Choosing E&D recognition marks and standards
Dear Colleagues,
We were contacted recently by DisabledGo and met with them in March to
discuss their services. DisabledGo appear to provide good quality, useful
accessibility auditing and communication/marketing services which would
potentially be a positive for disabled visitors, staff and students and
would help identify to the University where changes are needed to improve
accessibility.
However, we are looking at the (limited!) pot of money we have available for
potential new investment in E&D recognition marks and standards (such as
Disabled Go, Investors in Diversity, Stonewall Employer etc) and are keen to
spend our money wisely! We want to make sure that any recognition schemes
that we commit to really deliver tangible long-term benefits around our E&D
commitments and profile - eg through increased staff diversity (at point of
recruitment and through retention and promotion), increased student
diversity, improved student/staff satisfaction indicators etc.
Regarding DisabledGo, something we are considering is whether our in-house
services could do similar accessibility auditing work, which we could
promote on our own webpages without the additional cost of commissioning an
external organisation (recognising of course that there are still internal
resource costs with this option).
I would be very interested to hear from any members on the forum who either
have used DisabledGo and have had some tangible long-term benefits or
members who have had a similar journey to ours and decided not to go with
DisabledGo.
Many thanks
Jenny
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Jenny Ratcliffe
Strategic Planning Manager
Human Resources, Organisational Development and Student Support
Keele University.
Tel: 01782 734403
E-mail:[log in to unmask]
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