Check! Let’s do an accessibility inventory

If you have decided to take a grip on your accessibility status – to both manage it and communicate it to your customers, you might wonder where to start. Handiscover Accessibility’s implementation team did the first step of our onboarding process, the inventory, in MOOD Stockholm shopping mall in the heart of Sweden’s capital.

MOOD Stockholm joined Handiscover Accessibility in August 2022, together with Fältöversten and Gallerian (all three malls are part of AMF Fastigheter). The first step in the onboarding process is to do an inventory of all the public areas in the mall, directly in the user-friendly Accessibility Management System. The team from Handiscover met up with floor manager Anna Alvåg in the nice mall in the early afternoon.

Our implementation manager Viviana Cea Rojas was responsible for this inventory, and we joined as Anna and Viviana went through the mall, taking pictures and adding information to the platform on a tablet.

The platform is user-friendly, and all the different perspectives on physical accessibility are covered. It’s just to go through the platform simultaneously as walking around in the venue – fill in the details, check boxes, do measurements and take pictures of all the different key areas and features that are bottlenecks and crucial when it comes to accessibility. The information collected is granular and based on your unique building. You even get suggestions for improvements from the platform, in a convenient checklist. All the data collected is time specific, and as soon as you change something or make an improvement on the checklist it is registered.

You access the inventory through the platform on any device, and the printable checklist is handy when you want to make improvements – to be able to aim for the ones that make the biggest impact on your customers.

Viviana, how long time does an inventory take?

– Usually, it’s about 6 hours, but it all depends on the size and the busyness if there are a lot of customers around since we don’t want people in the pictures. We finalize all the data points afterward.

What would you say about the accessibility in the mall?

– MOOD Stockholm has a good level of accessibility despite being on different levels. Out of 5 entrances, 4 are without stairs, and there is an elevator in the center of the mall. The toilets are for both men and women, which I find inspiring to see.

And what happens after the inventory?

– We always emphasize that doing this is first and foremost about documenting and communicating, more than viewing it as an assessment. Improvements are usually the next step and they can be planned thoroughly at your preferred pace. Some of our suggestions in the checklist don’t even need to be so expensive, sometimes it’s just about rearranging certain objects to make the venue more approachable for customers with different needs.

To be genuinely accessible is to make the customer experience smooth by thinking of the tangible facts in the venue – all the data you collect – but also about the approach and service amongst the staff. Handiscover Accessibility often follows up the inventory with a lecture on accessibility issues, to raise awareness and give further insights.

About the accessibility widget:
In the widget, your customers can see all your data presented. You can also track how many people have used the widget if you have our Connect package (read more here).

Read more:
Our COO/CTO on the development of the technical platform: ”We become part of the infrastructure.” Read the article here.