World Autism Awareness Week 2021

World Autism Awareness Week provides an opportunity to raise awareness of autism, and for us at Landsec it’s a chance to highlight that we’re committed to creating inclusive environments for everyone, whether that’s our brand partners, guests or colleagues.

Here are some of the things we’ve been doing to help everyone feel welcome:

Providing inclusive spaces

The team at Gunwharf Quays has worked with Autism Hampshire to produce two downloadable guides for guests with autism, who may need to plan their visit to the centre in advance, and with their autism in mind. The guides can be found on the accessibility page on the Gunwharf Quays website. The hope is that these guides can be rolled out across our centres, adapted to best support their local autism community.

Supporting Quiet Hours 

For several years, Landsec has supported the National Autism Quiet Hours across our centres which has allowed us to raise awareness through training with our brand partners, acknowledge our guests with autism and have a better understanding of neurodiverse conditions. When our retail destinations reopen, customer behaviour and peak times may change so we’ll make sure we adapt our quiet hours to these changes. 

Inclusive recruitment

We’re currently reviewing our recruitment processes to ensure that we’re inclusive in every part of the recruitment and retention process, and our strategic partners are also working with the National Autistic Society to review their processes.

Adopting the Hidden Disability Lanyard across all sites

As part of our autism strategy, all our sites have adopted the hidden disability lanyard, which are given freely to those who have a hidden disability and may need additional assistance. The lanyards offer a discreet way to indicate that you have a disability and since launch we’ve given away over 3,000 lanyards to our guests.

Ongoing Autism training from Purple

In collaboration with Purple, we’ve signed up to their 365 subscription service which supports our employees to access knowledge, understanding and practical approaches to provide a better everyday guest experience for disabled people and their families.  

ReciteMe 

Last year we partnered with ReciteMe who provide a visual web tool for those who have a visual impairment. The ReciteMe assistive technology provides our customers with the online tools needed to understand and engage with our products and services. 

Mentioned above are some of the things we’ve been doing to ensure our destinations are truly accessible to everyone. We know we’ve got more to do, but we’re committed to help everyone feel welcome.