Detailed Access Guides and Best Practice Guidance Reports - Royal Orthopaedic Hospital
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest specialist orthopaedic units in Europe. Offering planned orthopaedic surgery to people locally, nationally and internationally.
Since 1877 The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital have been at the forefront of orthopaedic care, pioneering new surgical techniques and advancing treatment for people with bone and joint disorders. That heritage of innovation and excellence still drives the hospital today; they continue to push boundaries to deliver the best care possible. They take pride in delivering exceptional patient care.
The Challenge
The Trust wanted to improve the patient and visitor experience by removing some of the anxieties about visiting hospital, aligning with their key values - respect, compassion, excellence, pride, openness, and innovation.
Internally, the Trust needed help identifying how to improve accessibility across the Estate, with specific guidance on inclusive signage and wayfinding.
The Solution
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital engaged AccessAble to create Detailed Access Guides for the buildings and services at the Birmingham site. These guides will be used by thousands of people with access requirements to enable them to plan their visit to the hospital.
To create the guides AccessAble’s surveyors visited the hospital to collect information, recording facts, figures and photographs for everything from parking facilities and hearing loops, to walking distances and accessible toilets.
The guides were also used to generate Best Practice Guidance reports for the hospital management to highlight areas where accessibility of the buildings could be improved. AccessAble also created and additional report to supplement to that work, looking specifically at the signage around the site and in the buildings.
As signs are only one factor in the ability of people to find their way around the site, we also considered factors such as pre-visit information, the legibility of the site and internal routes, and the use of contrast and landmarks to help people orientate themselves.
AccessAble’s signage report gives the Trust an opportunity to consider a site-wide wayfinding strategy and to produce guidelines for new or replacement signage when required. This forms part of a plan to make the hospital a fully inclusive area, making it accessible to all groups.
Feedback
"We’re excited to be working with AccessAble because it’s incredibly important to us that we meet the needs of everyone who visits our hospital. We are ambitious about creating an environment that is as supportive, anticipatory and equitable as possible. The information and guides that AccessAble have developed will help our patients visit our Trust with confidence, knowing that their needs are important to us"