Mark Wilson OBE, Accessibility Adviser
I was born minus both legs and one arm and walked on two often squeaky and occasionally painful tin legs until my mid forties. What happened next was that I started out on a journey to becoming “differently disabled“.
This is a journey that some disabled people don’t see coming, I certainly didn’t. But along the way my lived experience of disability saw me get up close and personal with all things "accessibility" from the basics of can you get in a building, on a train or bus or in a taxi to the wider aspects of accessibility that impact on the things that disable so many people.
Attitude, approach, planning, design, communications, culture and yes, politics.......and all of this simply by living through an at times pressured but hugely enjoyable career in the public sector, followed by a new work experience in social media management and finding out how things are done in some outstanding national and local charities.
I have applied this lived experience & operational management skillsets in a number of areas, all aimed at improving accessibility. Primarily the rail sector where chairing Northern Trains well respected Accessibility User Group (NAUG) has been an amazing experience. NAUG is something of a one-off. The largest pan-disability train company user group / advisory panel in the UK, NAUG delivers practical, highly skilled expert user advice to support improvements across all accessibility areas.
The key to NAUGs success is a combination of Northerns' impressive willingness to listen, and collaborate with its expert user group, and that group's willingness to put truly collaborative working above all other approaches and in particular to apply the ethos to its Task & Finish design which is producing real outcomes.....practical solutions that are clearly going to make a difference for disabled people using Northerns network.
My volunteering experience has been a very important part of my life for over 20 years and I have been lucky enough to volunteer with some of the most amazing charities in the UK. From local experience as a Trustee of the hugely successful Warrington Disability Partnership and the very different but equally awesome Ronald McDonald House at Alder Hey Liverpool, to the Volunteering Division of Macmillan Cancer Support where I continue to learn from the best there is in the voluntary sector, playing a satisfying part in a wide range of work around volunteer engagement, strategy design & development & delivery of volunteer led initiatives.
Finally a very different set of experiences as Chair of a local Patient Participation Group (PPG) with linked involvement to the area Health Forum. PPG work opens you up to the importance of the 'Patient Voice' in healthcare, particularly primary healthcare and why such engagement plays a crucial part in how we see healthcare services delivered in our local commutes for generations to come.
Along the way to loving being part of the work & volunteering areas above, I have acquired 8 years recent experience as a Social Media Content mgr, focusing on social media platform content creation, website creation (non tech !) and integration between things like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin with 'your' website and wider comms policies.
What can I help with ..........
Accessibility in the rail and bus sectors
My real and yes slightly sad passion is train travel and buses !! Since becoming a power chair user I have embraced all that the rail & bus sector has to offer, and found it to be an enabling factor in my and many peoples lives.
I have used my lived experience of disability & operational mgt skills to deliver a range of work around accessibility, looking in particular at physical access to & around stations, trains & buses, accessibility in its wider sense to booking & support processes, Passenger Assistance, staff engagement, social media, comms, managing & eliminating disabling attitudes, mystery shopping, access policies, Quality, and sadly.....
Covid-19 impact and mitigation.
Plus of course the crucial business of designing and delivering collaborative working between expert users, users of any type in fact, and the Train Operating Companies (TOC) themselves. I also love bus travel which many will find hard to understand perhaps, but few will have actually experienced how the simple fact of being able to access a bus service when it seemed impossible, opens up lives in ways most will naturally take for granted.
All of this in an approach that is honestly pan disability. wheelchair does not equal disability whatever influence those blue signs seem to have on service providers.
Accessible Tourism
If you want a builder with accessible building experience im not your guy. But if you are setting up or running an accessible tourism business and want to get under the skin of just what that should mean.....I might be able to help from the very basic viewpoint of an expert user of what accessible tourism has....or perhaps should have....to offer.
This includes the really personal experience of all things travel and accommodation. From the research and booking processes use, to delving deeper into that useless phrase 'wheelchair-friendly' !!
My expertise is deliberately not over technical. My contribution is all around the 'feel' of accessible tourism, avoiding the institutional look and approach, what really matters when someone with accessibility needs books and arrives at a hotel, resort, or books a city tour sets about finding out how to get to a destination and when there, look around !!
My accessibility report is all about the look and feel, the down to earth practical review of your hotel or villa or cottage or apartment complex and above all, the information you need to provide to help customers with accessibility needs decide if your place / attraction / service is for them !
Accessible employment & Disability Awareness
My experience is around disability awareness in the business of both providing a public or private sector service, helping those with an impairment look at things like job applications and interview approaches.
I led work in a very large govt organisation where for the first time we looked at how disability awareness can impact the quality & effectiveness of front line operational delivery, particularly in public facing tasks often subject to difficult, tense & emotional exchanges.
In a 35 year career, 20 of which was spent in senior mgt posts, my own personal experience of how 'becoming differently disabled' can impact your working life, has given me a kind of insight that is again, rather basic, pragmatic, and practical. But I am proud to say it has also enabled me to do some intense & challenging leadership roles, working alongside quite simply the best 'departmental' staff teams you could wish to come across in Govt.
Most of all I have found that disability awareness in the employment sector is mainly about getting to grips with what actually disables jobseekers & employers....the built environment, attitudinal factors and fear - fear as experienced by the jobseeker/employee & that of the employer & team.