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Enabling All - Accessibility

Why Accessibility Matters

People are wonderfully diverse. One in five individuals lives with a mobility, vision, hearing, memory, or cognitive difficulties—or is neurodivergent. These differences can create barriers to participation and leadership in church life.

Enabling All network exists to help churches remove those barriers, ensuring that buildings, worship, and activities are welcoming and accessible for everyone

Embedded in Our Diocesan Vision

Accessibility is woven throughout our diocesan action plan. It’s especially vital in areas such as:

Growing the number of worshipping communities
Engaging with local populations beyond church walls
Reflecting the diversity of the communities we serve
Everyone can see themselves represented in the leadership and governance of our diocese.

Accessibility Goes Beyond Ramps and Toilets

There is a broad range of ways to make reasonable adjustments to that help meet people's needs so that everyone is welcome and can participate. As all churches have responsibilities under The Equality Act 2010, it can put our focus onto our buildings.  It's important to acknowledge that for some of our churches changes to the fabric of the building can be very challenging, so we have a range of small changes that can make a big difference . The Enabling All Awards are here to give you a structured approach to looking at the accessibility your church offers.

Supporting individuals

Central to accessibility is supporting individuals and groups with specific needs. We have developed our Accessibility Resources Pages which includes webinars and sheets. There are other useful national resources. The Church of England's Barrier-free Belonging pages and the Church Support Hub, has a growing set of webinars and resources available too.

Supporting groups

We can offer training, called Encouraging Understanding which can be delivered in person or online, for groups from Deaneries, Chapters and parishes. We can also come and give a talk about the Enabling All network.

The training that we can offer is on Neurodiversity, disability and accessibility.

We have a number of small group courses that we can recommend.

If you want a leaflet about what Enabling All does, Enabling All Leaflet

For up to date campaigns and current activities, follow Enabling All on Facebook