Purple Tuesday takes place on the first Tuesday of November each year and serves as a celebratory day, promoting accessibility and inclusivity.
On Tuesday, 12th November 2024, the Council will be continuing its support of the #PurpleTuesday change programme by illuminating some of its iconic buildings purple from dusk to midnight to highlight the initiatives celebratory day.
Purple Tuesday is a change programme for organisations of all sizes from all sectors. The common goal of Purple Tuesday is improving the customer experience for disabled people 365 days a year.
Organisations are encouraged to promote #PurpleTuesday throughout their networks and show their commitment by becoming a participating organisation. Participating organisations and required to make a minimum of one commitment to change practice that will lead to greater accessibility and improved customer experience for disabled people.
Organisations and staff are starting to seize the art of the possible in terms of commitments that could be achieved. Some popular examples include:
· Quiet hours and their popularity when moving from an early morning to early afternoon slot, acknowledging the needs of the neurodivergent spectrum community, and their families and understanding it works for the wider community.
· Adopting the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower lanyard scheme which has supported staff to be proactive with customers with hidden disabilities.
· Mental health awareness training.
· Digital access audits, particularly organisation’s website.
· Frontline staff learning how to assist British Sign Language customers
· Staff adopting the six second rule when, after asking a question, they count to six in their head allowing the individual to process the question and speak the response, without someone jumping in. and answering (incorrectly) on their behalf.
Purple Tuesday works for disabled customers, staff and makes commercial sense. Visit England has undertaken significant research into value of purple pound, which shows that 17% of all staying visitors have a disability, and 18.2% of all staying visitor spend is generated by them. Assuming Cheshire West & Chester disability tourism numbers are statistically similar to Visit England data this suggests that there are 640,000 disabled staying visitors and 7.16 million disabled day visitors per annum, benefitting the local economy by at least £441million.