What is an access audit?

An access audit is a structured assessment of how usable a place or a service is for disabled people. It measures what's there against the law and the relevant standards, then says what to change, in what order, and what each change costs. Most audits assess one thing - whether someone can physically get in and move around. This one assesses six.

Most access audits measure a building against the law and stop at the word "compliant". That covers roughly one dimension of whether a disabled person can actually take part.

This method treats compliance as the floor and then measures the thing a tape measure can't reach: what your building costs somebody to move through, and what it would give back if it were built well.

The six sides

Six domains, always assessed in the same order, always all six. The order runs from the concrete and measurable to the human and experiential, which is the order most organisations think in, and then keeps going past where they usually stop.

They're mine. I built them, and it's worth saying plainly, because the rest of this page reads like a standard and it isn't one.

Not out of a training course. Out of thirty-six years of working out, usually on my own, why a building that technically let me in still managed to send me home early. The answer was never one thing - so one column was never going to hold it.

Can a person move through the space independently, safely, and without undue effort? Circulation routes, door opening forces, turning circles, gradients, rest points, what the floor does underfoot.

The question I'm actually asking: can you navigate with dignity, and without spending energy you needed for something else?

What Physical access misses, and where these six came from

Can someone see what they need to, when they need to, and where sight cannot be relied on, is there a tactile or audible alternative? Lighting levels, contrast, glare and flicker, signage legibility, tactile wayfinding.

The question: can you see what you need to see, or feel or hear it if you cannot?

The grey door on the grey wall

Can someone hear speech, alarms and environmental cues clearly? Fire alarm systems, acoustics and reverberation, hearing loop provision, background noise, speech intelligibility.

The question: can you hear and be heard, especially in an emergency?

An audio-only fire alarm is not a gap

Can someone understand and act on information without excessive mental load? Wayfinding logic, signage simplicity, information hierarchy, and how many things are competing for attention at once.

The question: can you navigate without exhausting your mental bandwidth?

The building was fine. I couldn't work out where to go.

Does someone feel valued, respected and autonomous? Independence rather than dependence, signage that others people, whether accessible features read as premium or as clinical, staff attitude.

The question: do you feel like a guest, or a problem to be managed?

The bin in the accessible toilet

Does a disabled person feel they belong, rather than that they are tolerated? Programming, representation, disabled-led work, staff training, what the organisation actually values.

The question: does this space feel designed for you, or despite you?

Designed for you, or despite you

Why one domain is never enough

The domains compound. Fix the Physical and ignore the Visual, and a wheelchair user with low vision still can't get around on their own. Excel at Cultural and fail at Auditory, and Deaf staff feel welcomed by your values and excluded by your fire alarm.

The interesting failures are almost always intersections. Heavy doors are a physical cost. Harsh lighting is a sensory cost. Put them in the same corridor and a neurodivergent wheelchair user meets something neither measurement would have predicted on its own.

That's also why a single-disability lens fails. A building designed only around wheelchairs can be actively hostile to someone autistic. A building designed only around screen readers can be unusable for someone with a tremor. Six domains exist because people are not one thing.

What I measure that a checklist cannot

The Welcome Factor

Regulations measure space. This measures feeling, and it answers one question: does this building want me here? Assessed across arrival, dignity, navigation and the general temperature of the place.

The Friction Index

Findings ranked by what they cost a person, not by legal risk. Three levels, and the names matter more than any colour coding:

• Deal breakersBarriers that force someone to give up or cause actual pain. A broken lift. A toilet lit at 2,500 lux.
• Energy vampiresNavigable, but draining. Heavy doors. Poor acoustics. The thing you can do, at a cost.
• AnnoyancesUndignified but manageable. The reception desk you cannot see over.

Spoon cost

Disabled people have a limited daily supply of energy. Every barrier spends some of it. An accessible building should be energy neutral: it should not tax you to get through it, so you arrive with something left for the thing you actually came to do.

So I total the cost of a journey through your building, and the goal is to get that number down to nothing.

The Solutions Spectrum

Every finding comes with three fixes, so you can act at whatever budget you actually have:

• MinimumStops the harm and covers the legal position. Often free. Adjust the door closer. Move the bin. Take out the bulb that is causing the problem.
• Best practiceThe systemic fix. A power door operator rather than a lighter closer.
• RegenerativeThe version where nobody has to ask next time. Automatic doors, zero touch, zero effort.

Scored, so you can see it move

Each domain scores from 1 to 10, and the bands mean something specific:

• 9 to 10RegenerativeActively gives energy back.
• 7 to 8Best practiceExceeds the standards and is genuinely inclusive.
• 5 to 6AdequateDoes what it has to and nothing beyond it.
• 3 to 4HostileTechnically usable, and it still tells you that you were not expected.
• 1 to 2CriticalActive barriers and safety risks.

A Six Sides score is my judgement of what a space costs the person using it, within the scope we agreed. It is not a compliance score and it is not a safety certificate. Where a standard applies I check it separately and name the document, and that sits beside the score rather than inside it.

Plotted across all six, the shape tells you more than the numbers. A flat profile means consistent quality. A high Cultural with a low Physical means you mean it and the building doesn't agree with you yet. That's a very common shape and it's a good problem to have.

Two example shapes

Lived experience, used as an instrument

I am a wheelchair user, I am profoundly deaf, I am autistic and I have ADHD. That's not the credential, it's the method. The barriers are found in real time during the assessment, because I meet them while I'm doing it.

It also means the report is written in the Social Model without exception. The barrier is in the building. It is never in the person.

The first twenty minutes are free. Or see the two ways to start, from £50.