Leadership / 06.04.24
Best Practices for Accessible and Inclusive Ticketing and Customer Service
Christine Payne
Dani Rose
When INTIX members gathered in Las Vegas in January 2024 for their annual conference, it was a chance for a small nonprofit organization to reach a large number of ticketing and live events industry influencers. Their mission? To encourage those professionals to join the “access champions” from Art-Reach in spreading the message that entertainment is a human right and, as such, must be accessible to everyone.
Dani Rose, Managing Director of Art-Reach, told the audience that gathered for her session on best practices for accessible and inclusive customer service, “When you have one access champion in the room, everyone in the room begins to champion access. And I believe that ticketing professionals are the access champions of the live entertainment industry.”
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a landmark piece of legislation that became law in the United States in 1990. Its primary purpose is to prohibit discrimination against individuals with disabilities in various areas of public life, including employment, transportation, communications, governmental activities and many places where the public may be served. This includes restaurants, hotels, theaters, museums, stadiums, hospitals, parking garages and more. But Rose reminded those attending her workshop that later amendments to the ADA provided a more specific model for ticketers to follow.
“The ADA keeps things general, but the standards are very specific when it comes to ticketing,” Rose notes. “When the requirements were revised [in 2010], they were updated for Title II, that’s state and local government, and for Title III. It included new considerations for physical access including very stringent design regulations, ticketing regulations, effective communication updates, and they mention[ed] web access for the first time. The entire document, just like the ADA, is kept as broad and general as possible so that it covers the greatest number of individuals under its protection and gets very specific about what organizations can do to prevent discrimination.”
The requirements address several areas, as illustrated in this slide:
Rose says, “Ticket selling is often the first touch point and is the first opportunity to share your company culture with your guests. And when you boil it all down, the regulations say that ticket selling must be accessible to people with disabilities.”
In other words, the process of purchasing tickets for events needs to be inclusive and barrier-free for everyone. This entails meeting legal requirements and adopting a proactive approach to address the diverse needs of patrons with disabilities and ensure their equal participation in the ticketing process. Thus, the need for more access champions.
“The ticketing requirements are clearly laid out in the 2010 standards, and because we have to follow all of these guidelines to welcome the public, ticketing folks are poised to be access champions and protect accessible seats for those who require the features,” Rose says.
Ticketing Obligations
Accessible tickets must be available for purchase during the same times and through the same methods as other tickets and available through all manners of sale. This means that if you sell tickets online, accessible seats must also be available for online purchase.
“Legally, you may not require a patron to call to reserve accessible seats,” Rose says. “If it's best for them to call for additional customer service after they have purchased online, that's fine!”
Accessible tickets must also be identified to the same level of specificity, so think about your seat maps. They must also be available at all price levels in your venue.
When it comes to general admission (GA) ticketing, including GA museum admission, Rose suggests that you consider admission for caregivers or personal care assistants (PCA), people visiting with a service animal, and auxiliary aids and access services. We will delve further into this later in the story.
6 Barriers in Customer Service
After sharing some ADA basics and obligations in ticketing, Rose talked about breaking down barriers from the front of house or customer service department.
When one considers what might prevent full access to arts, culture and live events for the whole community, physical barriers — such as a staircase without a wheelchair ramp — are among the most obvious. Rose discussed that but also explained there are other barriers that need to be removed.
Indeed, she identified six barriers in our environment, including informational, communication, physical, attitudinal, economic and situational/circumstantial.
“The information environment is any area where our guests find, receive and exchange information,” Rose says, adding that it is an area over which ticketing and venue professionals have a lot of control.
She recommends considering how visitors look for and find information before they arrive, how information is communicated during a visit, and the information that is available about access.
“Something like a know-before-you-go guide or detailed, easy-to-find and understand information about access services on your website helps guests find information before they arrive,” she says. “Consider your maps, signage and other displays of information that are critical to a visitor's experience. And consider if those display areas are accessible to everyone.”
In the communication environment, consider the methods of communication available to visitors and whether they are effective. This can include everything from audio description services, captions, ASL interpretation, and assistive listening devices to having a pen and paper ready and ensuring patience in verbal communication.
The physical environment includes fixed features and how guests navigate the venue.
“While most of our fixed spaces require barrier removal, the ADA asks us to make reasonable modifications to allow the greatest number of people to access our spaces,” Rose says, adding that organizations can sometimes solve physical barriers with things like signage, lighting or gallery guides to inform guests where venues are not accessible and share alternatives. “You can’t turn a staircase into a ramp, but you can solve a lot of confusion and frustration by anticipating and communicating with your visitors.”
When it comes to attitudinal barriers, Rose suggests reviewing the language being used to discuss accessibility. Additional questions she recommends asking ourselves include what assumptions are being made about audiences and how unconscious biases can be challenged.
Cost can also be a barrier for many people.
The ADA does not require discounts for people with disabilities. But when considering inclusion, Rose recommends looking at your community's economic constraints, whether your discount structures address financial barriers, and what types of community partnerships you can access. In Philadelphia, for example, the Art-Reach ACCESS Program is a partnership that enables some community members to visit cultural sites for two dollars. Other nonprofits and human service agencies across the country may have similar initiatives. Museums for All helps people receiving food assistance (SNAP benefits) in the U.S. to gain free or reduced admission to more than 1,300 museums nationwide.
Another economic barrier to consider is the cost of admission for a PCA or other type of direct support worker, and Rose says the number of free PCA, or caregiver ticket programs, is growing across the U.S. She also reminds us that these professionals are there to ensure that the person who uses their services has the help they need with functions of daily living, like navigating public spaces, toileting, medical equipment support and more.
There is also legal precedence regarding free admission for a caregiver.
If you are not familiar with the lawsuit, back in 2016, a patron with a disability who needed the assistance of a PCA was charged double admission to enter a museum in Philadelphia. The court ruled that caregivers must be admitted at no cost in a general admission environment.
“It is important to keep in mind that a personal care attendant is not just a companion or friend,” Rose stresses. “When a PCA attends your cultural institution, they are working. A PCA is required by the person who employs them to perform or assist with or support major life functions … Likely, this PCA is not necessarily attending your exhibition and engaging in the storyline but rather ensuring the person for whom they work is attending the exhibition and engaging in the storyline. Therefore, we encourage you, if you have not already done so, to adopt the policy of admitting PCAs at no cost.”
Rose encourages organizations to set aside a small budget to do the right thing for guests when it comes to customer service failures and accessibility requirements, like covering the cost of admission for a care worker. It is also important for employees to have the autonomy to spend that money as issues arise.
The last barrier Rose discussed is situational or circumstantial. These barriers are not always present but can arise when the typical environment is altered. For example, are the lights lowered if you hold an after-hours event? If you have a special exhibition, are there changes to paths of travel or sensory stimuli? Consider covering this information in your know before you go or having a separate guide for these experiences.
In all that you do, Rose encourages a service-first approach to ensure that guests with disabilities are having equitable experiences.
“Service first is applying outrageous customer service to accessibility, practicing the radically inclusive idea that in order to respect all individuals equally, we welcome everyone to have a positive cultural experience at our facility,” Rose says.
Organizations can do this by making five simple commitments:
- Presume equitable capability by removing disabling barriers and trusting that everyone entering your space can navigate independently. This can be achieved, for example, by directing all guests to a staircase and elevator and allowing them to choose.
- Ensure all staff are venue experts. Training is vital so that staff can quickly recall access features (e.g., where the restroom is and if there is an accessible stall) and use appropriate language (e.g., person-first, as in a “person with a disability” or “person who uses a wheelchair”).
- Use the universal icon system to identify access services. It should be used in both guest-facing and non-guest-facing environments, allowing guests to self-select services and ensuring team members are always aware of available services.
- Listen and evolve. “The disability community has a phrase, ‘Nothing about us without us,’” Rose says. “It means that nothing should be created for the disability community without direct involvement with the community.” Open lines of communication in your community and make changes based on feedback.
- Lead in your community and be the person who insists on accessibility. Share what you learn with your colleagues and share it with the broader arts, culture and live events community in your region, too.
“We talked about being the person who speaks up at your organization,” Dani notes. “It took a few years of relentless shouting into what felt like a void, but one day, rather than me having to pipe up in every meeting, my peers would come to me ahead of time to ask about access considerations. To me, this is what being a leader in the community means … share with your teams what you learn … so that everyone in your organization can begin to consider access at every level. Put a meeting on the calendar or a bullet point in the staff meeting. You need to be talking about accessibility all the time.”
We covered a lot in this article (and Rose covered even more in her INTIX session!). Are you wondering how to get started? Rose has an answer for that, too.
She shared this as a closing slide covering “The 4 E’s”: evaluate, educate, engage and evolve.
To help in your access journey, here are some additional resources mentioned in this story and Rose’s INTIX presentation:
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Tags: Accessibility , Leadership