Friends you haven’t met yet
A stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet” is a quote attributed to Irish poet William Butler Yeats, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
..and it is this premise that is the foundational idea behind “WelcoMe” our disability aware customer service app and winner of 2021’s World Summit Award for Inclusion and Empowerment of Disabled People. With it, we are helping businesses meet their customers and visitors in a way that has never before been possible.
70% of disabled people have reported poor customer service interaction and it isn’t too hard to understand why especially when you consider that we generally make up our minds about another person within the first seven seconds of meeting them and that the communication needs of all people especially those with a disability vary so greatly. The initial interaction between a disabled person and a customer service representative in any environment can be fraught with anxiety, misunderstandings and even opportunities for serious discrimination the worst of which we will have seen appearing on our social media feeds with alarming frequency.
Could the incident with the Israeli Energy Minister, Karine Elharrar, at COP26 have been avoided with better communication? Certainly “poor communication” was the excuse proffered by the UK government when the incident hit the headlines last month.
The short answer is of course, yes, knowing who is about to arrive and how best to interact with them is always going to be useful and more than that as a visitor knowing you will be met by someone who understands your access and communication needs will make it more likely you will want to visit them in the first place. Surely as we look forward to a Post-COVID era whilst understanding the need to fight we must also build bridges and endeavour to meet as friends.
Today we celebrate The International Day of Persons with Disabilities and the many disabled people who have been directly involved with the design and development of WelcoMe including members of the WelcoMe team, their families, our software developers Passio and our many disabled friends who have directly influenced the design and spread of the service. Your involvement has fundamentally influenced what WelcoMe is and does and underlines and underlines again the importance of the unifying call to arms “Nothing about us without us”.
We also take this opportunity to celebrate our growing list of amazing allies, the companies that are making a very real effort to break down these communication barriers and welcome ALL disabled people as friends even before they have met them.
Atos, Bespoke Hotels, Blackwood Housing, CV Life, Deafblind UK, Deloitte, Diageo, DoubleTree by Hilton, Dundee City Council, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Edinburgh Airport, Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, Edinburgh Printmakers, Enable Ireland, Exeter Leisure, Falkirk Community Trust, Fort Kinnaird Retail Park, Forth Valley Sensory Centre, Fringe, Guide Dogs for the Blind, Headway Ireland, Irish Rail, ISS, Legacy, Leonard Cheshire, Next, North Lincolnshire Active, North Yorkshire Sport, NorthLink Ferries, Oldham Active, On Fife, RNIB, Salford Community Leisure, Scarborough Museum Trust, Scottish Canals, Seescape, Simon Berry Optometrist, St James Quarter, Stirling Council, Support 4 Sight, University of Kent Templeman Library, The Anne Sullivan Centre, The Borders Distillery, The Charter Medical Centre, The Forge Shopping Centre, The London Centre for Cosmetic Dentistry, The Queen's Hall, The Scottish Government, The Scottish Parliament, The Willow Project, Trafford Leisure, Unhidden Clothing, Valarie Jerome Optometrists, VisitScotland, Voluntary Action Shetland, Walsall Leisure, Westminster City Council, Wigan Council, Yourtrust.
You can download WelcoMe here wel-co.me/app
If you are a business and would like to provide better customer service to your disabled visitors find more info here wel-co.me/business