A social enterprise company run by disabled people for disabled people has been formally presented with The Queen’s Award for Enterprise by His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Derbyshire Mrs Elizabeth Fothergill CBE and Deputy Lord-Lieutenant Tony Walker CBE.
Nimbus Disability, featured in the current issue of Living with Disability, has been recognised in The Queen’s Award Innovation category for the development of their Access Card scheme.
The Access Card is held by more than 100,000 people in the UK and beyond who register their accessibility requirements.
Powered by ‘NOS’, Nimbus Disability’s bespoke software, The Access Card system translates its holder’s disability/impairment/access requirements into symbols highlighting the barriers they face.
When booking tickets online, the Nimbus Operating System informs providers quickly and discreetly about the access requirements that individuals need without sharing further information about them with the venue.
This has vastly improved access for disabled people who previously had to provide benefit entitlement letters or invasive amounts of personal information each time they booked tickets for festivals, cinemas, sports matches and more.
The Access Card is already widely recognised at major venues across the UK and beyond including Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, The London Eye, Disneyland Paris, The O2 Arena and Alton Towers.
Notable overseas venues which have recognised and responded to cardholder needs include The Louvre in Paris, The Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Chicago’s Willis Tower.
The company created the bespoke Access Card under the leadership of Martin Austin MBE who has been an amputee since his diagnosis of cancer as a teenager.
“As disabled people ourselves, our mission at Nimbus and with our Access Card scheme is to provide a universal, digitised way of communicating all verified access requirements, from eligibility to companion tickets to the necessity for wheelchair-accessible facilities,” explained Martin.
“Our system enables each access requirement flagged to be integrated directly into ticketing systems to remove the need to continually call ‘special’ booking lines’ and fill in ‘special’ booking forms or answer personal and invasive questions over the phone.
“Ultimately our operating system lessens the administrative burden on disabled people at the same time as opening up equality of access to online ticketing solutions from West End theatres to theme parks.”
For more information about registering for The Access Card please visit https://www.accesscard.online/ or for businesses interested in how the Nimbus Operating System can streamline CRM processes, visit https://www.nimbusdisability.com/nimbus-operation-system/
Pictured above from left to right: Nimbus Disability board chair Steve Rigby, Deputy Lord-Lieutenant Tony Walker, Martin Austin and Lord-Lieutenant Mrs Elizabeth Fothergill CBE
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