Marketplace accessibility: a service-provider perspective

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to explore the strategies that service providers use to facilitate marketplace accessibility, and identify the key challenges in that process. The authors do so to develop a roadmap towards improved accessibility and disability inclusion in the marketplace. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted eight semi-structured interviews with service providers (curators, visitor service coordinators and access managers) at museums who run access programmes for customers with visual impairment (VI), along with an embodied duo-ethnography of those programmes. Findings Service providers foster autonomous, embodied and social access. Resource constraints, safety concerns and exposed differences between customers compromise access. To overcome these challenges, service providers engage in three inclusionary strategies – informing, extending and sensitizing. Research limitations/implications This service provider- and VI-focus present limitations. Future research should consider a poly-vocal approach that includes the experiences of numerous stakeholders to holistically advance marketplace accessibility; and apply the marketplace accessibility findings upon different disabilities in other marketplace contexts. Practical implications This study offers a roadmap for policymakers and service providers on: which types of access should and can be created; what challenges may be encountered; how to manage these challenges; and, thus, how to advance accessibility beyond regulations. Originality/value This study contributes a service provider perspective on marketplace accessibility that goes beyond removing “disabling” barriers towards creating opportunities for co-creation; an approach towards marketplace accessibility that fosters inclusiveness while considering the inherent challenges of that process; and an illustration of posthumanism’s empirical value in addressing issues of accessibility in the marketplace.