Last year the Guernsey Disability Alliance (GDA) promoted the Tennerfest Food Festival across their social media platforms to raise awareness of inclusivity  and accessibility and to provide online access guides. In response to this successful social media campaign, this year Tennerfest have added the ability for participating restaurants to include a link to their AccessAble accessibility guide to their Tennerfest website menus. 

AccessAble is an online guide, contracted by The States, to provide accessibility information like directions, parking, facilities, level changes and lighting.

‘We are delighted that the Tennerfest Food Festival organisers have seen the importance of raising awareness of inclusivity and accessibility by enabling participating restaurants, cafes and bars to include a link to the important information on the AccessAble website. This is especially timely given the prevention of discrimination ordinance comes into force on the same day that Tennerfest starts, Sunday 1st October.

There are an estimated 13,500 people in the Guernsey community living with a disability, and when you take into account their friends, family and more than 6,000 carers that number becomes more significant when thinking about the uplift in the percentage of potential custom brought to the hospitality industry due to accessibility to their establishment, which can only be positive to the businesses’, said Toni de Kooker, GDA Chair, The Guernsey Disability Alliance. 

‘Inclusivity is very important to us at Tennerfest, so enabling an accessibility link option on the Tennerfest website for participating venues in Guernsey is the first step and we hope to be able to find a similar solution for Jersey. We are aware that not every Guernsey venue is listed on AccessAble, but hope that the addition of this feature will prompt establishments to recognise the importance of sharing their accessibility features’, said Ollie Robilliard, a Tennerfest Organiser.

‘The ability to have a link to AccessAble on our Tennerfest web page has highlighted this informative website to us and although Mim’s Kitchen is not yet included, we hope to be in the future. By design Mim’s Kitchen already has good accessibility but we are looking forward to understanding more about how we can best cater to the community as a whole’, said Mim Sarre, Owner, Mim’s Kitchen at La Maraitaine.

The GDA are asking venues that are taking part in the Tennerfest Food Festival to add an AccessAble access guide link via their Tennerfest sign-in. Individual venue links can be found on the AccessAble website where there are currently more than 500 Guernsey venues already featured. If businesses are not already featured they can contact the States Disability Officer, Gill Evans, for further information at Tel: +44 (0)1481 222897 or e-mail: gill.evans@gov.gg.