Richard Arkless – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Arkless on 2016-04-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent steps his Department has taken to encourage music venues to improve ticket and seating arrangements for disabled people.

Mr Edward Vaizey

We believe that everyone should have access to arts and culture – having a disability should not be a barrier to enjoying Britain’s awe-inspiring cultural treasures. That is why we are working with venues and organisations representing disabled people to identify barriers to access, while at the same time seeing how we can share examples of best practice and what more cultural venues need to do to be accessible to people with disabilities. Our recently published Culture White Paper makes a specific commitment to work with the cultural sector to improve physical access to venues.

We support the work of Attitude is Everything, which works with audiences, artists, and the music industry to improve deaf and disabled people’s access to live events. My ministerial colleague Ed Vaizey also held a roundtable meeting with Justin Tomlinson, Minister for Disabled People to look at access to cultural venues and events for disabled people. Additionally, provisions in the Equality Act 2010 require providers of services to the public (for example music venues), to make a ‘reasonable adjustment’ so that disabled people are not placed at a “substantial disadvantage” to non-disabled people.