Press Release 07.08.2017: Best Restaurant, Favourite Accessible Bar, Most Ludicrous Loo? Recommend Your Favourite Venue for an Award
London, 7 August 2017, Nominations are open for the fourth annual Blue Badge Style Awards. The Awards will recognise the effort that stylish hotels, restaurants and bars have made to attract guests with disabilities. A stylish venue doesn’t have to be expensive, just have the certain something that makes it stand out.
Nominations close on Friday 8th September 2017 and Blue Badge Style wants to know what you think!
The website and app is redefining disability with style, encouraging people with disabilities to lead an exciting social life. Blue Badge Style reviews a venue’s facilities, access and style and awards up to 3 ticks; one for accessibility, one for facilities and one for style. Plus, you can enter your favourite place for one of the following awards:
- Best Venue in a Listed Building
- Most Accessible Bar (upmarket & budget)
- Most Accessible Restaurant (upmarket & budget)
- Most Accessible Hotel (upmarket and boutique)
- Best Disabled Loo
- Most Ludicrous Loo
- Best European Venue
- Above & Beyond – for the venue or company who has made a special effort
Some of the things Blue Badge Style looks for in a great venue are:
Access – things like ramps, unaided access, type of flooring, space to move around in a wheelchair or with a stick, noise levels which aid people with hearing difficulties.
Facilities – where is the disabled loo, how easy is it to use, is everything at the right height, where are the grab rails, emergency cord etc. If it’s a hotel does it have a walk-in showers and wardrobe rails at wheelchair-user height?
Style – only you can decide what’s stylish, but we want to hear about venues with style in terms of décor and the welcome the staff extend to people with disabilities.
Founder, Fiona Jarvis, says “Style remains, despite disability. We want people with disabilities to lead an exciting social life and Blue Badge Style gives them the confidence to do that. The site has all the information you need on stylish venues where you can have a good time, without worrying about how to get in, get out or go to the loo!”.
She continues, “our awards are about promoting stylish venues which also have good access and facilities. Too often people with disabilities don’t go out because they don’t know what to expect when they get there and staff don’t know what to do when they arrive. Our awards are changing that by promoting venues that have style as well as great access and facilities for people with disabilities”.
You can send as much or as little information as you wish and photos are always good. The judges will vet the suggested venues either by visits or remotely with detailed questionnaires. However, it’s your recommendation that counts above all else.
We also want to hear about your experience of ludicrous loos. Have you come across a supposedly disabled toilet that’s impossible to use because it’s full of junk, too small, or everything’s in the wrong place? Then let us know and send an image if you can.
The Awards will be announced in October. Look out for more details next month. Please send your recommendations via Email: info@bluebadgestyle.com, Twitter: @bluebadgestyle or Facebook: bluebadgestyle
Notes to Editors
About Blue Badge Style www.bluebadgestyle.com @bluebadgestyle
Blue Badge Style is the UK’s first and only app and website guide to help the less-able lead an exciting social life, because style and disability are not mutually exclusive. Established by Fiona Jarvis in 2007, it aims to give its community a positive, stylish and elegant experience, wherever they go or whatever they do. Fiona first realised she might have MS when she kept falling off her high-heels! That was over 20 years ago and today she uses a wheel chair to glide through life.
About Blue Badge Style Gallery
Blue Badge Style Gallery is aimed at venues and comes in three versions; Quick Gallery, Full Gallery and now Virtual Gallery too. It offers venues more information for the gallery sections of their websites, so they can attract guests with disabilities. A Blue Badge Gallery includes overlay photos and a narrative of facilities and access.
A prototype of Blue Badge Style Virtual Gallery is on the Avenue Imperial site. Click on the arrow in the doorway to continue into the reception.
http://property.avenueimperial.com.s3.amazonaws.com/Palais-Auersperg/Tour/tour-demo.html
For more information about Blue Badge Style, please contact PR Savvy:
Kate Warwick / kate.warwick@prsavvy.co.uk / 078 1069 7282 / @prsavvy
I would like to nominate La Maison Du Steack in Cambridge for the disabled loo award. I think you have a review for it already with pics.
http://lamaisondusteak.co.uk/blue-badge-style-founder-opens-disabled-toilet-at-la-maison-du-steak/
I would also like to nominate the Rupert Brooke in Grantchester for the same category – photos available ….
https://www.therupertbrooke.com/
https://www.chestnutgroup.co.uk/