The Lanes is proud to support Purple Tuesday

The Lanes is proud to be joining thousands of businesses nationwide in supporting Purple Tuesday, helping to improve the customer experience for people with disabilities.  

Purple Tuesday is about improving the customer experience for disabled families 365 days a year. The initiative inspires organisations and their staff to promote awareness, develop understanding and put in place practical solutions for greater accessibility. Purple Tuesday is a year-round initiative, which is highlighted with a celebratory day on the first Tuesday of November. This is an opportunity for organisations involved to review their progress in delivering on their pledges.

The Lanes are committed to offering an inclusive environment and improving disability awareness. We recognise the need to constantly review and improve our approach to better support our shoppers. For that reason, our first action in support of this initiative has been to ensure key members of The Lanes management team receive additional training to further assist them with their knowledge and understanding of disability related topics including autism, blindness, deafness and epilepsy. This has enabled us to educate other staff members and identify and deliver practical approaches, including the delivery of a basic British sign language training session to staff members and first aiders to provide a better everyday customer experience for disabled people and their families.

With the knowledge gained from the training already undertaken we have made some improvements to our communication channels, with the introduction of new signage in the shopper toilets which acts as a visual reminder that not all disabilities are visible, which we hope will encourage people to be more understanding and have awareness of others. We have also updated The Lanes website to make it easier for customers to plan their journey and understand the facilities and accessibility at The Lanes before they arrive.

Here at The Lanes we are keen to continue extending our knowledge and understanding to help make the Lanes as accessible as possible for all our visitors.