Accessible Ayr Guide
South Ayrshire Provost, Winifred Sloan, was guest of honour at the launch of the Accessible Ayr Guide which was compiled by South Ayrshire Access Panel. The Guide includes sections on banking, eating/drinking out, healthcare, hotel accomodation, leisure and entertainment, retail stores and services and travel. The symbols within the Guide were awarded by people with disabilities who had assessed the premises within the guide for accessibility.
Four thousand copies of the Accessible Ayr Guide have been printed, with three hundred large print copies for people with a visual impairment. Production costs were met by Scottish Executive funding.
Access Panel member, Margaret Shearer, explained the origins of the Guide. While visiting England, she had seen Access Guides but knew of nothing similar in Scotland, so asked the Panel to consider publishing a local one: "We audited over 500 local premises in the centre of Ayr, including all licensed premises, which are now included on our database. Only 380 could be contained in the Guide, but there is ongoing revision of our database.
See the revised Accessible Ayr Guide
Browse the revised Access Guide which contains over 500 premises.
South Ayrshire Council Disablement Liaison Officer, George Brown, said "The whole intention of the Guide is for people who don't know the area to be able to pick it up and make an informed decision about where they want to go. We also want to make guides for Troon, Girvan, Maybole and Prestwick in the coming years."
Members of the Panel would like to extend their sincere thanks to everyone who supported them in this venture.
You can view the Guide by clicking the picture of it on the right. To view PDF documents (Portable Document Format which captures all the elements of a printed document as an electronic image) you must have a PDF reader on your computer. Here is a link to the free download of Adobe Acrobat Reader
As an accessible alternative to the image link, here is a text link to the Accessible Ayr Guide. PDF documents can take a while to download and open the first time; don't worry, this is normal. There are various page viewing options available within the Reader.
The two large photographs - taken at the launch of the Guide - show (above) the members of the South Ayrshire Access Panel proudly displaying the Accessible Ayr Guide and (below) Panel member Margaret Shearer presenting a Guide to South Ayrshire Council Provost, Winifred Sloan.
