VOLUNTEER TRAINING
Access Nashville is a college student training project that gathers useful information about restaurants that are accessibility friendly and provides community awareness of disability issues through volunteerism and social action. The classroom asignment for each student is to visit designated restuarants and complete an accessbiilty survey. The surveys identify accessibility friendly restaurants in the Nashville area so customers who use wheelchairs and/or have other disabilities can make informed choices about where to dine.
Access Nashville provides training in a two hour classroom setting. The training team includes volunteers from the Access Nashville Board. Students are required to survey a specific restaurant for a homework assignment and their results and experiences are shared in a follow-up class the next week.
Classroom training includes a segment on disability awareness, training to the Access Nashville’s accessibility survey, and a “field trip” to a nearby campus restaurant where students practice completing the survey. At the end of class, students are given needed materials and tools to complete a survey, including a specified restaurant to survey for a classroom assignment, an Access Nashville t-shirt, measuring stick, and technical assistance. Students are also given resource information to share with businesses free of charge.
The training emphasizes gathering accessibility friendly information and not compliance with accessibility regulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act; this is reflected in the material given to the restaurant managers. Students are given one week to complete a restaurant survey and volunteers from Access Nashville return to class where students discuss their experiences and what they learned by doing this activity.
Completed surveys are given a rating of Wow Access, Good Access or Limited Access. This rating, with completed survey, is available on the Access Nashville website and the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau website.
The Access Nashville Project not only provides useful information about restaurant accessibility for all but also provides community awareness of disability issues through volunteerism and social action. As one student remarked following the training, “whenever I go to a restaurant, I will be looking around to see how accessible it is for people using a wheelchair.”
If interested in replicating this project, please contact Carole Moore-Slater at 615-322-8529 ext. 13, 800-640-INFO ext. 13, or carole.moore-slater@vanderbilt.edu.
