We want to make escape rooms inclusive for everyone. We don’t want people to feel inadequate in any way and make sure the whole team feels involved when visiting.
Our Building
We were lucky to find a property that in ground level. There are many escape rooms based in former offices but often these are multiple floors up. Whilst this is okay for most guests there are a number of visitors that may struggle with stairs. Sadly we do have a few steps inside the building but one of the very first jobs we did was to install handrails to assist visitors. A handrail was also installed in the toilet to help out anyone who needs it. We sought advice from occupational therapists to make sure these were well-positioned. We have a ramp for our entrance and for the rear of the buildings so we are able to accommodate wheelchair users in all of our rooms. It is unfortunate that many of our pre-existing doorways are standard sized but they fortunately can still accommodate the majority of wheelchairs.
Designing our rooms
We have ventured to a few rooms where there is nowhere to sit or require levels of mobility to be able to explore the area fully and we kept this in mind when we developed our rooms. It might seem like a coincidence but each of our sets is designed to feature a seating area and plenty of places to put things down and look at them without placing them on the floor. The majority of our locks and puzzles are positioned above knee height and under head height to ensure easy access for both visitors and staff maintaining them.
Before we start building our rooms we always focus on key questions involving information, tools, teamwork & accessibility to ensure that everyone is able to have the best experience possible.
Did we get it right the first time?
No, we didn’t but we’ll always take steps to improve. Some of our proudest moments have been when we’ve been able to host a variety of visitors that would have been unable to share the experience elsewhere. This includes registered blind and deaf visitors as well as wheelchair users.
Some of the changes we’ve made include:
- Designing the Lost Temple in a manner that it can be used for access for wheelchair users for Mount Clifton Manor
- Adding subtitles to all of our intro and outro videos
- Adding larger print text options for all puzzles
- Having a spare set of brighter lightbulbs and torches available for Mount Clifton Manor
- Developing a Companion Guide for carers to use with visitors who have learning difficulties to aid them in completing the experience
- Creating a non scary version of the Mount Clifton Manor soundtrack without scares to reduce anxiety
- Developing a soundtrack for the Lost Temple without ambient noise to aid neurodiverse visitors
- Modifying our intro and outro scripts to avoid words that may cause alarm or distress for visitors
Open to suggestions
It is a very diverse world out there and we don’t want anyone to miss out. If any group has feedback on ways that we can improve further we’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. As our customer your experience is our absolute priority.
