Inclusiveness trend: is it profitable for business to be inclusive?

Viktoriia Hubareva

We've only just begun to raise the issues of inclusiveness and adaptation of spaces, streets, transport for people with disabilities in Ukraine. The initiative to adapt spaces comes to a greater extent from businesses and patrons than from the state. We attended the online conference "Inclusiveness Trend: Discussion with Business on the Benefits of Inclusion" to learn more about this issue. And that's what we learned.

For instance, from the very beginning, the Planeta Kino network built their cinemas in full compliance with State Construction Regulations, which are mandatory and include requirements for adapting premises for people with limited mobility. It's logical that under the regulations, spaces should be fully adapted to visitors in wheelchairs. However, as it turned out, it's very inconvenient to move in a wheelchair even with the norms, according to Dmytro Derkach, co-owner of Planeta Kino.

They took this experience into account when building a new cinema in RiverMall: they created a new resource room for people with autism spectrum disorders in the new Planeta Kino shopping center and provided access to movie theaters for people with wheelchairs. In terms of costs, it turned out that constructing inclusive cinema halls isn't more expensive than cinemas fully complying with state construction regulations. Slava Korzhov, director of the customer experience of the cinema network "Planeta Kino," says it's more expensive to correct such shortcomings in the existing cinema. According to Derkach, it's not possible to correct all halls. Sometimes technical conditions don't allow, for instance, to expand the corridor as it should be, but they are trying to make their cinemas accessible to everyone.