The Go Anyway Experience Review · Sample
What you commission is a full report. This is a short walk through how it’s built.
Every commissioned review is shaped around your venue, but the methodology stays the same. This is a condensed look at it on a sample motorsport festival, drawn from a report that runs far longer. The figures are illustrative. The structure is real.
What this is
This is a condensed demonstration, built to show how a Go Anyway Experience Review reads and what it contains. The subject is a large motorsport festival on open parkland, described generically, because the point here is the method rather than a verdict on any one event. A commissioned report goes considerably further than this page: a full account of the visitor journey, every one of the nine domains examined in turn, detailed case studies, a data-collection plan for the visit, and the instruments and references behind the method. What you see below is the shape of all of it.
It leads with the experience, not the measurements. Door widths and toilet counts have their place, and they sit in a single short section rather than being allowed to dominate. What an organisation learns here is what its event feels like to move through as a disabled visitor, where the friction sits, and what would make the difference.
The principle underneath all of it
Barriers come down first. Always.
Go Anyway is not an argument for leaving obstacles in place. The first move is always to remove every barrier that can be removed. What remains after that work is the genuine demand of the thing itself: the noise that is the engines, the distance that is the site, the crowd that is the event. That residual challenge is what we ask a visitor to prepare for and decide on. The two are never confused, and an organisation that leaves avoidable barriers standing is marked down for them, not credited with providing challenge.
Executive summary
A demanding day that rewards the effort it asks for.
The site is large, open and busy. The ground is mostly grass and gravel, and the noise close to the action is considerable. None of that makes it inaccessible. It makes it a meaningful challenge, and for a visitor who prepares well, the experience of being feet from cars that are usually behind glass is hard to match. On the framework set out below the event records an Experience Score of 70 out of 100, a band of Strong, with its single greatest strength being the warmth and competence of the people who work there.
Experience Score
70 / 100
Band: Strong. A weighted blend of nine domains.
Value of the Attempt
5 / 5
The distinctive Go Anyway judgement. Well worth attempting.
Challenge rating
2 / 5
Moderate. Real preparation needed, but surmountable.
Public rubric
31 / 40
The eight-category summary published with the article.
What works
- Staff and culture are the standout. A steward read hesitation correctly and offered a quieter route without being asked, and that single interaction reset the whole day.
- The participation itself is exceptional. Standing close to a competition car as it launches is the kind of experience most people assume is closed to them.
- Arrival and entry are handled well, with accessible parking and a gate that did not become a bottleneck.
What asks the most
- Wayfinding is the weakest domain. The open showground is legible to anyone who can read long sightlines and distant signs, and markedly less so to anyone who cannot.
- The sensory load near the track is high. Quiet space is available but unsignposted, so a visitor has to know to look for it.
- Terrain is grass, gravel and temporary trackway. How it behaves in wet weather is one of the most important things a full visit must record.
The framework
Nine domains, weighted by what actually decides a day.
The nine domains below are the Go Anyway Experience Framework, the instrument applied to every review. Each captures a distinct part of the day, and they are weighted, because they do not matter equally to whether a visit succeeds. Participation carries the most, because it is the reason a visitor travels at all. Wayfinding and staff carry more than the rest, because on a large open site the ability to stay oriented and the quality of human help are what most often decide whether a day holds together.
| Domain | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Pre-visit information | 10% | How findable, clear and trustworthy the access information is before you travel. |
| 2 · Arrival and entry | 10% | Parking, drop-off, the approach to the gate, and getting through it. |
| 3 · Wayfinding and navigation | 15% | Reading the site, finding routes, signage, and staying oriented. |
| 4 · Sensory and environmental | 10% | Noise, light, crowding and the overall sensory load. |
| 5 · Participation and viewing | 20% | The core of the day: getting to the action and experiencing it. |
| 6 · Staff and culture | 15% | Attitude, competence and the felt welcome from people on the ground. |
| 7 · Facilities and recovery | 10% | Toilets, accessible provision, seating and places to recover. |
| 8 · Belonging and emotional safety | 5% | Whether a disabled visitor feels they are expected and they belong. |
| 9 · Departure | 5% | Leaving: flow, fatigue, transport and the end of the day. |
Three numbers, kept deliberately separate.
The Experience Score grades how smooth the day was, out of 100. The Challenge rating grades how demanding it was, out of 5, so a prepared visitor can judge it. And the Value of the Attempt grades whether it was worth doing at all, reported on its own so it is never averaged away into the headline figure.
The felt arc of the day
Confidence, stage by stage.
This is the thing a list of scores cannot show. Confidence and independence are tracked across the day, and the low points are not where the walking is hardest. They are where the site is hardest to read and where the crowd is densest. The recoveries come from two things: a person who helps, and a reward big enough to be worth the effort.
Two domains, worked through
The weakest and the strongest.
Every domain follows the same shape: what was observed, an experiential reading, a score with its justification, and the specific things a full visit needs to capture. Here are the two that sit at opposite ends, because the contrast shows the method better than any single example.
Weight 15% · the hardest part of the day
Reading the site and staying oriented across a large, open, crowded showground.
The site is open, with long sightlines that reward distance vision and offer little to a visitor who cannot use it. Orientation depends heavily on a few large landmarks. Signage is legible at close range but not from the distances at which a visitor actually needs it to make a decision. In one wooded section the route narrows and people sit along the edges that line it, so the very boundary a sight impaired visitor relies on becomes unreliable.
For a visitor with monocular vision and reduced acuity, the open showground is harder than any single obstacle on it. There is no continuous edge to follow, distant signs cannot be read, and depth is hard to judge in a moving crowd, so each decision about where to go costs effort. This is the cognitive load that makes the day tiring, and it has nothing to do with distance walked. The landmarks are a real strength. The absence of continuous edges and decision-point signage is a real weakness. This is the domain with the most room to improve.
Weight 15% · the strongest domain
The attitude, competence and felt welcome of the people on the ground.
A member of staff read the visitor’s hesitation correctly and, without being asked, offered a quieter route and a clearer way through. Marshals and stewards were visible, approachable and calm under the pressure of large crowds. Help, when offered, was practical and matter-of-fact rather than awkward or performative.
No amount of signage substitutes for a person who notices and acts well. The unprompted offer of a quieter route is the single most important moment in the whole review, because it shows staff anticipating a need rather than waiting to be asked. For a sight impaired visitor this human layer is not a supplement to wayfinding. At times it is the wayfinding. A culture that produces that behaviour reliably can hold together a day that the physical site, left to itself, would make harder than it needs to be.
The full scorecard
Every domain, with its working.
| Domain | Weight | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Pre-visit information | 10% | 3 / 5 |
| 2 · Arrival and entry | 10% | 4 / 5 |
| 3 · Wayfinding and navigation | 15% | 2 / 5 |
| 4 · Sensory and environmental | 10% | 3 / 5 |
| 5 · Participation and viewing | 20% | 4 / 5 |
| 6 · Staff and culture | 15% | 5 / 5 |
| 7 · Facilities and recovery | 10% | 3 / 5 |
| 8 · Belonging and emotional safety | 5% | 4 / 5 |
| 9 · Departure | 5% | 3 / 5 |
| Weighted result | 100% | 70 / 100 |
The nine weighted scores sum to 350 of a possible 500, a weighted mean of 3.5 out of 5, which rescales to an Experience Score of 70 out of 100, in the Strong band.
Mapped to the eight-category public rubric
| Public category | Score |
|---|---|
| Getting there | 4 / 5 |
| Entering the event | 4 / 5 |
| Sensory environment | 4 / 5 |
| Physical navigation | 2 / 5 |
| Viewing / participation | 4 / 5 |
| Staff interaction | 5 / 5 |
| Facilities | 3 / 5 |
| Value of the attempt | 5 / 5 |
| Public rubric total | 31 / 40 |
The distinctive judgement
The Value of the Attempt.
Every other part of this review measures how smooth the day was. This part measures whether it was worth doing, which is not the same question and is the one Go Anyway exists to answer. The day is demanding: a large site that is hard to read, a high sensory load, ground that depends on the weather and a long walk that ends in fatigue. And the reward is proportionate to all of it.
Standing close enough to a competition car to feel it launch is an experience most disabled people are quietly assumed to be shut out of. To have it, in person, after preparing for and meeting the challenge of getting there, is exactly the kind of participation this publication believes in. A day stripped of all challenge would not be safer in any meaningful sense. It would simply be smaller.
Value of the Attempt — 5 / 5
Reported separately, and deliberately so.
This is the reason a visitor with this access profile would, and should, go anyway. It is also the reason an organisation’s investment in access matters: not to remove the challenge, but to make a genuinely worthwhile challenge reachable by more people.
What an organisation does next
Immediate, low effort, high return.
A full review groups its recommendations by horizon, each carrying the domain it serves, the evidence behind it, and a read on impact against effort. These are the immediate ones: the changes that cost little and move the day the most.
-
Signpost the quiet and recovery spaces that already exist
Quiet space was present but had to be found. Signposting it costs little and helps the most sensory-sensitive visitors most.
-
Make accessible viewing platforms easy to locate from a distance
The platforms are excellent, but a solo sight impaired visitor must currently find them without help.
-
Keep a continuous edge clear of seating on key routes
People sitting along the boundaries blur the very edge a sight impaired visitor follows to stay on the path.
-
Consolidate accessibility information into one clear page
The pre-visit picture had to be assembled from several places. One trustworthy page lets a visitor rehearse the day and arrive with a plan.
Why organisations commission a review
What a review is actually for.
Organisations commission a Go Anyway review for three reasons, and none of them is a certificate for the wall.
- To see the day as a disabled visitor actually experiences it, rather than as a checklist describes it.
- To know which changes matter most, and which cost the least for the most return, before spending a budget.
- To get an honest, independent account they can act on, and measure again the following year.
Built on established research
The framework is not improvised.
It draws together established work in disability studies, accessible tourism and environmental psychology, from the dignity of risk to the way people read a space and tire in it, so that what the review measures rests on more than one person’s opinion. That grounding is what lets two different venues be assessed the same way, and the same venue measured again a year later.
How a review is carried out
The method, and the lens behind it.
Every review applies the Go Anyway Experience Framework: the same nine domains, observed against the same prompts, with evidence recorded as it is gathered through the day. The lead assessor brings lived experience of severe sight impairment and reads each venue through that lens, so the findings come from someone moving through the day rather than inspecting it from outside.
Every review states plainly the standpoint it was conducted from, and points to where another access profile would strengthen the evidence. Where a venue would benefit from the view of a wheelchair user, a Deaf visitor or a neurodivergent visitor, the review says so rather than pretending to cover it. That honesty is part of what makes the rest of it trustworthy.
Editorial independence
You are told what was found, not what you hoped to hear.
The review reports the experience as it was, with the difficulty left in. That is the whole value of it, and it is the part that protects an organisation as much as its visitors.