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This year is a big one for women’s football. With England vying to defend their Euros title and Wales entering a major tournament for the first time, it presents itself with a great opportunity to grow the accessibility of women’s football.
Accessibility should be part of the foundations of everything we do. When it comes to football, it’s an opportunity that gives everyone the inclusion they deserve. It means that no one is left out or feels excluded.
Football should be for everyone. But to make it a reality, everyone should be able to get involved, whether that’s in the stadium or watching from home. While the game is growing exponentially, we need accessibility to grow alongside that momentum.
Her Football Hub have put together a list of some of the ways football can grow accessibility in 2025 and beyond.
The process of purchasing accessible tickets to be accessible
We’re moving to a model of purchasing matchday tickets online. The process can pretty much dictate whether you can attend a game or not. Being able to purchase tickets accessibly and independently would attract more disabled supporters.
Right now, there are two main options: purchasing accessible tickets over the phone or online.
When purchasing over the phone, it usually means lengthy phone queues. Online purchases often mean navigating inaccessible websites. While we move to an online approach, this needs to be accessible for disabled fans. They shouldn’t be at a disadvantage due to a lack of accessibility. The website needs to be accessible for screen reader users, have clear navigation, good colour contrast and ensure it is user-friendly.
Read more: A women’s football guide for disabled supporters
Ticket accessibility isn’t just about the purchase of the football tickets themselves — it’s also about attending the game. Offering a free/discounted companion ticket can be invaluable to disabled fans who may require that option, meaning they can attend the game with someone else and not have the extra cost attached to that support, which may in some circumstances make attending inaccessible otherwise.
Reserved seating for disabled supporters
Many women’s football matches are played in smaller stadiums. Although matches at larger stadiums are becoming more common, the large proportion of matches in the Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship take place at smaller stadiums. Whilst not always the case, these smaller stadiums frequently have unreserved seating. This means that disabled fans might not have the reassurance of seats that meet their needs.
Having reserved, accessible seating takes away any anxiety from the matchday experience and also means that a person’s needs are fully met.
Within smaller stadiums, there’s a common lack of wheelchair spaces for supporters who are wheelchair users. This is most evident in the away section. If the women’s game is to grow, then everyone needs to have the opportunity to have a seat in the stadium in the first place.
More clubs offering audio-descriptive commentary
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Audio-descriptive commentary opens up the match for blind and visually impaired fans. However, many clubs offer audio commentary. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does sometimes feel like the happy medium. Put simply, audio commentary is the commentary you’d find on the radio.
Audio-descriptive commentary goes way beyond that — it gives the extra detail that sighted fans are seeing for themselves like body language, facial expressions, colours of clothing, actions happening on the pitch, and anything else that’s relevant. It gives constant detail, never missing a beat.
Many clubs are making great waves in introducing audio-descriptive commentary. We need this availability to extend to being on offer at women’s matches.
Fan engagement: Accessible social media content
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Social media is the place fans go to keep up to date with the match action, the latest team news or behind-the-scenes content.
It’s vital that clubs engage with fans, further strengthening audience connection and making supporters feel valued. One way that they can do this is by making their social media content accessible.
Accessibility doesn’t have to be time-consuming — sometimes the smallest things go a long way. Adding alt text to images, captioning videos, capitalising the first letter of each word in hashtags and not overusing emojis can be the difference between accessible and inaccessible content.
Alt text is a written description of an image, making it accessible to blind and visually impaired people. It’s a thrilling moment getting that detailed written description of your favourite player scoring a belter of a goal!
When images don’t have alt text, it makes those images inaccessible to blind and visually impaired fans. When videos don’t have captions, it makes them inaccessible to fans who are deaf or hard of hearing. The list goes on.
Sharing the action on matchdays is a fast-paced task. With that said, it shouldn’t mean that accessibility should be put on the sidelines.
Increased viewing from home
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We’d all love to attend as many matches as we can to support our favourite team. But that’s not always possible for a myriad of reasons.
There’s been a real growth of matches being shown on major broadcasters like the BBC and Sky Sports, along with the Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship launching YouTube channels for the 2024/25 season to help with that ever-growing presence. This has been met with some criticism, though, due to the quality of the commentary. For people who are relying on the commentary, like those who are blind and visually impaired, it can disappoint you when you’re left wondering what on earth is going on because of the lack of detail from the commentators. When will we reach a point when you’ll receive the same standard, no matter where you’re watching the match?
There are still strides that can be taken to help give the game the rights it deserves on the big screen.
Giving everyone a sense of belonging is something we can all do to ensure that disabled supporters feel included in women’s football, whether that’s through participation or watching the game. There’s no better time to make that a reality than right now.
