Reporting on DETERMIND’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Project

3 Aug

Read our list of accessibility definitions here: DETERMIND+EDI+&+Accessibility+Statement.pdf

Since April 2026, myself (Luce Stewart – DETERMIND EDI Officer and Research Assistant) and Ben Hicks (DETERMIND Study Manager) have been working on EDI improvements across the study. We’re thrilled with how the work is going so far and excited to report on the areas in which we’ve made a difference.

It began with a Teams call in April to lay out plans for a strategy, draft up some colourful progress charts and appoint the DETERMIND EDI Officer.

In April, we also did the following:

We gathered information about the training given to all DETERMIND Research Assistants across their respective universities, then published this on the DETERMIND website.

We researched the EDI policies of each study partner university and organisation and wrote these up into a list.

We decided on some ends goals for the EDI project. These included this report and our EDI Statement – DETERMIND+EDI+&+Accessibility+Statement.pdf.

In May, we were keen to get the wider DETERMIND team involved and publish our progress so far:

We shared two key training opportunities across the staff team: the Alzheimer’s Society Dementia Friends Training and a lived-experience developed DETERMIND EDI training (more to come on this later!).

We did an internal audit of the DETERMIND website against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), then published our Website Accessibility Report (DETERMIND+-+Website+Accessibility+Report.pdf).

We made changes to the website in line with WCAG guidance to make it more accessible. We also continued improving the website tone, content and appearance with the helpful feedback received from our two DETERMIND advisory groups.

We drafted the EDI and Accessibility Statement and sent it around for feedback from a range of DETERMIND team members.

In June, we pressed on with publicising the project and increasing the skills of a range of DETERMIND staff:

We published the EDI and Accessibility Statement on the DETERMIND website.

We included a statement about our EDI work in a funding proposal for future work.

We ran a training session called ‘Disability Inclusion in Practice: Awareness, Advocacy and Accessibility’. Those who took part evaluated their knowledge and confidence before and after the training.
When comparing the surveys from before and after, we saw the following results:
- People's knowledge about disabilities increased by 35%.
- People's confidence in joining conversations as an advocate increased by 47%.
- People's confidence making accessible materials increased by 30%.

This provided great motivation for the work we did in July, during which we aimed to finish up the planned project timeline and start thinking about future EDI goals.

In July, we sent a short evaluation survey to members of our DETERMIND marginalised ethnicity and faith / LGBTQIA+ advisory groups. The survey found that:

100% of our advisory group members found the DETERMIND meetings and communication outside meetings accessible, with 67% rating them as 'very accessible'.
84% of our advisory group members said that the DETERMIND accessibility met or exceeded their expectations.
83% of our advisory group members said that they would ‘definitely’ approach our team if they had an accessibility requirement in future.
100% of those who asked for accessibility requirements said their requirement had been ‘somewhat met’.

Lastly, in August, we published this informal report about the work we’ve done so far. Looking back on the past few months, we’ve made a lot of progress towards making sure the study is accessible to all. However, it is important to continue improving in the future! We’re keen to keep developing our accessibility priorities with the people they may affect most.

We would like to continue implementing accessibility within our advisory groups. While the feedback we received was reassuring, there is definitely space to improve. In any future groups, we will aim to establish group codes of conduct early on, assign EDI roles for staff within the groups to ensure the code of conduct is followed and allocate budget for one-to-one meetings with those requiring accessibility adjustments to make sure these are followed.

We would like to evaluate the accessibility of the study with some of the people living with dementia and their supporters and family caregivers who have taken part.