Chevening Professional Relationships Essay Example: Accessibility coordinator at a civic services organization

Coordinating accessibility testing at my organisation, I needed disabled residents to share honest observations and service managers to treat those observations as operational evidence. I had no authority over either group. With residents, I committed to returning to the same three community centres on a fixed monthly schedule over seven months. I explained what testing would and would not change, and recorded observations verbatim rather than paraphrasing them into general complaints. A core group of about eight residents began raising barriers they had not mentioned earlier, including confusing signage at the main office and an online appointment form that timed out before screen-reader users could complete it. To keep the relationship reciprocal, I sent each participant a short note showing which of their observations had been quoted in our internal recommendations, and invited two residents to review the draft summary before it went to managers. With service managers, I prepared side-by-side comparisons of current processes against resident demonstrations, shared one-to-one because managers were wary of workflow disruption. After seeing the form walkthrough, the appointments team piloted a revised booking script and extended the session timeout; the facilities lead agreed to trial reworded signage in one office. Three months in, residents reported fewer repeat visits to reception, and the appointments manager asked me to test two further service points. That request turned a one-off consultation into a standing quarterly review. I still need stronger structured co-production methods. On the MSc Disability Studies at Leeds, I want to study participatory research design and use the Centre for Disability Studies seminar series to compare my consent and feedback notes with UK practitioners. On return, I will bring a revised testing protocol to our quarterly review and ask managers to adopt it for two additional service streams.