RANGERS have appointed a new Disability Access Officer to help continue to make the club an inclusive environment for all supporters and visitors.
With over 25-years of experience working in disability rights and equality, John Speirs will support disabled fans, while also helping to build and develop the services the club offer.
In his role, John hopes to form strong relationships with supporters and be a recognisable face at both home and away matches.
He said: “I attend every match and I have managed to build up relationships with quite a lot of our disabled supporters over a very short period.
“I want to be visible at games to ensure people can come to me if they have any queries or questions and make sure there’s always someone they can go to, I think that is a really important part of the role.”
With 103 wheelchair-accessible places, Broxi’s Den, Rex Blind Party and the Disability Matters group, the club have committed to making Rangers and Ibrox Stadium an inclusive environment.
John hopes they can continue to push that going forward to meet the needs of all supporters.
He continued: “We obviously have an old stadium which creates some issues in terms of how accessible we can make it for all disabled people. The aim is to build and develop our services to ensure all disabled people have access to the matchday experience as well as the other services like tours and hospitality.
“We have the Disability Matters group which allows disabled people to feed into policy development within the organisation. I have monthly meetings with them where I provide an update on our strategic plans for the future and get their feedback into how we develop that.
“We are looking to carry out a fans’ survey this year too which will give us some really important information on the needs of the supporters.
“We have 47,000 season ticket holders and 20 percent of the Scottish population are disabled people so potentially we have around nine or ten thousand season ticket holders who are disabled people and they may have some needs that are not being addressed at this time and we want to be able to support them with that.”
With a background in user-led organisations, John’s aim is to work with disabled supporters as the club continues to develop.
He said: “The club has committed to going way beyond compliance and developing good practice and doing everything we possibly can to ensure that all of the services are as inclusive as they possibly can be for all disabled people.
“We are keen to work with disabled people so that they can tell us what they need and I think that is critically important. The club has recognised there are areas we can do better in and have committed to improving that and hopefully me being here will contribute to that as well.”
Supporters can contact John by email at [email protected].
Rangers are delighted to unveil even more football stars who will come to Ibrox on March 26 to celebrate our 150th anniversary as part of the Weekend of Legends, presented by Unibet. World Legends team include names such as Luís Figo, Claude Makéléle, Iván Córdoba, Ricardo Carvalho, Predrag Mijatović, Gheorge Hagi and Roy Makaay. Alex McLeish will manage the Rangers Legends squad which features light blue heroes such as Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Paul Gascoigne, Sasa Papac, Michael Mols, Kris Boyd, Nikica Jelavić, Ronald De Boer, Alan Hutton, Carlos Cuellar, Pedro Mendez, Lee McCulloch and Jorg Albertz. Additionally, former treble winning Captain and Rangers Hall of Fame inductee Barry Ferguson will be the Rangers Legends Captain.
To mark this incredible occasion, the Rangers Legends squad will wear a specially designed Rangers Legends kit that carries the name of every Rangers captain to lead the club. In addition, the shirt features a traditional collar design reminiscent of some our most famous shirts and our commemorative 150th anniversary crest is proudly embroidered on the chest. This limited-edition shirt is available to pre-order now from The Rangers Store online.