The legal duty sits with the venue, but the practical work of getting it right sits with whoever is planning the event, and it is almost all done in advance.
Access for disabled guests
North London Venue Guide Access for disabled guests
Service providers, which includes venues hiring space to the public, owe a duty under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments so that disabled people are not placed at a substantial disadvantage. The duty is anticipatory: it is not triggered by a particular guest turning up, it exists in advance.
What counts as reasonable is fact-specific, and it takes account of the building. A listed hall with a single stepped entrance and no possible route for a ramp is in a different position from a modern room that has simply never bothered. But "the building is old" is a starting point for the analysis rather than the end of it.
For someone planning an event, the useful framing is not what the venue is required to do. It is what you need to establish so that everyone you have invited can actually attend.
What to check on a viewing
Entrance. Is there a step, and if so is there a permanent ramp, a portable one, or an alternative entrance. If the alternative is round the back through a yard, that is worth knowing, because arriving separately from everyone else is its own kind of exclusion.
Route to the room. Stairs, lift, lift dimensions, and whether the lift is reliable and available in the evening. First-floor pub function rooms very often have no lift at all, which excludes wheelchair users outright and makes the room hard work for anyone with limited mobility.
Toilets. An accessible toilet, its dimensions, whether it is locked and who holds the key, and crucially whether the route to it is level. An accessible toilet down a flight of stairs is not one.
Floor surface. Cobbles, gravel yards, thresholds and heavy fire doors are the practical obstacles inside otherwise level buildings.
Seating and sightlines. Where wheelchair spaces will go, whether they are with the rest of the party rather than at the back, and whether there is somewhere to sit near the entrance for guests who cannot stand for long.
Hearing. Whether there is a hearing loop, whether it is tested and working, and whether the PA covers the whole room. In a hard-surfaced hall or an arch, speech intelligibility is poor even for guests with no hearing loss. See arches and studios.
Lighting. Enough to lip-read by, and no strobing or rapid flashing without a warning, which matters for photosensitive epilepsy and for a good many autistic guests.
What to plan rather than check
Tell guests what the building is actually like, in the invitation, in plain terms. "Level access throughout, accessible toilet on the ground floor, no lift to the first-floor bar" is more useful than a symbol.
Ask about requirements when you ask about dietary requirements, in the same sentence, so that nobody has to make a special approach.
Allocate wheelchair spaces on your floor plan rather than finding them on the night. They need a route to an exit that does not depend on a stair, which is also a fire safety point. See capacity and safety.
Think about the quiet space. A room somewhere in the building where a guest can sit away from the noise for ten minutes costs nothing and is the adjustment most often appreciated and least often offered.
Brief your suppliers. A caterer who blocks the accessible route with crates, or a band that stacks flight cases across the level entrance, undoes the planning without meaning to.
The awkward conversation
Some buildings cannot be made accessible without works nobody is going to fund. If that is the case for the room you want, the honest options are to choose a different room or to be straightforwardly clear with guests about what they will face.
What does not work is discovering it on the day, which is how a guest ends up being carried up a staircase in front of a hundred people.
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