Formalising your disability inclusion journey

Did you know:

This is the current disability Pride flag

The disability pride flag was originally released in 2019. But… by 2021 it had to undergo an accessibility redesign. It was found the original design brought on symptoms such as seizures and migraines for individuals with visually triggered disabilities.

See, not even the disability sector gets disability inclusion and accessibility right all the time.

July is disability inclusion month. It is also the first month of a new FY so a chance to kick off those well-meaning projects which often lag behind the priority ones. Disability Pride month 2024 is the perfect time to start making your organisation more inclusive for people with disability!

Over the coming months, we are going to share a fortnightly update with tips and tricks for something you and your organisation can do to improve disability inclusion. In 2022, the Australian Disability Strategy implementation measurements suggested that 77% of employers were positive about hiring people with disability. Yet only 42% of Australian businesses reported feeling confident in their disability inclusion practices. With such a gap, this instalment will be focused on some myth busting and truth telling.

Research suggests that many organisations want to be disability inclusive, but don’t take action for a range of reasons:

• They think that it’s going to cost a lot of money
• They’re worried they will get it wrong and offend someone
• They wholehearted believe they treat everyone equally without realising the difference between equal and equality.
• They don’t have personal insight into why this is such a significant issue
• They have tried to be a more inclusive employer, but people with disability don’t apply

 

All of those are beliefs. And beliefs can be changed with lots of small but continuous improvements. To counter those beliefs, here are some quick-fire facts on why this is not only the right thing to do, but why it makes good business sense to do it now:

 

• People with Disabilities and their loved ones who make buying decision represent a huge, yet reasonably untapped market. Globally it is estimated to be 13 trillion dollars. In the USA the total after-tax disposable income for working-age people with disabilities is approximately $490 billion (Source: American Institutes for Research)
• Disability-inclusive companies are 28% more likely to have higher revenue, 30% higher economic profit margins, and 2x net income. (Source: Accenture Report: Getting to Equal)
• The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect, Exploitation and Discrimination of People with Disability has stated that the Australian federal, state and territory governments should leverage their buying power by adding disability inclusive employment practices to their procurement rules
• 1 in 3 People with Disability state that mainstream goods and services currently don’t meet their needs (Source: Australia Human Rights Commission)
• 33% of Australians with disability aged 15 and over, avoid situations because of their disability. One of the most common situations avoided were going to shops, banks etc. (34.3%). (Source: Australia Human Rights Commission)

 

Our first tip… be kind. Any action, no matter how small it may seem is better than no action. And you are probably doing better than you realise.

Second tip…. Understand where you are starting. You may be further along the disability inclusion journey than you might think.

Take this short quiz to find out where you are currently doing well and pinpoint the areas where you might need to invest some more effort.

How inclusive is your business for people with disability? (scoreapp.com)

 

Third tip… Keep trying even if you get something wrong.

Apologise, learn from the error and keep moving forward’. So long as you learn and correct the error moving forward, but to try and stop you from getting it wrong in the first place, here are some things the disability community want you to know (note this is a generalisation based on our knowledge as it is not possible to cover the views of every person with a disability)

• A disability is not a specific condition. Disability is as broad as the human condition.
• Focus on the person, not the disability
• Reference a person’s disability only when it’s relevant.
• Avoid pity terms, such as ‘suffers with’ or ‘afflicted by’. Having a disability does not mean having a lesser quality of life.
• People with disability often have a strong preference for either person-first language (people with disability) or identity-first language (disabled people). If in doubt, ask the person what they prefer, and being aussies, you can’t go wrong with a ‘mate’.

 

And the final tip for today….. Remember the rule of marginal gains?

Making consistent, small improvements can accumulate quickly and generate results better than could have been imagined. By reading this article and putting some of the tips into practice you have already slightly improved. The next step is to record your plan and achievements in an inclusion or organisational strategic plan as what you measure you will improve upon.

 

Our blog next fortnight will look at reasonable adjustments. Do you currently have a policy?

If you can’t wait for this information to come to your inbox each fortnight, get in contact with us for a confidential chat about where you are currently at and how you can get to where you want to be.

To read all our other blogs visit here.