Disability Pride Month

July is Disability Pride Month.

Supporting employees with disabilities in the workplace can take on many different forms. Because of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), many workplaces are already aware of how to include folks with physical disabilities, including those who use wheelchairs, those who are partially or fully blind, and people with movement challenges.

Not all companies know how to celebrate people with disabilities, though, or how to include those with invisible illnesses or disabilities.

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What is an invisible disability?

An invisible disability is a disability that may not be immediately obvious. These can include chronic pain, chronic fatigue, brain injuries, epilepsy, and many others.

Some folks include mental illness as a disability and other challenges like ADHD and even autism. Every person with a mental illness or disability defines themselves differently, so it’s best not to refer to employees with ADHD or autism as disabled unless they themselves use that identifier to describe themselves.

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What can we learn from disability justice movements?

Contrary to the opinion of many able-bodied people, having a disability isn’t a bad thing. Disability justice is a movement that emphasizes the autonomy and power of people with disabilities and has much to teach the rest of us about how to make spaces more inclusive and celebratory.

In the workplace, there are many ways that you can be more inclusive and apply tenets of disability justice.

• Offer extended time as an option for tasks.
• Make it acceptable to be off-camera during meetings. Visual stimulation and the experience of being watched can be hard for many folks with autism, ADHD, and other mental health or neurological conditions.
• Offer mental health sick days and encourage employees to take them when they need to.
• Offer flexible working hours as many employees with disabilities and/or mental illness may need to take more frequent breaks, go to medical or mental health appointments more often, or adjust their schedules to account for changing energy levels and other needs.
• Consider how inclusive your technology systems are. Do your company materials offer alternative text? Do your company devices offer screen reader software? Are the photos high-contrast? Does your company have devices that offer voice-to-text technology?
• Create a safer space for employees to disclose disability status by being as supportive as possible.
• Avoid jokes about folks with disabilities and use of words like “insane,” “lame,” or “crazy.”
• Remember that even though not everyone needs accommodations, having the option to use accommodations helps everyone.

This month and every month, it’s important to examine your biases around experiences of disability. Some activists in the disability justice movement call non-disabled people “temporarily abled” to emphasize how all of us are temporarily disabled at times (think: a broken leg) and that the majority of us will experience disability and a loss of ability at some point in our lives.

What ideas will you put into place this month?

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