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POWERED UP - AN INSIGHT BY THE IN GROUP

Is it an identification or language issue at all?

Factors which were found to increase the chance of someone identifying as disabled were stigma and severity of impairment. If someone has a negative experience related to their health condition, they may find identifying as disabled empowering or useful. It may make their life much easier. For example, they’d be entitled to various adjustments, which could be the difference between being able to take a job or not.

When looking for people to join our disability and neurodiversity panel, I was nervous to approach people in the business. I didn’t want to offend them by talking about their condition as a disability if they’ve never thought of it like that. This might have been down to my own perception of the word disabled, but how would I know? Perhaps it’s not the identification issue at all. Maybe people are worried that attitudes towards disabled people – particularly in the workplace – could have a negative impact on their career success. The Social Model says that words are key to changing these perceptions, but this takes time.

I just want to know what to say!

How do we know what language to use if disabled people, or people with a disability, can’t agree? Good question. As they say, you can’t please everyone all the time. So aiming to be 100% right in such a complex and subjective arena is impossible. My advice is this: say what you say with kindness and try to educate yourself on what you’re talking about. How can we know things are equal or unequal, inclusive or non-inclusive if we’re too scared to talk about them? What would be far worse is not saying anything at all. It was interesting to hear a colleague recently describe a conversation with somebody else in the business. My colleague was shocked to learn that the person had no idea about an issue which they thought was blindingly obvious to all. We all experience things differently. We can’t assume that everyone has the same view and understands these topics in the same way, even if we think it goes without saying. What DEI needs is engagement; we need people to feel safe to talk about disability. Disability is experienced by more than one in ten of us, so joining the conversation is a positive. Even if you fumble along the way at times, best efforts are what count.

Are people reluctant to identify with the word disabled?

When we were talking about why there seem to be fewer allies for disability and neurodiversity compared to some of the other panels, we wondered whether some people may not identify as disabled. Approximately 15% of the British population are disabled. With just under 300 people in the business, this would suggest around 45 will have disabilities. Of course, not everyone who is disabled would automatically want to be involved in ‘extracurricular’ activities at work. It could be a factor that the pool of people identifying as disabled is smaller than those who technically or legally are. In fact, a study in Rehabilitation Psychology by Bogart found that only 12% of those with a health condition identified as disabled. Taking this number into account, that equates to only five people across The IN Group who would identify as disabled.

CREDIT - PEXELS