Working with Disability

This pack will allow you to explain and bring to life the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Participants will understand how it applies to them and how it can be used as a basis for making their work environment more user-friendly and more effective. But the activities also bring out the wider issues beyond the legislation, encouraging a more sensitive and thoughtful approach to the subject of disability. They help to dispel the awkwardness many feel about the subject, opening minds and finding ways of promoting better understanding.

List of Activities:

1. Getting into the Act

The Disability Discrimination Act has created controversy and criticism and although it is not appropriate for an activity pack of this nature to enter into these areas, it is essential that all employers and providers of goods and services to the public are made aware of their obligations under the Act and consider how best to apply the provisions of the Act to their own areas of responsibility.

2. Definitions of Disability

All of use play many roles in our lives and, in their working environment - like any other - people do not 'lose' other parts of their identity. This activity stimulates consideration of issues of personal identity and concerns in the context of the requirements of the Act.

3. It Could Be You

Talking about disabilities may make people feel uncomfortable. It may be the same discomfort that, magnified in society as a whole, produces resentment, fear and prejudice. This activity seeks to open up some of the discomfort in an interesting and non-challenging way.

4. Opening up the Market

Good practice in business terms means being responsive to the needs of existing customers and being aware of, and prepared to serve, the needs of new customers. The needs of people with disabilities have not generally been recognised by the commercial sector, other than in terms of supplying special equipment for physical difficulties. There is a large potential market awaiting those businesses prepared to explore the potential of people who may have specific and limited needs in one sector of their lives and who, in other terms, share the hopes, aspirations and needs of the rest of society.

5. A Fair Deal from Employers

The Disability Discrimination Act provides enhanced opportunities for people with disabilities as the Government has produced a Code of Practice for the elimination of discrimination in the field of employment against people with a disability. This activity introduces some of the issues in the Code of Practice.

6. The Disabling Environment

All too often the only barriers preventing disabled people from obtaining appropriate employment, goods or services are those which society itself creates. This activity looks at some of the issues that create barriers in the environment of work and the market.

7. Who Benefits?

Opening up employment possibilities for people who need special provisions carries obvious benefits for them. It gives them an occupation, status, companionship and stimulation. It is good for the world as a whole, encouraging a more positive, realistic and balanced society, one which values contributions from all of its components. There are also specific benefits to individual employers and places of work. The skills and abilities of people with disabilities represent a rich source of experience, creativity and talent which can be of great value. This activity introduces a discussion on some of these benefits.

8. Improving Access

In order that discrimination against people with any disability is addressed with some hope of success, individual organisations, firms and workplaces will have to take the issue into the practical working of everyday routine. Pious expressions of intent are not sufficient. Company policies and procedures will need to be reviewed carefully and the co-operation and energy of all individuals in each workplace will need to be involved. It should be remembered that the word 'access' is used in its widest sense with the intention of opening up opportunities in every way for individuals and groups with disabilities.

9. How Does it Feel?

It has been said that the only way to understand fully the life and the problems of any person is to 'walk a mile in his shoes'. Many disabled people are of the opinion that only people with disabilities themselves can fully understand the issues involved for others with disabilities. This activity is an active attempt to introduce participants to some practical issues involving day-to-day and face-to-face functions and relationships for people with a range of disabilities. It can only deal with a restricted range of disabilities and should not, therefore, be considered to be more than a preliminary exploration of the difficult and emotive topic of what it feels like to be disabled.

10. Disability Etiquette: Language

Sometimes people are very shy about approaching or having anything to do with people who have a different experience of life or background to themselves. This has the effect of making those people in turn feel shy and isolated, and often upset and angry as well. This phenomenon is applicable to people with disabilities. They frequently comment that their acquaintances seem to have difficulty in relating to them socially. Sometimes what is an awkward situation is worsened by a lack of understanding of how others feel. In particular, people are often concerned because they want to help someone who has some obvious difficulties and they are doubtful about how to offer that help without seeming to be patronising. The keynote of good relationships is respect for other people. This includes a respect for their identity and uniqueness as an individual and since, obviously, each person with a disability is an individual with their own history and unique experience, it is difficult to learn what to do in general, to judge when help is needed and to give it in a way that is both effective and sensitive. This activity introduces participants to a discussion about this difficulty and offers some guidance as to how effective and sensitive communication, both ways, can be established.

11. Disability Etiquette: Actions Speak Loud

Most well-intentioned people express a desire to ensure that people with disabilities have a fair deal. Most people would say that they would do all they could to ensure that this happens both in the work context and in the wider context of society where disabled people wish to receive service which is equal to that given to the rest of the community. Many fear that they have not got the right technical knowledge to help someone with disabilities. The philosophy of this activity pack and of many people working in the field of equal opportunities is that it is the people with disabilities themselves who are the 'experts' and who can give the most effective guidance on access to increased and equal opportunities. However, the application of sound common sense to practical issues often produces simple but effective solutions and removes what seem to be insuperable barriers. It should also be remembered that the 'expert' in solving problems for people who are disabled is usually the individual with disabilities. People without those disabilities need the confidence to ask the right questions of them in a way which is sensitive and effective.

12. Medical Model/Social Model

We are all very much conditioned to see disability as a deviation from the norm and to look at the needs of disabled people as requiring help from the rest of society. This leads us into seeing them as 'ill', 'impaired' and 'handicapped' - all words that carry a meaning which is pejorative at worst and patronising at best. When considering the factors that create and intensify difference, it is often the medical or scientific definitions of 'normal' that are used as criteria. It is now generally recognised that distinctions based on these criteria are fairly arbitrary. Which of us is strictly 'normal', after all? Such questions have been raised earlier (in Activities 2 and 6, in particular). There is another difficulty in accepting a medical definition of disability and normality which is that it discounts completely the powerful effect that societal attitudes have and how they become self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating into a truly 'vicious' circle. Furthermore, by grouping together people with a range of conditions - mental and physical, some derived from accident, some from birth - 'they' are separated even more effectively from 'us'. The community provides special services for those considered to have special needs. The danger is that thereby created are, by definition, both artificial and damaging to those on either side.

13. Disability Politics

This activity looks at what disabled people, as individuals and in different organisations, are saying to society, in contrast to what often has been considered the accepted approach of the 'medical model of disability'.

14. How to Find out More

The best and most effective way to understand a person with disabilities and their unique position and capabilities is to ask them. However, it is sometimes necessary to prepare policies and procedures of a general nature; or to prepare in advance to serve as a customer or work with as a colleague someone whose disability you feel you need to understand before you meet them so that the ground can be fully prepared and you can open as many opportunities for them as possible. In such circumstances it is important to know where to go for good, clear and helpful information. This activity seeks to give advice as to where to find the best sources of such information.

15. Working on Prejudice

One of the most difficult things for an individual to do is to recognise and deal with their own negative feelings. Prejudice, as a mixture of feeling, instinct and internalisation of social attitudes, is extremely difficult both to recognise and to deal with. Working with a group of people one knows only in a work context, it is not appropriate to make activities of this sort too 'heavy'. It is important that the activity is presented in a tentative rather than an over-authoritative manner and that participants are encouraged to express their views freely. There is some evidence to suggest that courses that seek to raise awareness of discriminatory issues risk increasing prejudice rather than diminishing it because they make participants feel guilty about some of their own emotions. Participants should be listened to with respect even if the trainer and the other participants disagree with their views. Bear in mind that, in almost any group of people, there are likely to be at least one or two who have themselves suffered from discrimination.

16. Pitfalls of Disability Training

A little knowledge can indeed be a dangerous thing. It is also dangerous when there is a government or social dictum that people feel has to be followed, even though they do not understand the reason for it. The drive towards 'political correctness' may do more harm than good. Sometimes this is because unscrupulous trainers jump on a fashionable bandwagon to sell their wares. Sometime it is because what is ethical is used only in so far as it serves pragmatic purposes. Sometimes genuine mistakes are made because of a lack of full understanding of the issues and because there has been no dialogue with disability organisations or the 'real' people who have disabilities. Disability and 'anti-racist' training courses illustrate these difficulties well, and the trainer must be careful to distinguish the essential and helpful components in teaching material from those which cynically seek to exploit a fairly new provision. Trainers and training managers receive 'flyers' advertising many such courses. How can they evaluate which are helpful? Training in a workplace can only be successful if the aims are seen to be congruent with the 'culture' of that workplace. It is therefore very important that participants can all feel that they can 'own' the concepts that underpin any course based, as is this, on values. This activity is a short one, but it is hoped that it will encourage a critical but constructive approach from participants which will stimulate their thinking when they return to work.

17. Agenda for Change

Cynics may often use the provision of training courses as an excuse for inaction. Courses that intend to be effective must build in a component that includes an element of planning for action. The form that this action takes - the timetable, personnel and policies that need to be involved in order for it to be effective - varies according to conditions in a particular workplace. There are, however, certain common elements which need to be addressed by all. Decision-makers have to be worked out for agreed goals; and, for the security of good practice, there should be systems for evaluation and monitoring. These are examples of the basic parameters that have to exist and within which, only those with the right 'local' knowledge of the firm, the industry and the workplace can adapt an agenda for change.