Disability Inclusion should not be a “fringe” Activity

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If your business or Company aims at serving a wider range of customers, there is absolutely no acceptable reason for not including persons with disability in your programs.

Getting down to this topic we must fully analyses and interpreted these two terms, Persons with disability and Disability inclusion.  

Persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.

Disability inclusion technically means full participation of persons with disabilities in all their diversity, this process involves promotion of their rights and removing all barriers hindering their full involvement.

It is no secret that People with disabilities struggle to fit in the society today just because company policies are designed to favor those without impairments. Despite existing laws like the Equality Act and Human Rights charters, Business owners have failed to understand that the problem is not the person’s disability, but a mismatch between their abilities and the environment. 

Being able to work effectively with persons having impairments should be one of your core business principles. Bear it in mind that when you remove policies or biases to opportunity for persons with disabilities, the whole world benefits.

In one of the summits the UN chief said “Realizing the rights of persons with disabilities is a matter of justice as well as a common-sense” However we have a long way to go in changing mindsets, laws and policies to ensure these rights are respected.

As an employer your organization can not be a platform for change when persons with disabilities cannot access that platform. You will need to raise the standards of your  company's performance on disability inclusion  to bring about the transformative changes we seek.

In the quest to foster Inclusion in your business, Investing in building capacity of your staff should be given priority. Company staff must understand how to communicate and interact with employees with disabilities. Without capacity building staff will remain rudderless as they will have significant difficulties to make the workplace friendlier to disabled people.

You must take all the necessary steps to address discrimination and exclusion, particularly against persons with disabilities. One good way to do this is by ensuring that your organization partners and works with persons with disabilities to contribute to the major SGDs 2030 goals of living no one behind.

Your business should thoroughly review its policies, procedures and environment that may affect PWDs to obtain and maintain employment. This process should include assessing the four core organs of your company policies towards inclusiveness and these majorly are Governance, Programs management, Finance and Human resource.

Its thoughtful to assess if disability inclusion is mentioned anywhere in your organizations policies, human resource policies have to be disability inclusive, Persons with disabilities should participate in all planning, monitoring and evaluation phases and lastly your company`s finance office should have an established budget for reasonable accommodation.

An inclusive business postulates a workplace environment that allows for inclusivity. 

To achieve this, an organization needs to be flexible; it should recognize that not everyone is the same, wants the same thing(s) or is even able to do the same things, and create an environment in which everyone can flourish in order to collectively get the best results in terms of production or service.

My hope is that one day people with disabilities shall live in a world that protects respects and values their rights. To achieve inclusion as a belonging.




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