Equality and awareness

Disability Awareness and Disability Equality training are used interchangeably these days. However, I think it’s helpful to know why equality and awareness carried a different meaning for disability activists a few decades ago. 

 

In the 1990s disability awareness training was largely impairment specific, delivered by non-disabled experts often employed by large charities. These charities not only had access to money but also had significant power and influence over local organisations and national government policy.  This inequality of power and voice still persists today. You’ll notice that far greater ‘ink’ is given to big charities than to grassroots organisations on television or radio for example. 

 

As I found out many years after delivering disability awareness training myself, equality programmes were created more intentionally as a response to the power held by non-disabled professionals. Equality training came about as an opposition to cultural silencing, with the voice and the interests of disabled campaigners securing accountability in a storytelling that articulated the Disabled people's movement fight for equal rights (Morris, 1995). Disability equality focuses on the structural inequality that drives discrimination and disability hate crime, allowing an exploration of structural power and privilege [rather than highlight individual differences, it addresses the specifics that affect groups of disabled people, while respecting the individual’s choice to identify.]

 

When I was introduced to disability equality, and the Social Model more specifically, the perspective changed my view of personal experience - and my language over time. Simulation, private feelings and personal preferences were dropped in public conversation and written work. I began to tell a story that articulated emerging theoretical ideas and framed my own experience within the context of the Disabled people’s movement. It was a storytelling that aimed to reflect a shared knowledge, while far from academic in those days,  I was keen to be part of a conversation begun by disabled activists refusing to be silent. This meant presenting societal oppression, then disablism now ableism, as akin to sexism, racism, homophobia and religious intolerance... The books came much later, and my library was slow to grow, but 2 decades later I’ve joined a few dots between lived experience, academic theory and civic protest. I still speak ‘in the streets’, to paraphrase hooks, I fear a conversation that was only to be held within the walls of universities.

 

I use disability ‘equality’ to place the interests of the disabled population firmly at the centre of organisational accountability, responsible business, and sustainable development. I encourage people to embed an understanding of structural ableism in their organisational storytelling, the way they would sexism, homophobia, classism, ageism and racism.  By framing the challenge as dealing with barriers and attitudes in the workplace, not with disabled individuals. the also training provides definitions for inclusive practice, with disabled people facing a problem, rather than being a problem. In terms of the Sustainable Development Goals, disability equality training aligns with the social and environmental implications of climate change and global inequality. However, still most crucially the trainings is led by disabled people, their groups, networks and communities - D/deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations, for example.  If I seem intransigent, please believe I’m less radical than I was. There’s a plentiful blend of excellent training out there, and I applaud those tackling this mountainous issue. This is but my perspective, not an unique truth. (See am I disabled?)

 

 

As I stated in my thesis:

The articulation of equality is critical I think, because in the past impairment training had largely been delivered by non-disabled professionals, and or those with medical expertise or academics from clinical disciplines (Campbell & Gillespie-Sells, 1991). Formalised in 1985 by the 'Disabled Trainers Forum' (Barnes, 1991, Section 2 – online text has no page), Disability Equality practitioners had a personal experience as disabled individuals, giving them a proximity to experience, but also an understanding of group politics [interest] and theory - the social model of disability as a tool (Oliver, 1990; Beresford, 2003). The distinction of disability equality therefore, was its perspective- the ideas of the disabled people’s movement. It is not an attack on doctors or medicine, but the extent of their power in the lives of disabled people. As a shorthand, the Social Model encourages us to avoid the specific characteristics of disability stereotypes – that disabled people are few, faulty and needy – and the assumptions linked to the disempowerment enforced (possibly unwittingly) by medical workers or clinical experts (Morris, 1995; Oliver, 2016). (L. Chapman unpublished but available)

 

 

Bibliography

Barnes. (1991). Discrimination: disabled people and the media. . Contact, 45-48.

Beresford, P. (2003). It's our lives, A short theory of Knowledge, Distance and Experience. London: Citizen Press / Shaping our lives.

Beresford, P. (2016). All our welfare: Towards participatory social policy [Kindle Edition]. Bristol: Policy Press.

Campbell, J., & Gillespie-Sells, K. (1991). Disability Equality Training: a trainers guide. London: CCETSW.

Campbell, J., & Oliver, M. (1996). Disability Politics. London: Routlege.

Caradonna, J. (2016). Sustainability: A History. Abingdon: Oxford University Press.

hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black. Boston MA: South End Press.

Morris, J. (1995). Creating a Space for Absent Voices: Disabled Women's Experience of Receiving Assistance with Daily Living Activities . Feminist Review, 51, 68-95.

Morris, J. (2001). Impairment and Disability: Constructing an Ethics of Care That Promotes Human Rights. Hypathia, 16(4), 1-16.

Morris, J. (2013, 10 11). Welfare Reform and the Social Model of Disability. Retrieved 4 19, 2017, from Jenny Morris: https://jennymorrisnet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/welfare-reform-and-social-model-of.html

Naysmith, S. (2015, 12 2). Disabled people face social apartheid, warns human rights chief . Retrieved 01 22, 2016, from http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14119159.Disabled_people_face_social_apartheid__warns_human_rights_chief/?ref=twtrec

Oliver, M. (1990). The Politics of Disablement: A Sociological Approach (Critical Texts in Social Work and the Welfare State). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Oliver, M. (2016). Rewriting history: the case of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Disability & Society, 31(7), 966-968.

Qa Research. (2017). ‘It’s broken her’ – Assessments for disability bene ts and mental health 3.Rethink Mental Illness. Rethink Mental Illness.

Rieser, R., & Mason, M. (1992). Disability Equality in the Classroom: A human rights issue. London: Disability Equality in Education.