Disability Inclusion is something people with disability are serious about. Disability is part of the spectrum of being human* – it’s like any other attribute that makes us who we are.
It’s not about what we can’t do. Even most people without disability can’t do lots of things – can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t draw, can’t cook and so on. Not being able to do something is not the point. Not being able to do what you can and want to do because of attitudes, behaviours and barriers is the point.
In a sense, the challenge of disability inclusion is about how we, as a person with disability, can work to change the attitudes and behaviours of others – and have the barriers removed.
We have to do it because we know, better than anyone else, the injustice of exclusion. We have the impatience and the determination to drive the changes needed. But we need allies, with whom we can make creating genuine inclusion a real art – a genuine act of creation.
I focus on employment because this is my area of expertise. I also focus on the sticking points in organisational culture and behaviour because fixing the hard things is not only necessary to ensure inclusion is uniformly experienced – it is a moral imperative for any organisation that claims it supports inclusion.
Michael Patterson
13 October 2021
* From Claire Cunningham https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04n611c