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When you become an Inclusive Employers’ Member you grow your I&D team.
Your account manager works with you to understand your goals, your challenges and achievable next steps.
Do you need more support for your inclusive culture to thrive?
Disability discrimination and microaggressions
In this blog, I want to take you on a little journey with me to explore some of the different everyday discriminations and assumptions I experience daily. I am aware my experience is nowhere near as rare as it should be, and I’m sure others will experience situations much worse than these, but I wanted to share some of my experiences in the hope that they will be helpful, informative, and hopefully a bit entertaining.
“What’s wrong with you?”
This is a question I get asked a lot, and my go-to response is “nothing, I’m disabled”, mainly so that I can see people’s faces go through a gamut of different emotions all at once when they don’t quite know how to respond. I live with fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis and arthritis – put simply – chronic pain, chronic fatigue and ouchy joints.
It affects me in lots of different ways. On a good day I can walk with some discomfort, usually using my walking stick but on a really good day I can get by without it. I experience extreme fatigue, mind fog, and memory problems. On a bad day, I have intense pain, meaning I cannot walk unaided and often have to use a wheelchair. I sometimes even experience seizures.
“You don’t look disabled.”
This is a comment that still affects me, even though I do try to laugh it off. I remember shortly after I had started using my walking stick myself, and my wife was picking up her parents to attend a family wedding. This would be the first time most of the family had seen me using a walking stick.
As we walked up to my in-law’s flat, a neighbour said hello, looked me up and down and said: “You don’t need that, you are far too young, and you don’t even look disabled.” She said it with a smile as if it was supposed to be a compliment, I laughed it off, but it broke me. I was so self-conscious that I felt like I was doing something wrong by using a mobility aid that I needed to get through the event.
The idea of looking disabled is something I struggle with daily, and so do many others I have spoken to who have fluctuating or invisible disabilities. For a long time, I even gaslit myself (if I’m truly honest, I still do) into believing that because I don’t always have visible symptoms I am in some way faking, don’t belong, or am intruding on a space that isn’t for me. This has stopped me from getting the support that would have helped me and stopped me from joining groups or being physically active in para-sports, all because of internalised ableism.
Find out how the Inclusion Passport can encourage inclusive conversations“The Inclusive Employers inclusion passport has been amazingly helpful in shaping these conversations.”
“Can you do that?”
This is a comment that both makes me laugh and makes me angry at the same time. Assumptions are made all the time about my capability, capacity and intellect, and it is one of the main reasons I still avoid using my wheelchair.
Not only is it very annoying that what people think is accessible versus what is accessible are two VERY different things, like a restaurant I attended recently that proudly told me they had an accessible toilet, and it was only up 3 stairs. I’m sure you can imagine me internally facepalming whilst trying to explain that 3 stairs might as well be Everest when you are in a wheelchair.
Mainly, I truly hate the way some people look at me when I use a wheelchair, that sideways look of pity out of the corner of their eye, talking to my wife instead of me or talking to me in a slow, deliberate voice assuming I won’t be able to understand. This has often caused me to put myself in situations where I am damaging my health to avoid using a wheelchair and dealing with this everyday discrimination that is far too common.
Yes, there are some things I do benefit from additional support with and I have been lucky enough throughout my career to have some amazing colleagues who have provided unwavering support. Simple things like writing things down after a discussion is amazingly helpful. Due to my mind fog and memory issues, I can often forget the actions from a meeting only minutes after leaving it, so having someone drop me an email with the action points I need to take forward is a tiny adaption but makes a world of difference.
I have also recently found the immersive reader function in Microsoft Edge (I know, I’m late to the party), but being able to remove all the distracting banners and adverts when reading makes it so much easier to get and retain the information.
Sometimes though, it is just a simple conversation between colleagues about what they prefer and the different tricks they use that has made me feel so much more confident about asking for adaptions and not feeling like I am being difficult or am the only one. The Inclusive Employers inclusion passport has been amazingly helpful in shaping these conversations.
“Is there anything I can do mate?”
To ensure you don’t leave feeling all doom and gloom, I wanted to end this blog with a story of inclusion done well and how the small actions of colleagues can change the course of your day.
A few months after I joined the team at Inclusive Employers we had a team away day, and this was my opportunity to meet most of the team in person for the first time. We had been doing lots of different fun activities during the day and I was really enjoying myself, but I was having a really bad pain day and had not really slept the night before, so I was struggling a bit to engage as the day went on.
I didn’t want to miss out, so I joined the session after lunch but I started to feel hot and light-headed, I could feel my legs and arms starting to twitch, which is one of the warning signs that I will have a seizure. I didn’t know what to do as I hadn’t told anyone at work about my condition, but our amazing managing director Claire had spotted the change in my behaviour before I needed to say anything.
This was when she did everything right, she didn’t make a big deal about it, she didn’t panic, and she just asked me what I needed. I asked for the keys to a quiet room so I didn’t have to have a seizure in front of everyone. I took myself away, and as I was coming around, I noticed a member of the team sitting in a chair near me playing on their phone. Michelle, our head of sport, looked up, calm as could be and said 7 words that made my day and let me know that this was a place I wanted to work for a long time, “Is there anything I can do mate?”
For more information and support, please contact your Inclusive Employers Account Manager or contact us to seek how we can support you and your organisation.
Inclusive Employers can also download the Disability guide for more information about accessibility and supporting disabled colleagues. If you are not an Inclusive Employers member, see what other benefits your organisation could enjoy by making us your inclusion and diversity partner.
Grow your team
When you become an Inclusive Employers’ Member you grow your I&D team.
Your account manager works with you to understand your goals, your challenges and achievable next steps.
Do you need more support for your inclusive culture to thrive?
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