In December, VONNE invited Difference North East to run a training session for our staff team on Disability Awareness.
A staff survey identified it as an area we wanted to learn more about, and VONNE Members Difference seemed well placed to tell us more. The interactive session gave us real insight into this important area, starting conversations among the staff team that might not otherwise have happened.
In this guest blog, Nic Cook from Difference tells us more about the training they offer and why it’s important.
Difference North East works widely to fight for equality and an end to disability discrimination, to improve digital accessibility, and to make sure that inclusion for disabled people is high on the agenda. Difference is led by disabled people and our campaigns, training, research, and consultancy are in turn led by the experience of disability. Our training aims to challenge the way we think about and act towards disabled people, and ending discrimination is at the heart of what we do.
The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted many disparities across all parts of life for disabled people, especially in the North East. Since 2020, inclusion has been an issue that organisations are giving due attention. Organisations across our region are investing in and becoming more aware of how they collaborate with disabled employees, volunteers, customers, and stakeholders. Through learning about disability politics, portrayals of disability in society, and common barriers disabled face to participation, our training helps improve knowledge and understanding of disability issues. It also helps organisations to build more inclusive cultures. Collectively, we can make more space for equality and inclusion, more space for listening, and more space for solidarity.
Recently, we facilitated our Disability Equality, Awareness and Etiquette workshop with VONNE where we had conversations about disability, in a safe and non-judgemental space. The workshop prompts us to consider the ways we automatically respond to disability, the ways we feel we ought to ‘help’ or the ways we might not think about access at all. To summarise Carol Botten, CEO of VONNE, we held a helpful space for talking about disability and bringing these issues to the fore so that employees could discuss them together. We often don’t have that sort of space for these conversations in a world where the word ‘disabled’ can still be taboo.
Another crucial part of our work is advocating for digital inclusion in the North East. As part of the Digital Pathfinders Programme, we have delivered sessions to numerous and varied organisations across the region this year. We worked through making online content, online meetings and online events more accessible, and each organisation left with the commitment to make even one small change in their work towards digital inclusion.
To quote Margaret Mead, ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.’ It really feels like this quote, sums up the sector in the North East right now, coming together in solidarity to make change happen, to make inclusion and equality the absolute baseline of all that we do in our organisations.
We are developing our training offer to include more scope in developing inclusive cultures in the workplace from a disability perspective, so if you’re interested in learning more about this, please do get in touch. Likewise, you can find out more on our website about our training sessions in Disability Equality and Digital Accessibility.