The role of PR in communicating with and for disabled people

A speech given by Kate Nash, Chief Executive of the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation (RADAR), at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Diversity Means Business conference in London on 18 October 2006.

In focusing on the role of PR in communicating with and for disabled people I would like to explore five key areas:

1. What does disability mean?
2. How should the term disability be communicated?
3. The market - how big is it and what are the related business opportunities?
4. How do you engage with disabled people?
5. Key tips for communicating with disabled people.

It is clear that the term disability means different things to different people. Certainly the term conjures up a range of emotions from people - it tends not to be seen as a positive and fulfilling experience - and despite ten years of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) and the establishment of the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) it is still the case that the emotions people associate with the concept of disability are fear, sadness, pity and regret.

In terms of the facts:

• There are over 10.8 million disabled people in the UK
• Just 17% were born with an impairment
• Some 70% of economically active disabled people become disabled during their working lives
• Over 2 million are of working age
• 1 in 4 of the general public have a disability or have a close relation or friend who is disabled
• Wheelchair users make up less than 5% of disabled people

Increasingly disability is seen as not purely a medical issue - one that should be dealt with by medicine and doctors alone - but as a social issue. There are many well-known writers - Mike Oliver, Jane Campbell, Colin Barnes - who have contributed to the emergence of what has been called the social model of disability - that the challenges we face here really have very little to do with the actualities of MS, polio, diabetes, repetitive strain injury, visual impairment or a mental health condition - in my case arthritis.

The challenges are threefold:

1. Other peoples' attitudes
2. Policies, practices and procedures
3. The built environment

Since the early 1970s disabled people themselves, through the strengthening of the disabled peoples' movement and the establishment of Centres of Independent Living, have begun to use the term in a way which establishes the term disability as a political experience (with a small ‘p'), a bit like how the black lobby did for itself in the 1970s.

That said, there is a fairly tight definition of what disability is in relation to the DDA: Anyone with a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on the ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

And while the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation (RADAR) lobbied very hard and was enormously successful in securing the DDA in 1995 (plus revisions in 2005), for us the restriction of the term disability to the definition according to the Act is to miss the spirit of intent behind the Act - to ensure that we build inclusive workforces which can facilitate disabled people being able to work and ensuring that disabled people can access our goods and services. That we want to do so - that we can do so - that we will be richer for doing so.

I have been asked by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations to cover the issue of how disability should be communicated. And, of course, that really depends on what you want to achieve. Whether that is about recruitment and retention or whether it is about improving your own product and key messages for customers.

The key is to remember that the ‘journey' of someone's impairment is often not static especially in relation to those who are newly diagnosed. Unlike other sector strands, you very rarely ‘ become' a woman, you very rarely ‘become' someone from the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) community, you very rarely ‘become' a gay or lesbian person - though you may take some time before you feel comfortable about being ‘out'.

But the majority of disabled people develop their impairment during the course of their lives. Why is this important? Well, it means that the experience of disability can be earth shattering and can take many years to accommodate - and while that may sound contradictory, in relation to my message that disability is a political experience, it isn't. But it does suggest that only through the individual process of accommodating impairment do individuals make sense of what they may need to ‘do life differently' - what adjustments or accommodations are needed.

You will know that in the DDA (1995) was born the concept of reasonable adjustments, a legal term to denote that there are some circumstances where it is acceptable to discriminate against disabled people (interesting in itself! - another day, another debate).

So, with that in the back of your mind the question becomes what are the key things you want to communicate? Well, presupposing you are here because you have already won the battle in that your organisations want to convey the message that you want disabled people in your employ and as customers…

The key, as employers, is to deliver the integrity message - if you are not getting it right - and we heard earlier that only two per cent of PR employees are disabled people - then you need to articulate the fact that you want to get that more right - you need to articulate your fears and concerns.

Secondly, you need to communicate what you are open to do when someone discloses their impairment - that you are open to dialogue about what is reasonable - that you are open to talking about what policy, practice, and procedure needs to be changed. You need to look at how you do things - improving application forms, changing working hours, looking at job modification. There are a whole range of things that can be done.

Then you need to take a look at your built environment and that you are willing to make changes. That doesn't always mean a costly lift (though it might) - it may mean a re-organisation - it may mean looking at IT features - it may mean looking at signage.

And then it means looking at attitudes. Convey in all corporate literature that the company means business in terms of recruiting and retaining disabled staff and start to breakdown unhelpful outdated assumptions. That this stuff does not have to be difficult. That this stuff is not philanthropic (though it might be the right thing to do) or sweet and ‘cutesy'!

As providers of goods and services you need to do exactly the same - only often you will have a wider audience and sometimes there is much more at stake. It is important to remember though that you have an anticipatory duty here - you need to have anticipated that you know you will have disabled people as customers and have taken reasonable steps to overcome barriers. The cost of getting it wrong can be devastating - not necessarily in terms of legal costs, but in cost to the business.

Lastly on this point, I just wanted to flag up that disability adjustments are not ‘special'. As a woman with arthritis, I do have some additional needs and I do have some different needs. But they are not ‘special' - this conveys ‘cutesy' and altogether a little bit sad. I am on a mission to obliterate the reference to ‘special' when talking about the needs of disabled people. Do join me.

So how big is the market - how big is it? And what are the related business opportunities? Well we know that there is a disability market of some 80-90 billion pounds (Labour Force Survey). This is an important indicator that disabled people are spending money. Now, of course, there are lies, damned lies and statistics, so, I give a health warning on this statistic, and ask you to note that it can take a while to get a ‘slice of the pie'.

These things aren't necessarily costly, with 250 pounds being the average cost of making an adjustment - it is very important to keep that in ones mind's eye. Again, that is not to say some of us aren't expensive - indeed some of us are - but the average cost is minimal.

The financial return for getting it right is well documented and I would encourage you to join the Employers' Forum on Disability to hear how their members fare in this regard. The financial penalty for getting it wrong is significant, with something like half a million pounds being the largest pay out from a DDA case.

So how do you engage with disabled people? Well, that really is pretty much about common sense. About being real and linking communications objectives to business objectives.

Talking to disabled staff is critical to demystifying the issue. Use your own staff to test out your organisational thoughts about the need for change.

It is important to build links with the disabled community - really important. Not to do so will mean you are not going to even ‘tickle the sides' on increasing the number of disabled staff from two per cent.

Certainly, I would be keen for you to share RADAR's vision - of a world where human difference is routinely anticipated, expertly accommodated and positively celebrated. It is the best way of engaging with disabled people. It blows up silo visions - it means, as a collective, we start to not recognise visions of worlds for individual sector strands. This is, in my mind, next generation thinking and I hope the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights goes down this route. I am waiting for the call from Trevor Phillips, the first chair of that commission, to lend or offer up our vision for their use, which we will freely do.

You can view presentations from the CIPR conference, Diversity Means Business, here.