Why is Disability Awareness Training important? | Ability Focus | Disability Awareness Specialists
Why is Disability Awareness Training important?
Over the course of the coming weeks, we will write several brief articles referencing the importance as well as benefits to society of increasing knowledge around greater disability awareness. Disability Awareness Training is a key tool for organisations in increasing their knowledge base around disabilities.
It is thankfully rare that discrimination towards people with disabilities is premeditated today. It is even less commonplace within Irish workplaces. The reality is that most discrimination towards people with disabilities within Irish workplaces is unconscious. People simply don't realise they are being discriminatory. It is this unconscious attitude which creates bias and barriers for people with disabilities either when seeking employment, or within an employment setting.
While more than one person in seven in Ireland has a disability (this figure is now shown to be closer to one person in six) many people still feel they have minimal experience of engaging people with disabilities. When put in an employment context, this is significantly less. When considering both societal as well as employment settings, the reality is that you are probably meeting disabled people in far greater numbers that you realise. Yet there are still conscious and unconscious bias and barriers placed by those without disabilities every day.
It must be remembered that because someone may have a neighbour who is a wheelchair user, has a friend who has a mental health issue, or has a colleague whose son has Cerebral Palsy, this knowledge of one or some disabilities does not constitute effective disability awareness, as people with disabilities are not a homogenous group.
Without a greater awareness of disability, when it comes to engaging people with disabilities, society continues to run the risk of fear, pity, misrepresentation, lack of empathy and excessive sympathy, many of which lead directly and indirectly to forms of discrimination.
In the next post we will delve further into the importance of Disability Awareness Training for organisations in Ireland.