Making your event truly accessible to all: a guide to disability inclusion – part 1

If you act in any professional event or meeting planner capacity in 2023, chances are that DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) is something with which you have become rather familiar with over the course of the past few years. No doubt about it, DEI considerations have become center stage in a lot of ways for the meetings industry… and that’s for the best! Considerations like proper representation for race, gender identity or expression, as well as sexual orientation (just to name a few) have naturally emerged as priorities, and have impacted your work in the events and meetings you’re responsible for.

Simply said, the audience is no longer just asking for those things, they’re now expecting them. And rightfully so! In the wake of movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, as society evolves into a new state of consciousness when it comes to inclusion, and as younger generations become increasingly influential in driving what needs to be a given today. For you, it’s no longer a question of whether your event should incorporate DEI considerations. It’s a question of how you will actually do it.

Welcome to part I of a two-part series on some of the reasons why you should most definitely be paying attention to disability inclusion, as an event or meeting planner. Let’s get this party started.

Just how accessible are your own events?

That being said, just how accessible do you think your events truly are? Just how inclusive do you believe your speakers to be, when it comes to the delivery of their presentations and keynotes from the platform? Protected characteristics like the ones briefly mentioned above, as well as other equally important aspects like colour, creed, national origin, religion, family status, marital status, or even age might be on your radar, but what do you make of disability inclusion?

How much thought have you given recently to including attendees living with disabilities in your events or meetings? How a lack of proper disability accommodations might affect a person’s ability to truly connect, fully participate, and benefit from their experience attending your events?

In your efforts to constantly align with the new set of important, societal values that are brought forth by DEI when it comes to representation for people of colour and gender, as well as acknowledging audience members who identify as non-binary, how much attention have you been giving to the way disabilities impact the experiences of those amongst your attendees who identify as disabled or neurodivergent?

If your answer is “none”, or “not a whole lot, Jimmy”, then now’s your time to do something about it because you’ve been clearly missing out! For instance, do you happen to know just how prevalent disabilities are in Canada? It’s certainly more than most of us realize!

To put things into perspective, 2017 StatsCan data reveals that over 22% of Canadians self-identify as having at least one disability that has a daily impact on their lives. Yep, you read that right. This means that more than 1 out of every 5 individuals living in this country consider themselves to be living with at least one disability that affects the way that they interact with the world daily.

If this data is shocking to you, it’s simply because of all the people who self-identify as having a disability, 80% have a condition that is considered “invisible”… meaning one that the rest of us would never know about, unless that person cared to disclose it – and most of them will never do that, unless it’s absolutely necessary!

How well do you know your audience?

So, let’s be real. How well do you know your audience? Considering their size, does it make sense to recognize that a portion of these folks will also be likely to attend (and sometimes, even speak at) our events? In light of this information… do you think it might make sense for the meetings industry to start catering a bit more to disability inclusion in their events and meetings? I certainly think so. Hopefully you do, too.

Invisible disabilities include less obvious conditions like being hard-of-hearing, or having low vision, as well as other conditions that limit mobility, and affect cognitive abilities. But there’s more to it than just that. It also encompasses most conditions that fall under the general umbrella term of “neurodiversity”, something we’ve discussed quite a bit these past few months here on this blog, especially in the context of the impact of neurodiversity in communications and in the workplace.

I think you’ll agree that as event and meeting planners, you have a responsibility to ensure that your events are as accessible and inclusive as they can possibly be for every attendee. As disabled individuals are making themselves heard more and more, disability inclusion is an increasingly critical aspect of DEI. If you care to create events that are truly inclusive of all of your audience members, it’s vital for you to actively prioritize disability inclusion in your planning moving forward.

Failing to do so only perpetuates a systemic culture of stigma and discrimination that leaves behind the potential 20-some percent of our audiences identifying as disabled.

More than just the right thing to do…

Altruistic motivations for inclusion are easy enough to figure out… After all, most of us are well-intentioned individuals who simply want to do the right thing! But it’s also important to realize that failing to account for disability inclusion exposes you, your event, and the organization you represent through the event to serious consequences: legal and financial risks, reputational damage, etc. Excluding a significant potential portion of the population by design (or lack thereof) is not something any of us should be taking lightly, especially in a world so heavily measured by the catastrophic impacts of an unfortunate social media backlash.

So, in part II of this post next week, we’ll dive even deeper into more reasons as to why disability inclusion should, in fact, be vital in meetings and events planning, and how the meetings industry needs to seriously catch up with this important, yet spectacularly ignored aspect of the DEI movement.

We’ll also explore some of the risks that you might be facing as an event planner who fails to account for disability inclusion. And of course, because our goal here is to educate, we’ll also look at some key best practices that you can easily embrace, to ensure that your events are as accessible and inclusive as possible. Stay tuned!

Catch up on this two-part series!

• Making your event truly accessible to all: a guide to disability inclusion – part 1
• Making your event truly accessible to all: a guide to disability inclusion – part 2