Your Guide to Accessible Language at Work

Accessible language is hugely important in the workplace. How we speak both to and about disabled people is a critical factor in how this community of people feel working in the workplace. Get it wrong and you will find staff leaving their posts, making claims for discrimination, and spreading the word that you are an inaccessible employer. 

Inaccessible language is hurtful and damaging for disabled employees. It can damage their self-esteem and mental health, and cause them to withdraw from all other colleagues around them too. 

In other words, using inaccessible language is a huge disadvantage for everyone in the workplace. Accessible language, on the other hand, is the key to building a safe and happy workplace where disabled people can be productive and can stay in their posts for a long time to come. 

At Careers with Disabilities, we believe in the power of accessibility. We have created this blog to tell you a bit more about accessible language at work and how to use it, in the hopes that you can embrace as much accessibility in your workplace as possible. 

Let’s get started with some Do’s and Don’ts. 

The “Do”s” of Accessible Language 

First up, let’s talk about the positive side of the equation and what you should do to embrace accessible language in your workplace. 

These are our “do”s of accessible language…

Do

• Use “people first” language. Never place a person’s disability before their personal identity. For example, you should say “people who use a wheelchair” rather than “wheelchair confined people”. You should also never say something like, “this is our deaf colleague, Emily”. It is better to say, “this is our colleague Emily who works in our admin department, she uses this specific desk because she is deaf”. A disability isn’t someone’s entire identity and so it shouldn’t come before their name or position. 

• Discuss disability in an open way. That being said, disability is not something to shy away from. Disabilities aren’t shameful or something to be discussed in hushed tones. Using the right terms for disability openly and frankly in the workplace is the best way to build an accessible and open workplace culture that doesn’t see disability as something to be hidden. 

• Run Disability-Awareness training. The best way to make sure that all employees are on the same page with the terms to use, and not to use (which we will cover in the Don’ts section), is to run a company-wide Disability Awareness Training that gets everyone up to speed. For a workplace to be inclusive and accessible, all members of staff need to be using accessible language at work. 

• Ask employees what terms they prefer to use for themselves and their condition. Every disabled person is different and even people with the same disability may have different ideas about how they like to discuss their disability. The best way to know what a person wants is to ask them and have an open conversation about it. The best time to do this is during the recruitment and onboarding processes. 

Now for the don’ts. 

Don’t 

• Use offensive and outdated language. Don’t use terms such as “spastic, crippled, invalid, retarded, defective” or anything pejorative that may have been acceptable a very long time ago. 

• Use negative language that implies suffering and misfortune. Don’t use terms such as “confined to a wheelchair”, “suffers from blindness” or “has been struck down by MS”. All of these terms imply the disabled person involved is suffering and in constant turmoil, and this may not remotely be the case. 

• Engage in stereotypes around disability. Don’t encourage and engage with societal stereotypes around different types of disabilities that are offensive and paint all disabled people with the same brush. 

• Be patronising towards disabled people by using overly positive language. Don’t say things such as “disabled heroes” or “overcoming the odds”.  Nor anything that patronises a disabled person for living their normal, everyday life at work. While this may come from a place of good intention, it can infantilise an adult who simply wants to be seen as an equal. 

• Tiptoe around disabled people with common phrases such as “see you later” and “let’s walk and talk about it”. Disabled people won’t be offended by well-known and common phrases. Tiptoeing around such things or over-apologising for them again only patronises the disabled person involved and makes the conversation uncomfortable. 

• Over-generalise with group terms such as “the disabled”. Not all disabled people are the same, in fact, what counts as a disability is extremely varied and diverse. Saying such collective terms implies a misunderstanding of disability and puts everyone in the same category. 

Overall Tips

Ultimately, the most important thing when it comes to accessible language is using language in such a way that disabled people feel safe, supported, and included in the workplace. You want to avoid anything that implies that anyone disabled is on a lesser level than anyone non-disabled, and you particularly want to avoid anything patronising, infantilising, or outright offensive. 

One of the most effective ways of ensuring that accessible language is used across the board in any workplace is by running Disability-Awareness training and educating all staff on these issues to the same standard. 

As an employer, you should know that the use of accessible language in the workplace is paramount. Not engaging with it appropriately is a recipe for disaster. 

The only way to be a good employer in 2023 and beyond is to become Disability Confident and know how to be inclusive and accessible to disabled job seekers and members of staff. Luckily, we have everything you need to make that happen right here at Careers with Disabilities. 

Check out our section on guidance for employers and our services for employers currently on offer. We can help you with everything from screening your job adverts for exclusive language to creating job posts on our disability-friendly job board. 

Being a disability-friendly employer is the way forward, get on board with our services today to start.