How to: Become a Disability Rights Advocate or Ally
Or: How to Support Disabled People in Your Community
Photo Description: Hands reaching toward each other, symbolizing an offer to help — to be an ally.
When people ask me: “how can I help make the world more accessible?” or “how can I be a disability ally?” my heart warms. It restores my hope in people and makes me feel seen. Most days I feel so singular in the world, waging my daily battles alone (but supported by close friends and family members). It can feel like a slog, especially when the issues are repetitive and seemingly intractable.
I truly, very deeply believe that everyone can help and be an ally for disabled people and making our world more accessible and inclusive. Day-to-day actions can really matter. At the very least, they lend support to the effort of advancing the rights and inclusion of people with disabilities.
Notice and Witness
One of the things I appreciate hearing from friends and acquaintances is: “hey, I never noticed <name an inaccessible thing or practice> until we met and I started seeing these things.” Attention is powerful. Observing differences and learning the experiences of various disabled people is very eye-opening.
I add myself to this kind of learning! My disability experience is wheelchair and mobility-based. When I listen to and observe other disability experiences (such as a blind person excluded from rideshare because a driver didn’t want to take their guide dog or a deaf person excluded because captioning or American Sign Language interpretation wasn’t provided for an event) I also learn about the many ways society fails to accommodate people with a variety of disabilities.
Being present with others we care about. Noticing their experiences of exclusion and inaccessibility. Bearing witness to these experiences and taking note of the wrongness in them — that is huge and helpful. When you move throughout your day do you see steps without ramps, audio without captions, signage without audio, and so forth?
Validate and Support
I admit that accessibility and discrimination problems happen frequently enough to me that I sometimes can feel numb to it. “Not again, sigh, I don’t have energy or time for this” has become my instinctual response. It can take me time, but I will eventually get angry and then inevitably exhausted.
Having a friend or loved one there who observes what has happened, then validates my feelings (of anger, exclusion, disappointment, outrage, etc…) is really helpful. When a person validates the experience (“I see the discrimination that has happened and agree that it is wrong”), I feel so much better and less alone. Being the only person who observes an issue is very isolating and enhances my feelings of exclusion.
Next, I appreciate when someone offers support: “Is there anything I can do?” or “What can we do to help?” or “What do you need?” It is good to ask these kinds of questions because my answer may be different than what a person may assume. For example, shouting at someone to complain or rectify the issue may actually make it worse in the moment. I may just want to move on and salvage my day and precious time by going elsewhere immediately, then complaining later to an owner or manager (who has more power to change things than a frontline worker might). Support may mean just lending an ear to my complaints or it may mean raising hell — it depends on the situation and moment.
Take Action
It varies with the individual and time/skills/energy an ally has to spare, but I really appreciate those who can take action to support disability rights and inclusion. It is huge when nondisabled people notice inaccessibility and work within their community to rectify it. As a disabled person, it is taking a lot of my unpaid time and energy to fight these battles and it is helpful when other people notice, care, take a stand, and help share in the work.
Actions can include contacting local government, writing letters to local media, talking with others about disability rights and inclusion, inviting disabled people to speak to community groups, engaging disabled people in community planning discussions, reading/listening/watching/learning about disability perspectives, sharing knowledge resources with others, asking questions, and so much more.
People may think an action is small, but I think all actions can be huge in making a difference. I will never forget the woman who asked what she could do to help when I was trying to find the accessible entrance to a local ice cream shop and discovered it was blocked illegally on the inside (with a giant freezer), rendering the business inaccessible. It moved my heart and made me remember that noticing, asking if one can help, and lending support are truly powerful, yet simple actions towards the goal of disability inclusion.
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There are so many things we all can do everyday to make this world for all of us.