Questions to Ask About Disability Awareness

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   What are we including when we say disability here?

   Legal definitions, medical ones, and self-identification produce three different lists, and most disagreements in a session trace back to people quietly using different ones. Settling it at the start saves an hour of people talking past each other.

2. 2

   How much disability is invisible?

   Chronic pain, hearing loss, diabetes, autism, mental illness, and long-term conditions usually show nothing at all. Raising this early moves the conversation away from wheelchairs, which otherwise dominate the whole session and shape every example given.

3. 3

   Do you prefer disabled person or person with a disability?

   Both are in wide use, communities differ, and some groups strongly prefer the identity-first version. The point is not to learn one correct rule but to get comfortable asking the person in front of you.

4. 4

   What is the difference between the medical and social models?

   One locates the problem in a person's body, the other in the environment and how it was built. Almost every argument about accommodations is really a disagreement about which of the two people are using without saying so.

5. 5

   What assumption do people make about you most often?

   Directed at a speaker or panelist, this gets you something specific rather than a general principle, and it is usually about competence, independence, or who they are assumed to be with. Follow up by asking what it costs them to correct it each time.

6. 6

   How do you want people to offer help?

   The common answer is to ask first and then wait for the reply. Grabbing a wheelchair or a person's arm without asking is one of the most frequently reported irritations, and the fix is a single sentence.

7. 7

   What should someone do if they say the wrong thing?

   Fear of getting it wrong stops people talking at all, which helps nobody. Most answers amount to correcting yourself briefly and carrying on, rather than an extended apology that makes the disabled person manage your embarrassment.

8. 8

   What questions are fine to ask, and which ones are not?

   Lines differ by person and by setting, and the most common trip-up is asking how someone became disabled within a minute of meeting them. Ask about the setting too, since a panel invites questions that a corridor conversation does not.

9. 9

   What is the difference between an accommodation and an advantage?

   This objection surfaces in every workplace and every classroom, usually indirectly. Getting it addressed openly, with an example, does more than any policy statement about the same thing.

10. 10

    What does requesting an accommodation actually look like from the employee's side?

    It usually means disclosing to someone in HR, waiting an unclear length of time, and often producing medical evidence. Hearing that sequence out loud explains why many people never ask and prefer to struggle quietly.

11. 11

    Which accommodations cost nothing?

    A large share are scheduling changes, seating, written instructions instead of verbal ones, or a door left open. Naming free ones defuses the assumption that this discussion is really a budget negotiation.

12. 12

    Who has actually checked whether our building works?

    Meeting a code minimum and being usable are two different tests, and only the second one matters to the person at the door. Ask when it was last checked, by whom, and whether anyone tried the route from the parking space to the meeting room.

13. 13

    Are our meetings and documents usable?

    Captions, alternative text, readable slides, and files that work with a screen reader are ordinary habits rather than special projects. Ask who currently owns that, because the answer is often nobody.

14. 14

    What happens in a fire drill?

    Evacuation is the most frequently overlooked accessibility failure and one of the few with a life-safety consequence. Ask whether individual plans exist, who holds them, and whether the people named in them have been told.

15. 15

    Where do disabled candidates drop out of our hiring process?

    Application platforms, timed tests, and panel interviews each screen people out for reasons unrelated to the job. Look at where the funnel narrows rather than at the encouraging sentence in the job advertisement.

16. 16

    Are we asking disabled colleagues to do this work, and are we paying them?

    Awareness events are often built on unpaid labor from employees who already carry more than their colleagues. If a panel is being assembled, the question of compensation and time belongs before the invitations, not after.

17. 17

    Which conditions get left out of these conversations?

    Mental illness, chronic fatigue, learning disabilities, and anything that fluctuates day to day tend to go missing because they resist a simple story. Naming the gap is more useful than adding another ramp anecdote.

18. 18

    What does being called inspiring feel like from your side?

    Being praised for ordinary activity is a common and rarely voiced frustration. The answer usually reframes a compliment the audience believed was straightforwardly kind, which is the sort of thing an awareness session exists to do.

19. 19

    Where does getting older fit into this?

    Most people acquire a disability during their life rather than being born with one, which makes accessibility a subject about everyone's future. It shifts the room from them to us without anyone needing to deliver a lecture.

20. 20

    What will be different here in six months, and who owns it?

    Ask this at the end and write the name down. Sessions that finish without a named owner and a date produce a warm feeling and no change, which is the standard complaint about them.