How do I engage in advocacy with a disability?
People with disabilities make up for 15% of the world’s population.
We are a diverse community, no one person is the same.
People with disabilities are passionate about many things, like making the world better for people living with disabilities.
But that’s not all we care about.
We are interested in nature, community, belonging.
We are curious about people outside of our community and we want to make people feel happy and safe.
We want to be a part of positive change because we care about others.
Working with others to spread and create change is called advocacy.
Advocacy isn’t always accessible for everyone.
People living with disabilities sometimes feel left out of the conversation.
Better accessibility will help us to advocate for ourselves and for others.
What are organisations doing to communicate with people with disabilities?
Easy read documents are helpful and are becoming more common.
Videos and photographs are important because they guide us through information.
But communicating to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities seems to be an afterthought.
Easy read documents can be hard to track down. Videos don’t always have closed captioning or options to slow down speech.
How can we participate on our own terms?
We can get involved in the conversation.
Talk to our friends. Talk to our family. Share ideas and knowledge.
We can ask for help to understand issues that affect us.
We can attend online and in-person events where big issues are being talked about.
For example:
- – protests
- – community forums
- – local council meetings
- – informational sessions on topics such as climate justice
We can follow and engage with advocacy on social media, helping organisations to reach new groups of people.
Organisations such as Climate for Change and Close the Gap are good places to start.
And we can show people outside of the disability community what we are passionate about.
What are you passionate about?
Our voice matters.
Empowering our community to contribute, learn and take action will strengthen positive change and make sure no one is left behind.
