Your colleague in a wheelchair has nothing to gain from you knowing that the accessible toilet shouldn’t be used as a storage room.
Not until you make sure there’s nothing stored in there.
Your colleague with a chronic illness has nothing to gain from your admiration that she has a job.
Not until you make sure she can work from home an extra day and has flexibility in how she arranges her hours.
Your colleague with autism has nothing to gain from you knowing that written instructions help him.
Not until you actually take the time to write them down.
Your colleague with a visual impairment has nothing to gain from you knowing that descriptions of images and graphs help her understand a document.
Not until you actually add them.
Your colleague has nothing to gain from your awareness. Only from the action you actually take to make the workplace more accessible.
This week is Accessibility Week. Many organisations are paying attention to accessibility, diversity and inclusion. Awareness is a good first step. But what do you do with the information you hear this week?
You can spend as much time as you like exploring accessibility, diversity and inclusion, listening to podcasts, following training sessions and joining inspirational events. But if you stay stuck at awareness and don’t change your behaviour, you haven’t learnt anything. You’ve just entertained yourself.