Tools

Easy wins and action points for disability inclusion

1 minute read

First steps for disability inclusion

Start conversations about disability

Evidence suggests people find it difficult to talk openly about disability.

Make sure your organisation provides leadership in this area to encourage a more open culture.

This could include talking about it in team or leadership meetings, sharing an article or personal stories or arranging a webinar.

Do not make assumptions

Experiences of disability can be very different.

For example, being disabled may impact mental health for some people and not for others.

It’s important to recognise that disability present differently in each individual.

Use inclusive language

There are many words, phrases and acronyms that appear when talking about disability. These often change depending on the context of the conversation.

Fear of saying the wrong thing should not stop work on inclusion. Most people will forgive slips, but it is good to know some basics.

Explore our guide to disability terminology and language.

Provide accessibility information

Share accessibility information on your website. This should include potential adjustments for people visiting your premises.

For example, explore our travel and access information.

If you do not have a website, you can send the information directly, including plans and photos.

Consider turning on all accessibility features on your technology and software as a default and require a strong business reason to turn them off.

For example, you could turn on transcripts and captions in teams.

Train your staff on how to use these and why they are important.

Explore our guide on beginning your organisation’s digital accessibility journey.

Senior level engagement

Disabled people are under-represented in the legal profession, particularly in senior roles.

6% of solicitors declared a disability in 2023, compared to 16% of the UK workforce.

Only 5% of partners declared a disability.

Consider how people in senior positions can drive disability inclusion and support disabled people led staff networks. Provide genuine support and allow them time to do this work.

Explore opportunities to join with other organisations such as local law societies and our Disabled Solicitors Network.

Encouraging senior personnel to be open about their lived experience and barriers helps address stigma and fear of sharing.

But be aware of placing undue pressure on these people to act as role models.

Check your promotions criteria and reasonable adjustments policies.

Consider introducing a reverse mentoring scheme, where junior disabled staff members mentor senior colleagues.

If you don’t have any disabled people in senior roles, appoint an identifiable and well-trained ‘disability champion’ in a senior position to:

encourage mentoring and role models
argue for allocation of resources
provide leadership on organisational disability matters

When giving out and assessing work, it is important that senior leaders consider if agreed reasonable adjustments are properly accommodated.

When planning office developments or refurbishments, consider accessibility early in the design stages and consult with any staff network and/or accessibility consultants.

When procuring technology, read our guide on beginning your organisation’s digital accessibility journey.

Reasonable adjustments

Encourage discussions about reasonable adjustments

Consider asking ‘what adjustments would help you realise your full potential?’ in all recruitment, onboarding and appraisal conversations.

Make sure staff involved in recruitment and appraisals know how to respond to the answer or how to follow up with the person being interviewed or appraised.

Make sure your staff are aware of the EHRC guidance on commonly accepted reasonable adjustments.

An individual might need a reasonable adjustment not in this list, but it’s a good place to start. It can prompt a conversation about how to best support an employee.

Explore best practice examples in our guide on reasonable adjustments in organisations.

Make sure reasonable adjustments are recorded and securely stored

Keep a record of individuals’ reasonable adjustments in case managers or personnel change.

Consider adopting a voluntary ‘passporting system’. This provides a continuous record of adjustments agreed between an individual and their line manager, so they don’t have to continue to explain.

Read our Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) impact story on supporting workplace adjustments at BCLP.

Embed reasonable adjustments in your policies and processes

Establish a point of contact to discuss reasonable adjustments. Make sure everyone is clear on who that is, including potential applicants and clients.

Look at your HR policies, processes and practices to check whether reasonable adjustments are allocated for.

Consider creating separate policies for:

sickness absence
occupational health
training
performance management
flexible working policies

Legally Disabled? found reasonable adjustments were rarely, but should be, applied to these processes. For example, performance should be assessed once agreed reasonable adjustments are in place.

Some people may need extra time off to attend medical appointments during working hours. Think about whether your policies address this.

You could record absences connected with a disability differently. For example, by adjusting the number of days of absence that trigger further action.

Regularly monitor requests for adjustments while making any business changes.

An increase in requests should be viewed as positive and evidence that people are more confident to self-identify as disabled.

Recruitment

Job descriptions and advertisements

When reviewing job descriptions, consider what is essential for the role versus what is desirable.

Rethink job descriptions to play to people’s strengths. Offer job sharing and think about how disabled people add value to your organisation.

This will open up the role to a wider pool, including disabled candidates.

When advertising jobs, consider the language you are using for any bias.

Be as specific as possible. For example, rather than saying ‘good communication skills’, specify what is actually required.

Consider where you advertise roles. How proactive are you in reaching out to and encouraging disabled applicants?

Read our impact story on disability inclusive recruitment at Irwin Mitchell.

Processes and criteria

Make sure your processes and criteria are disability friendly.

Check they’ve been prepared with disabled individuals in mind and consider making reasonable adjustments a part of these procedures.

Think about:

accessibility of online recruitment forms and processes
disability recruitment training
biases in processes

Recruitment agencies

The Legally Disabled? research found that disabled people were being filtered out by external recruiters before their CV was provided to the hiring employer.

Consider reviewing the recruitment agencies you use.

You should ask for evidence that agency staff have appropriate disability training and encourage a diverse pool of candidates, including disabled people.

Recruitment schemes

Introduce recruitment schemes that actively target talented disabled candidates. You could consider reserved spaces for disabled people as a group.

To increase the number of disabled people with a particular impairment or condition, consider using positive action, for example, internships and non-qualifying work experience

You could also offer part-time training – Project Rise aims to increase the numbers of organisations offering this.

If your premises are inaccessible, consider offering the option to work from home and remote supervision. This widens the talent pool by removing barriers for some disabled people.

Career progression

You may need tailored advice to understand how your current processes and practices might disadvantage disabled applicants and employees.

Unconscious bias may be preventing talented disabled people entering or reaching their potential in your organisation.

Consider the extent of the disability knowledge gap across your different business areas. It is not just an HR and diversity and inclusion issue.

Evaluate your use of technology to prevent unconscious bias and make sure disabled colleagues can use it.

Explore guidance on beginning your organisation’s digital accessibility journey.

Disabled people should be provided with appropriate reasonable adjustments to help them reach the established job criteria.

There may be times when a disabled candidate cannot meet the criteria or target because of their impairment or adjustments made. If so, the criteria may need adjusting.

Employers often worry about making adjustments because of costs or disruption. But most adjustments are simple, easy to implement and inexpensive.

Consider Access to Work for support with funding adjustments.

For example:

funding for adjustments to interview processes, and
alterations to work tools and environments for disabled staff working in the office and from home

Small organisations are unlikely to have to contribute to these costs.

It is good practice to ensure funding for reasonable adjustments is provided from the central and ring-fenced.

This is so money doesn’t have to be taken from department budgets.

It will help address the misconception that disabled people are expensive to employ.

Where adjustments are expensive or disruptive, you may still have a legal obligation to provide them.

There may be some useful tips in our guidance on becoming a solicitor as a disabled student.

Flexible working and wellbeing

Many disabled people welcomed more regular home working that came about during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some organisations have flexibility as the norm, unless there is a business need not to. Ask yourself and your clients whether in person contact is absolutely essential.

Consider hybrid ways of working to add balance.

The law on reasonable adjustments takes precedence over any flexible working policies.

Remember that someone’s reasonable adjustments at home may not be the same as they are in the office, so two workplace assessments may be needed.

Many disabled people find home working liberating, but do not assume that all disabled people want to work from home all the time.

There are many reasons they may prefer to work in the office, such as:

people’s barriers make remote working more difficult
feeling isolated at home
preferring to work from hard copy documents
household circumstances

Wellbeing and mental health

Regularly check-in on people’s wellbeing and mental health when they are working remotely.

Do not underestimate the power of a senior person or business owner sharing their own strategies, as this can empower others. For example, making sure to get fresh air every lunch time.

Employers are responsible for health and safety whether people are working from the office or home. Carry out regular risk assessments.

Engage with disabled people to make hybrid working inclusive.

Think about meetings and technology. Consider whether attendees in the office should virtually join meetings to be more inclusive of those working remotely.

Accessibility requirements

When arranging virtual meetings and events, ask people if they have accessibility requirements, just as you would for an in-person event. For example:

“We are committed to making our events as open and accessible as possible and ensuring attendees have the best experience. If you require any additional support to attend the event or any accommodations based on disability, or health condition, please let us know below or contact X for further support.”

Consider starting meetings at 10 minutes past the hour or finish 10 minutes before, to give people a break before their next meeting.

Use technology to mimic in-person interactions as much as possible and encourage external IT suppliers to do that.

Sometimes one piece of software can conflict with another. For example, chat box messaging can interfere with screen readers.

Some people will not be able to access some facilities or participate in discussions if the set up is not right. For example, sharing a document on screen during a group exercise may exclude those who are visually impaired.

Provide documents in advance of meetings to enable them to be adapted.

Consider the full range of communications tools available. Instant messaging can allow for faster, more open interaction and avoid adding to email inboxes.

Delegating work remotely will give you time and space to address any unconscious biases and encourage fair allocation of work and opportunities.

The EHRC has shared guidance on hybrid working for disabled employees.

Resources

Disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) within law and outside law can provide specialist advice:

Key organisations:

Although not always disability-led, many impairment/disability specific organisations have guidance for employers:

Statutory guidance can be found through:

Access to Work
Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)
ACAS
The Health and Safety Executive
devolved administrations

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has also issued guidance in this area.

To receive the latest news from the Law Society:

sign up to My Law Society
click ‘Disabled Solicitors Network’

You can also join the DSN’s LinkedIn group.

No matter how big or small your firm, in-house team or organisation, you can make a positive change to improve disability inclusion.

Based on research by Legally Disabled/Cardiff University, these suggestions have been developed by them, the Law Society and our Disabled Solicitors Network.

They are simply easy wins, questions to get discussions going or starting points for further work, rather than the only actions you should be taking. It is accepted that action to adopt some of them may take time.

This document supports you to start or improve the process of understanding barriers faced by disabled people and taking steps to embed disability equality into your policies, procedures and organisational culture.

The recommendations aim to remove the disadvantage that disabled people in the solicitors' profession face.

To understand what accessibility and inclusion mean in practice and how to monitor your progress, you should work closely with disabled staff to identify priorities, solutions and timescales.

There are separate recommendations for larger and smaller organisations.