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Research and Writing Prompt
As you begin to consider training content and facilitators:
What internal resources do you have access to (people, funding, venue, partners)?
Search for disability-led organizations and training facilitators in your community. Who could you bring in to support staff and volunteer training?
What is your budget for training?
Create a list of internal resources and external resources (organizations and individuals) you can reach out to.
Staff and Volunteer Training: Disability-led, affirming, and barrier-free event readiness
Planning and Resourcing for Training
When preparing to deliver training for your team, frame it as a commitment to equity and access rights rather than a reactive obligation. Events are most successful when all team members understand that access is everyone’s responsibility, and expertise lies with disabled people.
When preparing to deliver training for your team, frame it as a commitment to equity and access rights rather than a reactive obligation. Events are most successful when all team members understand that access is everyone’s responsibility, and expertise lies with disabled people.
Start by identifying what you already have access to:
Who in your team or networks has lived experience of disability, neurodivergence, or chronic health conditions and wants to be involved in co-creating access?
What relationships do you already have with disability-led organizations, independent consultants, or community leaders?
Do you have space, time, and budget set aside for meaningful training and reflection?
Tip: Prioritize partnerships with disabled-led organizations and trainers. They bring cultural and lived expertise that no manual or online module can replicate. Their leadership models best practice in a tangible, affirming way.
Staff/Volunteer Training: Facilitation and Content
Facilitation
Lived experience-led: All accessibility training should be designed and delivered by or with disabled people, nothing about us without us.
Practice what you preach: Ensure all training is fully accessible and inclusive – this means offering alternate formats, ensuring sensory safety, providing breaks, and modeling respectful language and behavior.
Real-world scenarios: Engage in problem-solving scenarios that help staff and volunteers understand how to respond to access needs. These should cover:
Effective, respectful communication
Responding to access equipment or technology needs
Preventing and supporting sensory distress
How to offer support without assumption or intrusion
Avoid simulations or asking people to "pretend" to be disabled. This reinforces stereotypes and causes harm. Instead, center real stories and practical strategies. Approach from a "How might we address different situations?" perspective.
Training Content:
Consider including the following topics in staff and volunteer training:
Ableism and unconscious bias
Language use: Disability and neurodivergent empowered/affirming language
Communication: including tone of voice (ensure people are treated as their chronological age); use of plain language and direct communication.
Access Services
Available supports/accommodations and how to help participants access them.
How to honor the expertise and lived experience of everyone (on the team and at the event)
Non-apparent disabilities and neurodivergence
Disability etiquette
How to offer support and assist/guide participants with disabilities
Sighted guide training
Service Animal etiquette
Access Statements (include time for staff and volunteers to fill out their own access statements)
Repetition: Provide more than one training opportunity
Ensure ongoing, organized, and open opportunities for check in, debrief, feedback, and questions.
Provide a refresher in the week prior to the event and offer real time support during the event.
Provide on-the-day refreshers or quick-reference access tip sheets.
Have trained staff and volunteers on site who can quickly support participants if any challenges arise.
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