Ensuring accessibility means different things for different organizations or individuals, but when it occurs, it can enable organizations to mobilize and expand their membership. A key to ensuring accessibility includes understanding both what accessibility means for various groups as well as how to provide access in different contexts.

For some movement activists, accessibility might refer to location of meetings. In contexts where groups are meeting across conflict lines, this might actually mean traveling further in order to ensure that meetings take place in settings that feel safe. For example,  civil society practitioner Margaret Ward noted that, in the Northern Ireland context, Catholic and Protestant women she worked with wanted to pair up with women’s groups in locations far from their own communities because meeting closer to their homes was perceived as threatening and unsafe. According to Ward:

What [women] never wanted was to pair up with a women's group near to them that they could be in easy contact with because that was too threatening. They always wanted to pair up with somebody far away that they would then have to be bussed over…So, it's not really an organic development that they then might start making friendships and going to each other's areas because it is still just…it still is a little bit, you know. It's too difficult. It can be too dangerous. 

For other activists, accessibility can mean providing services that enable activists to attend meetings – for instance, childcare services. For instance, Bronagh Hinds of the Northern Ireland civil society organization DemocraShe explained that her organization developed a crèche program to mobilize for meetings, “essentially it was to get women more prominent in the trade union movement… we were always saying and because of all the events were all very, very male and we were saying you need to provide childcare.” For grassroots organizers, other kinds of services may also be needed: one Black Lives Matter group notes the importance of coordinating rides for activists to events. 

Accessibility can also come in the form of language use.  For example, Sadaka Reut aims to normalize use of Arabic along with Hebrew (in contrast with Israeli society more broadly, where Hebrew is the primary means of communication and few Jewish citizens speak Arabic). Creating spaces where Arabic - or other non-dominant languages - is normalized, is important for activists to feel that their identities and languages are legitimate within social change initiatives. 

Finally, particularly for grassroots activists looking to mobilize large groups, it is important to ensure that events as well as digital platforms are accessible to individuals with disabilities. One Black Lives Matter-affiliated group includes American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters at all of their events, so that “people who are differently abled and can’t hear, or can’t speak, they can definitely still plug into things that are related to social justice.” Activists in this group also note the importance of including image descriptions for those who might be able to read writing on social media/digital platforms but not see images. While this may seem like a relatively small step to take, it is important for ensuring that groups are inclusive and that their actions reflect an intersectional approach.

Challenges you may encounter using this tool

• Sometimes enabling one group to participate can make it harder for other groups to participate or distract from the broader aims of the work. Although consecutive language interpretation at meetings can make the discussion accessible to all, the time spent on interpretation may detract from the substance of the conversation. 

• It is hard to cater to all individuals’ needs, which will inevitably result in a prioritization of needs and possibly still leaving some needs unaddressed.

• Even when use of non-dominant languages is normalized in activist spaces, members of dominant language groups are often not fluent in these languages if they speak them at all. This can make it difficult for discussions to be equally accessible to all and often results in prioritization of the dominant language.