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The hidden minority

1 in 7 people living in Ireland has a recognised disability. This is the largest minority group on the planet. In Ireland there are well over 650,000 people living with a disability, which represents the largest minority group in this country.

When shopping in your local supermarket, working in your socially distanced office, queuing for coffee or delivering training, you are almost certainly always within speaking distance with someone who has a disability.

The disability community is one of the only minority groups that anybody can join, at any point in their life. So why are disabled people twice as unlikely to be unemployed? Under represented in the media and still facing widespread discrimination.

Revealing the disability gap

We must also ask ourselves, how confident are we when it comes to our own awareness of disability?

Do we know the appropriate terms to use when presenting to a group which has participants with disabilities?

Are we confident of our knowledge of employment and equality legislation and its relevance to disability?

Do we know the barriers that people with disabilities face?

Do training programmes ensure access for all or are we inadvertently excluding some?

Addressing this disability knowledge gap is vital if we are to provide true social and economic inclusion.

Time to shift the balance and readjust

Irrespective of the level of good will on behalf of those employers, too often their positive efforts were frustrated by the widespread lack of disability awareness in Irish workplaces. This lack of awareness results in misconception, miscommunication, misinformation and inevitably further marginalisation.

The unfortunate reality is that in Ireland at present, people with disabilities still lack significant employment opportunities when compared to their non-disabled peers.

Many companies who focus on diversity primarily reference gender balance, LGBTQ+ and ethnic minorities and so on... Yet disability still seems to be further down what may be a hierarchical structure of diversity. 90% of companies worldwide claim to prioritise diversity, yet only 4% prioritise disability. This needs to be addressed. Let us work together to make the hidden, unhidden.

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