Follow good practice engagement principles

These guidelines are based on five key principles for engaging with people with disability. These principles were developed in consultation with people with disability and disability representative organisations.

The principles are:

  • Build mutual respect.
  • Take responsibility.
  • Meet people where they are at.
  • Prioritise safety and trust.
  • Close the loop.

Build mutual respect

People with disability live interesting, fun, complicated, and complex lives. Every person’s experience of disability is different and unique. People with disability are experts on their individual experiences of disability but are not defined by their disability.

Many people with disability have had negative experiences with engagements that felt tokenistic. They got a sense that there were predetermined outcomes, and that the engagement was only run to tick a box.

However, everyone deserves to be treated with respect and to feel that their time and energy is valued.

It is important to engage with people with disability as equals by building reciprocal relationships based on mutual respect. To build mutual respect:

  • Include people with disability from the beginning of consultations on all topics, not only those specifically related to disability.
  • Follow the principle of ‘nothing about us without us’. Decisions about disability-related topics shouldn’t be made without people with lived experience of disability.
  • Value lived experience of disability by empowering people with disability.
  • Ensure all people with disability are heard and their input is acknowledged.

Take responsibility

Many people with disability have experienced engagements that made them feel unsafe or disrespected. Often, the voices of people with disability are ignored, dismissed, undervalued, or interrupted. Those voices can be the difference between an inclusive engagement and one that does not meet the needs of the people you’re engaging.

Practising inclusive engagement means perpetually learning and growing, as you will learn regularly new ways to prevent exclusion. Make sure to learn from your mistakes and experiences and share your knowledge with others. Taking the time to learn about disability from existing resources before engaging can prevent people with disability from experiencing discrimination.

To take responsibility for providing an inclusive experience:

  • Acknowledge the privileges or advantages you may benefit from, but others may not.
  • Recognise your biases and how they affect the way you interact with others.
  • Draw on existing information, research, and resources to make sure you are asking the right questions about the right topics during your engagements. Don’t depend on people with disability to educate you on topics that are already well-documented.
  • Take responsibility for your actions, decisions, and the limitations you have.

Meet people where they are at

What makes an engagement accessible depends on who is being engaged. Complying with accessibility standards is a minimum requirement; however, making sure everyone can participate shouldn’t stop there.

Design engagements that can adapt to people with disability, rather than asking people with disability to adapt to your engagement.

To design and deliver effective engagements:

  • Consider how you can maximise accessibility in your engagement from the start.
  • Make sure your engagement is flexible – be prepared to modify, adapt, or change your engagement if needed.
  • Ask people with disability what you can do to make your engagement accessible to them. Don’t assume you know a person’s needs.
  • Be prepared to provide the support people with disability ask for without judgement. People with disability shouldn’t need to over-explain their requirements or prove a disability to receive the support they need to participate in your engagement.

Prioritise safety and trust

Make sure you are keeping people with disability and their contributions safe. Ensure people with disability can trust you to act in their best interests.

To be trusted to prioritise participant safety:

  • Be transparent about all your decisions during every stage of the engagement.
  • Be clear about any limitations your engagement has and the options you’re able to provide people with disability.
  • Take the concerns and needs of people with disability seriously.
  • Take ownership of your mistakes and preventing them from happening again.
  • Show allyship: support people with disability if they experience discrimination while participating in your engagement.

Close the loop

People with disability are often not told about the outcome or impact of engagements they contributed to. This makes people with disability feel that their time was wasted or that what they shared wasn’t valued.

Informing people about the outcomes of your work demonstrates the value of the time and effort they invested when participating. Once your engagement or project is complete, follow-up with people with disability and tell them about the impact their contributions made.

To close the loop:

  • Inform people with disability of the next steps in your project during and directly after the engagement.
  • Follow-up with people with disability to share the outcomes of the engagement and the product of their contribution where possible.
  • Keep people with disability updated about the progress of your work if it’s a longer-term project.
  • Inform people with disability even if the engagement leads to no outcome or change, and explain why this may have happened.