Disability Pride Month 2024: Why it’s important to celebrate in the workplace

Disability Pride Month is celebrated in July every year and here Demi Rixon, diversity and inclusion advisor at Gateley, provides a short overview on the month and why it’s important to celebrate it.

What is it?

Disability Pride started as a day of celebration in 1990, held in Boston, following The Americans with Disabilities Act being passed in that same year. Since then, the celebration of disability has progressed to a month and is now celebrated across the world. Excitingly, the list of participating countries is continuing to grow.

The idea of Disability Pride can be traced back to similar movements like LGBTQ+ and Black Pride and is all about celebrating disabled people.

In 2013, Chicago’s Disability Pride parade defined their mission in three principles: “To change the way people think about and define ‘disability’, to break down and end the internalised shame among people with disabilities, and to promote the belief in society that disability is a natural and beautiful part of human diversity in which people living with disabilities can take pride.”

Why is it important to celebrate Disability Pride?

Disability Pride Month can mean various things to individuals within the disability community. The focus of the month is to encourage self-acceptance and embrace all disabilities. The month enables disabled people to celebrate and feel proud for being disabled.

Ableism is a major problem in society which creates a stigma against disabled people resulting in barriers to everyday life. Disability Pride Month raises awareness of the barriers disabled people face in society and helps to push forward the conversations on disability. This month is a brilliant time for allies to listen and learn about what they can do to support the community.

For me, I will use this month to celebrate and feel proud for being disabled. Let’s not forget that there are numerous strengths associated with disability and it gives us an ability to see the world through a unique and valuable lens.

How can we celebrate Disability Pride?

There are many ways to celebrate Disability Pride Month in the workplace. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

• Raise awareness of Disability Pride Month to drive conversations within your organisations about disability inclusion and the disabled community. You could send a short email to your team or colleagues highlighting a social media story, podcast or article such as this.
• Listen to a talk on disability inclusion, there are various free webinars/ podcasts out there for you to gain a greater understanding of the topic.
• Engage with your disability employee resource group or network to understand how you can support their activities in their disability inclusion agenda.

As with all awareness days, weeks and months like Disability Pride, it’s important that the support shown for diverse communities is continued throughout the year.