What You Need to Know

Individuals who are both disabled and members of the LGBTQIA+ community face discrimination against both parts of their identity. The reality of living with an intersected identity means facing multiple barriers and adversity in everyday life.

The voices and experiences of LGBTQI+ disabled people are often overlooked and underrepresented. This community needs allies like yourself to take action and step up to support the LGBTQI+ disabled community. Take the first step in your allyship journey by reading, practicing, and sharing the points below.

1. Fight for Accessibility

Society has been designed in such a way that it only meets the needs of non-disabled people - this is systemic oppression. As a result of systemic oppression, disabled people are often excluded from events, activities, and places because they are inaccessible to the disabled community. Over a third of disabled people experience difficulties when trying to access public, commercial, and leisure goods and services; as well as other spaces where people gather. This is particularly true of LGBTQIA+ spaces, because they often revolve around protests, marches, and club nights. For disabled people to feel welcome and valued in the LGBTQIA+ community, these spaces need to become more accessible, and therefore more inclusive.

As a brand, make sure that all events you sponsor have accessibility as top of the agenda. When it comes to digital advocacy, make sure that the campaigns you sponsor include disabled LGBTQIA+ community members. If you want ideas about how to make an event more inclusive and accessible, click here.

2. Language Matters

Language is a crucial tool for marginalized communities – it helps us identify ourselves in ways that feel empowering. This is particularly true for LGBTQIA+ and disabled communities. Every LGBTQIA+ disabled person will have a unique relationship to language, and a preference for what terminology they prefer. Personal preference should always take priority when you’re referring to and conversing with marginalized individuals. .

While personal preference is important to prioritize, it’s also important to acknowledge the organizing efforts of disabled communities who have said they prefer either person first or identity first language. For more nuance surrounding this topic, click here.

3. Honor Emotional Labor

A key part of allyship is learning and expanding your knowledge – but when you’re doing that, its important to be mindful of who you’re asking and what you’re asking. You should never ask a person about their sexuality or disability unless they speak to you about it first. Always be led by the person and never ask intrusive questions.

Even when someone is happy to share their experiences, it’s crucial to remember that a marginalized person is not responsible for teaching you about their identity. This only differs when they have willingly been assigned a professional role to do so. So, instead of relying on disabled LGBTQIA+ friends or family to educate you, hire disabled LGBTQIA+ consultants or educators, and compensate them for their time and emotional labor.

4. Challenge Ableism

Ableism is the systemic exclusion and oppression of disabled people. Because ableism exists across all society, it’s also widespread within the LGBTQIA+ community. One in four LGBTQIA+ disabled people whose activities are limited have experienced discrimination or poor treatment from others in their local LGBTQIA+ community – because of their disability.

It’s important to include disabled people in your LGBTQIA+ pride initiatives to show that your brand believes that disabled people belong alongside their fellow community members in the LGBTQIA+ spaces. By showing the different lived experiences of disabled LGBTQIA+ people in comparison to their non disabled LGBTQIA+ community, it opens up pathways for more empathy and inclusion within the community.

5. Permission First

If a person comes out to you or discloses their disability, it’s important to not share this with anyone unless they have said you can… especially when it comes to campaigns. While including disabled people in your campaigns for PRIDE is important, it’s equally important to make sure you have permission to speak openly about their sexuality or gender identities before doing so. Because even if a person has spoken openly to you about it, they may not be out to everyone. Treat any information they’ve shared about their sexuality or disability as confidential.

6. Support LGBTQIA+ Organizations that Prioritize Disabled people

When you’re looking for LGBTQIA+ organizations to partner with over pride, make sure that they prioritize the disabled members of their community. If they don’t, ask them why and encourage them to do so.

Here are some organizations that DO prioritize disabled people:

• PFLAG

• ILGA WORLD

• The Center

• SAGE

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Your next steps

Ready to make your pride campaigns more inclusive? Great. Here are some downloadable plans that you can implement into your Asana, Monday, Click Up, Trello or Notion boards. These should take less than 10 minutes a week between now and Pride and will enhance your company’s brand expression.

Want to see what equitable inclusion looks like in action?

Check out what this brand did.