Can I be honest? As a disabled person, I am exhausted with the mental load of disability awareness days

I can’t help but feel frustrated when it comes to International Day of People with Disability. Because when it comes to the general public knowing about it, or promoting it, for the most part, it doesn’t happen. It’s the same with Disability Pride Month, and most other disability-related days. We’re ignored, while other diversity and inclusion months and days are widely promoted—like LGBTQIA+ pride month. And don’t get me wrong: LGBTQIA+ pride month is so important, and much-needed, and I’m so glad it happens, and has become more widely celebrated: especially when not that long ago, it was illegal to be queer (and still is in many places around the world). But I can’t help but feel like businesses, organisations and society in general can do a lot more when it comes to disability-related events. Especially when disability is so common, and yet, we’re still so widely discriminated against. Often, we can’t get opportunities—because we can’t even get in the door.

Now, some organisations are already doing great things. They seem to actively care about doing better, and create opportunities for disabled people to be paid and platformed for their work. It brings me so much joy to see this—especially organisations stepping up to do better, when they haven’t in the past. Creating events, creating panels, creating speaking events, writing opportunities, artistic opportunities, or any opportunities: every little bit counts. Especially when it’s so much harder for disabled people to get paid, stable work, and almost half of the disabled community lives near or below the poverty line. Not to mention the fact that it’s so much more expensive to be disabled!

But unfortunately, a lot of people and organisations just use days like Disability Day to be performative. They want to look good, and look like they’re diverse and care about the disabled community. When in reality, many organisations have strict, inflexible policies that mean disabled people for the most part can’t work there, unless they can contort themselves to fit the non-disabled boxes and expectations. I see this a lot. There might be say, a job advertisement, where they claim to value disabled applicants and provide adjustments as needed. But in reality, they won’t. They’ll see our access needs as “too hard” and pick someone else. Even things like adjusting something to be work-from-home, or having flexible, part-time hours. Once I applied for a program in the media specifically for disability, but I couldn’t do it because of . . . my disabilities. Sigh.

Tokenism and performative allyship are so exhausting. But it’s so common. With every marginalised group. They might like to put a picture of a smiling wheelchair user on their marketing, but they won’t make changes so said wheelchair user could actually . . . go there.

And often, the people that are platformed by places like this are the most privileged and palatable. They’re likely already ridiculously successful in their fields. They’re rich, pretty, thin, hetero, cisgender and white. We miss out on the diversity that actually exists: and those who need these opportunities most miss out.

I’d like to challenge organisations to look beyond the obvious. To truly seek diversity. To seek intersectional voices, and those we don’t usually hear from. People who actually need these opportunities, and have exceptionally important stories to tell.

And I’d REALLY like organisations to stop asking us to work for free—or worse: for “exposure”. Excuse me while I vomit. Thanks, but my landlord won’t accept exposure for rental payments. Asking us to work for free also shows that you don’t actually value our work, our time and our expertise: you just want to look good. And that’s gross.

 I know I’ve just written a whole article about how this day frustrates me—but it is also a day that gives me hope. Hope that . . . someone might see things like this, and change their mind. That one person might realise: hey, we need to be good allies and support the disabled community. And that every small bit of change helps.

But the reality is . . . we don’t need small change, we need big change. The disabled community faces so many challenges, and a lack of representation and paid work is just the tip of the iceberg.

About the author:

Zoe Simmons is an award-winning disabled journalist, copywriter, speaker, author and advocate. She writes to make the world a better place. You can find out more about Zoe on her website, or follow her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or Tik Tok.