How Small Businesses Can Increase Disability Confidence: Practical Strategies and Benefits

Small businesses can become leaders in accessibility, diversity, and inclusion. Today’s consumers, especially Millennial and Gen-Z shoppers, want to shop at businesses that share their values of inclusivity. Employers stand to increase their talent pool and improve staff retention by pivoting to more accessible hiring practices.

For small business owners who feel uncertain about disability inclusion and accessibility, including where to start, there’s a helpful term to remember – disability confidence.

Download the guide to Disability Confidence

Disability confidence provides a framework for creating accessible workplaces that promote inclusion.

In this article, we’ll explore disability confidence, how you can improve it with practical strategies, and the benefits of becoming an inclusive, disability-confident organization.

What is Disability Confidence?

Disability confidence refers to creating a culture of inclusion where employees and customers with disabilities are supported.

For small business owners, improving disability confidence is essential for success and enhancing social inclusion for disabled people.

Becoming a disability-confident employer means overcoming the fear of saying or doing the “wrong” thing. It means removing assumptions and making space for respectful and meaningful inclusion of people with disabilities.

Disability confidence is not about having the “right” answer to every accessibility issue. Instead, it’s about having enough knowledge, understanding, and skills to navigate accessibility in the workplace and create an inclusive environment. It’s about proactively putting an accessibility lens on all you do while being open-minded to including people with disabilities in your workplace.

Categories of Disability Confidence

According to A Framework for Developing Employer’s Disability Confidence from the University of Toronto, there are four stages in the development of disability confidence:

1. Disability Discomfort

In this initial stage, people experience discomfort around the topic of disability. This discomfort generally stems from stigma, discrimination, and a lack of experience interacting with disabled people. In this stage, small business employers struggle to see past misconceptions and uncertainties about accommodating employees with disabilities and meeting disabled customers’ needs.

Resources for this stage:

2. Reaching Beyond the Comfort Zone

In this stage, business owners tentatively begin to make efforts to reach beyond their old comfort zone. They learn about the compelling business case for accessibility, undergo disability awareness training, and open the door to a workplace culture that values sharing lived experiences.

Resources for this stage:

3. Broadened Perspectives

As business owners continue to educate themselves and reflect on their accessibility commitments, they begin to challenge stigma and stereotypes, minimize bias, and focus on the abilities and talents of individuals with disabilities.

Resources for this stage:

4. Disability Confidence

Disability confidence is characterized by the establishment of a supportive and inclusive culture. Small business owners are modelling social change, embracing accessibility as a core value, and leading by example. Even though the stages of disability confidence seem sequential, developing disability confidence is a continuous process.

Resources for this stage:

How to Improve Disability Confidence

Download the Workplace Accessibility for Small Business Owners Checklist

Small business owners can do an accessibility check-in to understand where to start to improve their disability confidence. Through this check-in, businesses can identify, remove, and prevent barriers. Barriers are anything in an environment that hinders full participation, limits functioning, or creates obstacles for people. By addressing barriers, small businesses can create an inclusive environment that accommodates all abilities.

Benefits of Becoming a Disability-Confident Organization

When leadership buys into accessibility, there’s a trickle-down effect on the organization, a cascade of positive changes.

Diverse and inclusive workplaces are:

  • Two times more likely to meet or exceed financial targets.
  • Six times more likely to be innovative.
  • And six times more likely to effectively anticipate change.

Small Business BC has spoken at length about the advantages of workplace accessibility, including the financial benefits. Here are just a few ways that your small business can benefit from increased disability confidence:

  • People with disabilities are productive, have good work ethics, and are innovative problem solvers.
  • Including disabled people in your workforce can improve profitability, and competitive advantage, and create an inclusive work culture.
  • Strong disability confidence helps you comply with accessibility laws and prepares your business for the future.

Download the guide to Disability Confidence

Continue your Accessibility Journey with SBBC

Small Business BC is a non-profit resource centre for BC-based small businesses. Our Workplace Accessibility Resources page is full of tips, tools, and more to support your next stage.

This guide was developed in consultation with Melissa Lyon of Accessibility & Inclusion Matter Consulting.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction.

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