Accessible communication during Disability Pride Month: 6 questions every leader should ask
July is Disability Pride Month – a time when disabled people come together to share their experiences and start conversations. Here at Open Voice Lab, we are proud allies to people living with disabilities and want to help organisations make their engagement and communications accessible to more people.
Disability Pride Month
Disability Pride Month began in Boston in 1990 and has grown steadily since then into a global movement.
A fun fact. The Disability Pride Flag was designed by Ann Magill, and each colour band represents the barriers people with disabilities face.
Red = physical impairments and conditions.
Gold = neurodiversity
White = non-visible and undiagnosed impairments and conditions
Blue = Emotional and psychiatric conditions, including mental health, anxiety and depression
Green = Hearing impaired, vision impaired, audio processing and all other sensory impairments and conditions
Charcoal = The charcoal background is to represent people in the community who have experienced ableism, and to protest against this
Open Voice Lab work
For us, Disability Pride Month is a reminder of why accessible engagement and communication matters every single day.
Accessibility is often talked about as a technical requirement or a compliance task. But we think it’s a representation of your organisational culture. Do you show care and respect in how you engage and communicate with the people you serve? Is your approach one of everyday accessibility, not one-off fixes?
We know from experience that most accessibility barriers aren’t created intentionally. They come from lack of leadership support, lack of knowledge, lack of training, rushed deadlines, or simply a lack of understanding of how it can impact negatively on outcomes.
In our recent Word accessibility training, even experienced staff said that “hearing the screen reader is very useful to understand how it works.”
Disability data
There are approximately 16 million people in the UK living with disabilities and 3 in 4 disabled people say they have experienced negative attitudes (Scope).
10% of the UK population has dyslexia and the average reading age in the UK is between 9 and 11 years old. Just take a moment to think about what this means for how you need to approach your engagement and communication efforts.
More than 2 million people in the UK live with sight loss and a proportion of those will be using screen readers to access information.
In addition to this, we need to think about people experiencing cognitive load, stress or fatigue. People accessing information on poor devices with cracked screens, in noisy places.
Many people simply haven’t been exposed to how inaccessible content behaves. In our recent training with Thames Valley Police, participants told us that “hearing the screen reader was eye opening” and that “listening to the inaccessible document was a shocker.”
This is why we talk about accessibility as culture. It’s not something you add on at the end or sort out when you are prompted by someone. It is something you build in to how your organisation approach engagement and communication every day.
Accessible communications are better for everyone – those with disabilities and beyond. Even people with existing knowledge told us they had never considered reading age before, saying “this was not something I have previously considered.”
A real‑world example of accessible communication
We love to see strong examples of accessible engagement and communication. When the National GP Survey results landed recently, I looked at how Ipsos made this accessible.
This national survey was available in 12 languages, plus British Sign Language, Easy Read, Large Print and Braille – alongside a dedicated telephone line for each of the spoken languages. Alongside this was a text relay service and assurance that the online version of the survey would work with several different screen readers.
The approach was comprehensive and thoughtful – as you would expect from an organisation like Ipsos.
But for me, it also highlighted the importance of the next step. Understanding whether these provisions worked for people and then analysing the demographics of who did respond. Equality analysis is so important to understand who isn’t responding, how different formats are used, and where gaps may be. These are the kind of questions leaders should also be asking to build an accessible culture.
This month, ask yourself…
If I were leading an engagement or communications team, here’s what I’d be thinking about this month
Do we listen to our communities – and do we understand where the challenges are?
Insight comes first.
What do people struggle with?
Where do they get stuck?
Who is currently engaging with you? And what might that indicate for your accessibility?
What formats, language styles or channels create barriers?
How do you cascade your knowledge across your organisation so it doesn’t sit with just you and your team.
Insight is the foundation of accessible culture.
When was the last time we completed an Equality Impact Assessment on our work/strategy/project?
This is your diagnostic. You need to know where you stand before you can address gaps or strengthen your practice.
Has my team had access to any formal or informal training?
Once you know your gaps, capability-building is the next steps. You can’t expect people to know absolutely everything about accessibility, disabilities and how they can work to address barriers if they don’t have the knowledge and training.
Who are your internal advocates – and how do we support them?
Every organisation has people who quietly champion accessibility. You team must sit in this space because you have direct contact with the people you serve.
Find other internal allies and support them.
Give those allies information and insight that helps them to challenge, improve and educate other colleagues.
Culture shifts when advocates are visible and valued.
How do we top‑slice our budget for accessibility essentials?
Translations, alternative formats, easy read, British Sign Language, properly tagged documents - these aren’t “nice to haves”. They are essential.
If accessibility is always funded reactively, it will always be done reactively.
Are we building accessibility into our everyday processes - not just our intentions?
You organisation policies and template matter.
The real shift happens when accessibility is baked into your everyday processes – not something you sort out when someone flags an issue.
Open Voice Lab recommendation
At Open Voice Lab, our recommendation is simple: start small, stay consistent, and build accessibility into the culture of your organisation. You need everyday habits, shared insight, and leaders who understand that accessible communication is core to public trust.
If your team wants support strengthening its practice, we offer practical training, real‑world guidance and tools that help you embed accessibility into the way you communicate every day.
Disability Pride Month is your opportunity to reflect on how you are doing and to have some conversations with colleagues – with a reminder that accessible engagement and communication is a meaningful way you can show people that they matter.
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