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Choosing The Right Disability Awareness Trainer for Your Organization
Summary: Lauri Sue Robertson of Canada's Handidactis, Inc., provides some helpful advice about how to choose a disability awareness trainer who can meet your organization's specific needs.
Author: Nan Hawthorne
You Know You Need One Finding and Choosing One Related Links You Know You Need One You know it's important to include disability awareness in your personnel training. Disabled people are not only your customers. They are a largely untapped source of motivated, reliable and skilled employees during times when you struggle to fill positions within your organization (and during times when finding employees is not acute). As I established in "Disability Awareness: Essential to Any Diversity Program", without disability awareness the rainbow for your business only goes part of the way across the sky. How do you choose the trainer or consultant who best fits your organization? I talked to Toronto's Lauri Sue Robertson, Vice President Operations for Handidactis Inc., a bilingual Canadian disability awareness training and auditing firm. Robertson offers such services on a world-wide basis. An experienced disability awareness trainer herself, Robertson is articulate and earnest about her subject. I started by asking her why just booking a diversity trainer was not enough. "Just the other day I got a flyer for a conference about youth and diversity," Robertson replies. "They included everything: race, ethnicity, religion, language, you name it. But not disability. When I pointed it out to them they said, 'Oops!'" Robertson continues with this advice: "It is important that you make sure that any diversity training includes information about disability awareness. And information that doesn't just come out of a manual." Go to Top of Page Finding and Choosing One Robertson offered these recommendations about how to locate and select the best disability awareness trainer for your organization's needs. Don't wait until you have a disabled customer coming in or a new disabled (or newly disabled) employee about to start work. You don't want to rush it -- and you may be tempted to do just that. In a rush, you'll likely prepare your staff for serving or working with that one disability. Robertson says, "You don't want to learn how to work with visually impaired people one year and then people with intellectual disabilities the next." It's more effective and cost efficient to get a well-rounded training all at once. Decide what you need to accomplish with the training. Not every work setting is the same. As an example, Robertson cites two very different types of training she did for airport employees. Her first was for those who deal with passengers between the door and gate and back to baggage. These workers help people find destinations, answer questions and help in any way they can. "Someone with a psychiatric disability may be overwhelmed by the noise and crowds," says Robertson. "Someone in this job may need to be aware of the stress signs and how to help the person relax and feel safe again." Those in this position of helping visitors will need to know how to guide a blind person, talk to a deaf person, help a person who uses a wheelchair and much more -- if their help is going to be genuine. The other group Robertson trained at the airport consisted of parking garage attendants. Their contact with disabled airport users would be much more limited than those working in the terminal. The contact would consist almost entirely of brief communications and the exchange of money and tickets and, at most, answering questions. The awareness of how to effectively interact with disabled visitors would be very narrow and focused. Depending on your work site and business, you will likely have some specific needs, too. Assess how your staff will likely interact with disabled customers and co-workers. When you shop around for a trainer or consultant, be thorough in conveying your unique needs to all you interview. Use existing networks to find a disability awareness trainer. Robertson suggests contacting organizations which serve people with disabilities, such as Easter Seals or Canadian National Institute for the Blind. It's likely they will be aware of trainers in your area. You can also contact the human resources departments of other companies to learn if they have had training. You may kill three birds with one stone that way: You will get recommendations and feedback on the training if they have done it, or you may be able to pool resources and have a joint workshop if they have not. Choose a trainer who is himself disabled or has a training team that includes at least one disabled person. Robertson says this lends more credibility and is more memorable for your employees. Robertson uses a wheelchair because severe arthritis makes it difficult for her to walk, and she often trains alongside a blind trainer as well as others with other disabilities. She observes, "Talking to me as a disabled person and learning about how I cope lets people get some stereotypes out of their minds. For instance, I can explain why they might see me standing at a drinking fountain one minute and moving along, the next minute, in my wheelchair." Don't hire, however, just any trainer, including a disabled person. Interview candidates and check references from other clients of the training firm. Just because someone is disabled does not mean he knows anything about disability issues or awareness training. Or, as Robertson emphasizes, he may be very well acquainted with his own disability but not other disabilities. Look for the same personal qualities you expect in the other trainers you choose. Some very important qualities for any disability awareness trainer, Robertson recommends, are "warmth, candor and a sense of humor." The warmth and humor put training participants at ease. Often individuals are afraid that disabled people will be brittle and easy to offend, so they may be fearful of asking questions. Warmth and humor both communicate that no question need be withheld and remain unanswered. One low-vision trainer I observed gained the attention of her audience when jokingly said that, since she could not see dust, she did not have to dust. Having no-taboo subjects further allows participants to get involved in the discussion. "For example, a common question I get is whether disabled people enjoy sex," Robertson says. "Or how a man who uses a wheelchair uses a public toilet. If people know they can ask, then you can answer their questions in a forthcoming, accurate, and direct way." Other factors in disability awareness training need to be considered. It may be difficult to manage interaction in an auditorium full of people. And there may be a diverse array of cultural attitudes towards disability that will need to be addressed. Talk about all of these issues with the trainers and consultants you interview. The trainer or consultant you hire should be able to make a lasting impression on your staff, be well informed, be warm and be open. As in everything else, you want to get the most for your money. And the product you are buying here is transformation of your workplace into a truly adaptive, inclusive environment. When you invest in top-notch disability awareness training, you model for all of your internal and external associates the real diversity you want your organization to radiate. Go to Top of Page
Related Links: Note: Accessing a link will bring up a new browser window. Close this new window to get back to this article Cutting Edge Disability Resources, jik.com. eSight's Site Accessibility Review: By: Robert Brown Usefulness: Five stars Accessibility: Five stars Navigation: Five stars June Isaacson Kailes, disability policy consultant, has compiled a detailed list of resources (described as "cutting edge") for purchase about the many aspects of disability and developed a commentary to go with each entry. The site is accessible. By combining a commentary with well-designed hyperlinks for each topic, the web master has maximized the accessibility of this online service. In a similar vein, keyboard navigation of the site is greatly enhanced because a substantive portion of the information being offered is concentrated in one section that is easily accessed with alt-tagged hyperlinks. Disability Trainers Factsheet, Employers' Forum on Disability, employers-forum.co.uk. eSight's Site Accessibility Review: By: Robert Brown Usefulness: Five stars Accessibility: Five stars Navigation: Five stars Here's a comprehensive list of available disability awareness trainers in Great Britain. The list features the name of each organization, its address and its telephone number. The site is accessible. Each listing is set off in discrete paragraphs, making it easy to focus in on an organization of choice. Likewise, navigating through the listing of trainers is simple. Handidactis, Inc., toronto.com. eSight's Site Accessibility Review: By: Robert Brown Usefulness: Four stars Accessibility: Four stars Navigation: Four stars Handidactis teaches people who aren't disabled how to work with people who are. This non-profit organization is an off-shoot of the Association for Sports for the Handicapped of Montreal. Since 1986, more than 15,000 people across Canada have benefited from Handidactis's training services. A wide variety of services, offered in English and French, are offered by experienced trainers who live with physical, hearing, vision, speech, learning, intellectual or psychiatric disabilities. This organization also provides management consultation on disability issues as well as audits for determining an establishment's accessibility. This site is valuable to the Canadian community, of course, but it can also serve as an excellent model of what can be accomplished for similar organizations in the United States. This site is accessible. Its services are clearly described. Keyboard navigation of the site is no problem. Its links are simple to navigate without distracting graphical images. Training Resources, Commonwealth Disability Strategy, facs.gov.au. eSight's Site Accessibility Review: By: Robert Brown Usefulness: Four stars Accessibility: Four stars Navigation: Four stars Featuring 14 effective strategies for disabled individuals, this site also offers an Australian perspective on disability awareness training. The site is accessible. Curiously links are listed twice, once as numbered links and the second listing with descriptions of each link. Keyboard navigation is only slightly complicated by this double listing of the site's essential links. Once the user gets familiar with the link structure, navigation is not difficult.
Related Content Disability Awareness: Essential to Any Diversity Program
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Choosing The Right Disability Awareness Trainer for Your Organization

Author: Nan Hawthorne