Business Resources and Services from Disability Awareness Author / Speaker Gary Karp
Once a person with a disability is on the job, getting to know their colleagues and showing what they have to offer, everyone gets that it's the person who counts, not the disability. Etiquette training makes this clear.

Disability Etiquette
in the Workplace

...So People Can Relax and Get the Job Done

An encounter with a person with a disability often produces this reaction...

What do I say? What do I do?

If someone is uncomfortable, not knowing how to behave, then how can those two people find their shared interests, much less work together effectively?

Workplace Disability Etiquette is the key, the starting point for any organization which wants to tap into the immense, emerging potential of workers with disabilities.

It starts with three simple principles:

  • They are people first; they are not their disabilities.A Little More
  • They treasure their independence.A Little More
  • They are experts in how they live with their disabilities.A Little More

    • Disability Etiquette does not involve a long, complicated list of stuff to learn. It's really as simple as just treating people as people who deserve to make their own choices and know how they do what they do. Like everyone else.

    Click on these links below or use the menus above to see how these principles apply in the case of specific disability types.

    General Etiquette | Wheelchair Users | Vision Loss | Hearing Loss | Cognitive ImpairmentSpeech Impairment | Invisible Disabilities | Disability & Language

    People with disabilities use skills, strategies, and resources that seem mysterious to the rest of us. It's not as hard as it looks, assuming they got what they need to be able to live to their real potential.
    When you lose the ability to do something for yourself, the things you CAN do are that much more precious. Everyone has the right to choose what they can do and how they do it.
    People with disabilities do not define themselves by their disabilities. They have the same concerns and desires as you do – being valued in family, community and work, enjoying personal interests, having fun, having friends and lovers.