In his article How to Make Workplaces More Welcoming for Employees with Disabilities, author Andrew Pulrang describes practical and informal strategies that employers can use to make workplaces more inviting and productive for current and future employees with disabilities. Among such strategies:

• Discourage ableist language.

• Learn to recognize and reinterpret behaviors and communication styles that may be related to disabilities.

• Don’t make disability jokes, even if a disabled employee says it’s fine.

• Make sure all company events, both formal and informal, are accessible.

• Provide accommodations quietly, but as often as possible, not secretly.

• Allow each disabled employee to control the terms of their own confidentiality and/or disclosure with other staff.

• Teach employees appropriate ways to express concern and offer help to disabled employees.

• Deal immediately with gossip and insulting comments related to employees’ disabilities.

• Don’t overlook the possibility that a disabled employee might join in the bullying of another disabled employee.

• Learn something about the cultural norms, customs, and pressures of people with different kinds of disabilities and overlapping backgrounds.

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