Building Vibrant Communities by Eliminating Systemic Ableism in Administrative Practices

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Overview: Four photographs in a two by two grid sit under the title "Root Out Systemic Ableism". Each photograph has a label beneath it: "Accessible Spaces", "Accessible Communication", "Challenge Bias", and "Inclusive Leadership".

Accessible Spaces (top left): A smiling white woman in a wheelchair passes through an open doorway beside a wheelchair access symbol sign. A smiling Black man walks beside her. Chairs fill the meeting room behind them.

Accessible Communication (top right): A laptop screen shows a video call. A smiling woman speaks in the larger frame, and a woman using sign language appears in a smaller frame beside her. A caption across the bottom reads "Everyone has a voice in our community." The video controls include buttons marked "CC" and "AD" and the words "Audio description". Beside the laptop stands a sign that reads "Community Meeting" with the lines "Welcome", "Discussion", and "Next steps". A spiral notebook next to it holds rows of raised Braille dots.

Challenge Bias (bottom left): A man in glasses and a woman sit side by side at a table with a laptop. The woman holds a pen over a page titled "Policies" on which several lines are marked in red.

Inclusive Leadership (bottom right): A Black woman in a wheelchair sits at a table, speaking and gesturing with her hands. A man in glasses holding a pen and a woman listen to her. Laptops and notebooks lie on the table.

Systemic ableism is discrimination against People with Disabilities that is built into community structures, policies, and practices. It lives in institutions, cultures, and norms, so it keeps producing barriers even when no one intends harm. Disability is part of every community. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.3 billion people, or 1 in 6 people worldwide, experience significant disability, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 1 in 4 U.S. adults have some type of disability.

Community administrators and members share the responsibility to remove these barriers, so that People with Disabilities can take part fully in their own communities. This article names four places where barriers hide, then sets out general and specific steps for removing them.

Four Places Where Barriers Hide

Physical Accessibility Barriers

Missing ramps, inaccessible parking, and inadequate restrooms at community event locations keep people from moving through a space on their own. These barriers affect wheelchair users, people who use walkers or canes, and others with mobility disabilities. They prevent independent arrival at gatherings and events.

Communication and Information Accessibility

Information often arrives only in formats that many members cannot use. Blind members and members with low vision may receive no braille, large print, or accessible digital version. Deaf and hard of hearing members may find no sign language interpretation or captioning. Blind members may miss what appears on screen when a video has no Audio Description, which is spoken narration of important visual information. Without these alternatives, members are cut off from essential community communications and from one another.

Attitudinal and Cultural Barriers

Negative stereotypes, biases, and misconceptions about People with Disabilities shape interactions, decisions, and opportunities for social engagement. Treating accessibility as a favor granted at the convenience of others is one common form, and the article on the difference between charity and service explains why it is a grave injustice. These attitudes keep in place practices that marginalize People with Disabilities and keep them out of community life.

Underrepresentation in Leadership and Decision Making

People with Disabilities are often underrepresented in community administrative roles. Without their perspectives, policies are written and priorities are set by people who rarely meet the barriers firsthand, and practices that exclude go unexamined. Without inclusive leadership, efforts to promote accessibility are not prioritized or carried out. Keely Cat-Wells names one cause:

“Attitudinal bias remains one of the largest barriers, shaping who gets hired, promoted, or even seen as ‘leadership material.’” -Keely Cat-Wells, Rethinking Work On International Day Of Persons With Disabilities

Involvement is also a legal expectation for governments. Article 4(3) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires the governments that are party to it to consult closely with and actively involve persons with disabilities, through their representative organizations, in developing the laws and policies that carry out the Convention. Communities can hold themselves to the same standard.

Root Out Systemic Ableism

The Universal House of Justice states the standard:

“There is no justification for continuing to perpetuate structures, rules, and systems that manifestly fail to serve the interests of all peoples.” -The Universal House of Justice, 1 March 2017 – To the Bahá’ís of the World

To root out systemic ableism, start with these general actions, then work through the specific steps.

Take Immediate Action: General Action Items

Enhance Accessibility

• Carry out initiatives across physical environments, digital platforms, and communication methods, so that every community member with a disability can take part. Name who each measure serves: ramps serve wheelchair users, captions serve Deaf and hard of hearing members, and text descriptions of images serve Blind members.

Promote Awareness and Education

• Provide training on ableism and how to oppose it for community administrators and members.
• Challenge stereotypes and emphasize the importance of disability inclusion, to cultivate a culture of respect and equity.

Ensure Inclusive Participation

• Design community activities and events so that People with Disabilities can participate fully and independently, and remove the barriers that prevent it.

Empower Engagement

• Involve People with Disabilities in decision making, on committees, and in leadership roles, so that their perspectives shape community administrative policies and practices.

The Bahá’í International Community describes what meaningful participation covers:

“[Governance] will need to provide for the meaningful participation of citizens in the conceptualization, design, implementation and evaluation of programs and policies that affect them.” -Bahá’í International Community, Valuing Spirituality in Development, 18 February 1998

Advocate for Accessibility

• Press for policies that uphold disability rights, accessibility, and equal opportunity within community settings. Written policies and clearly assigned responsibility keep access in place after a caring individual moves on.
• Collaborate with disability advocacy groups and with community members with disabilities to drive systemic change.

Take Detailed Steps: Specific Action Items

Sierra Weiss gives the test for every step below:

“[I]nclusion is possible when shared, systematized and woven into the fabric of an entire movement, not maintained by a sole person or department.” -Sierra Weiss, Want to take inclusion from principle to practice? The JCC movement shows what’s possible

Promote Accessibility Rights and Advocate for International Standards in Online Publications

• Raise awareness that accessibility is a fundamental human right.
• Advocate for the adoption of international accessibility standards in online publications.

Learn and Use the International Accessibility Standards

• Apply the standards across every communication channel, including emails, meetings, and events. For web content, the main standard is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 from the World Wide Web Consortium.
• Use free accessibility training resources, so that the people who write, design, and post community materials learn the standards before they publish.

Plan and Host Accessible Events

• Prioritize accessibility in event planning, to include People with Disabilities and people of diverse racial backgrounds.
• Remove barriers to participation in community events. The planning guide covers physical access, communication access, and asking participants about access early, and it recommends naming one accessibility coordinator who oversees access from planning through the event.

Change Our Mindset from the Medical Model to the Social Model of Disability

• Shift the focus from fixing individual people to removing the barriers in systems. A Blind member who cannot complete a form is facing a barrier in the form, and an accessible online version that follows WCAG removes it.
• Promote inclusivity and accessibility through the Social Model approach.

Use ALT Text and Descriptive Images

• Write meaningful ALT text, the text description that screen readers speak for an image, so that Blind members and members with low vision receive what the image shows.
• Keep image descriptions clear and concise.

Write Inclusive Accessible Email Messages

• Create inclusive email communications that avoid a sense of otherness.
• Foster belonging through accessible email practices.

Learn about and Use Audio Description in Video for Blind and Low Vision Accessibility

• Add Audio Description to videos, so that Blind members and members with low vision receive the visual information that the soundtrack does not carry.
• Make presentations and video content fully accessible through Audio Description.

Fix the Flaws of Print Design in Online PDFs

• Address the barriers in digital content, particularly PDFs.
• Give readers control over how they read, and place accessibility ahead of the designer's control of presentation.

Make Materials Accessible to Your Blind Friends

• Provide accessible formats for Blind participants in meetings and events: braille, audio, large print, and electronic.
• Ask each participant which format they prefer, so that everyone takes part in the format that works for them.

What Changes When Barriers Are Removed

Removing a barrier for People with Disabilities often serves other members as well. The Curb Cut Effect describes how a ramp built for wheelchair users also serves parents with strollers and travelers with luggage, and how captions made for Deaf and hard of hearing viewers also serve people in noisy rooms. That wider benefit is real, and it does not replace the specific access that each measure provides to the People with Disabilities it was built for.

Communities that remove these barriers practice Unity in Diversity in their administration. The aim stays the same: remove the barriers that prevent us from building vibrant, diverse, inclusive, accessible communities.

Questions for Community Builders

Gather with others in your community and take these questions one at a time.

1. Who holds the offices, committee seats, and budget decisions in our community, and which of them are People with Disabilities? If none do, what has kept People with Disabilities out of those roles, and what is one step we will take this year to change that?
2. Of the four kinds of barriers named here (physical, communication and information, attitudinal and cultural, and leadership), which have we examined together with People with Disabilities in our own community, and what did they show us that we had not seen?
3. Which of our written policies and procedures name who is responsible for accessibility, and what would happen to access in our programs if that person moved away tomorrow?
4. For our last gathering, which accessibility decisions were made before the invitations went out, and which were added only after someone asked? What does the difference show about how we plan?
5. What training on ableism have our administrators and members received, who led it, and what practice changed afterward? How do we know?
6. Of the nine specific steps in this article, which have we completed, which have we not started, who is responsible for each, and how will we report progress to the whole community, including the members who face the barriers?