How to ensure your community engagement isn’t ableist

Community engagement can be municipal leaders’ most potent tool. It’s an opportunity to learn what your residents need and want, and then to deliver it with their partnership. However, community engagement only works if the wholecommunity is engaged—not just part of it. And unfortunately, community engagement is frequently exclusionary.

One group often excluded from community engagement is people with disabilities. This exclusion, called ableism, may be inadvertent since not all disabilities are easily recognizable. Despite the motives for exclusion, however, the results are still the same: a large segment of the community—some of whom are among the most vulnerable—don’t have their voices heard.

Below, find three strategies to help ensure your next community engagement campaign combats ableism and allows everyone an opportunity to weigh in.

Audit your community engagement process

The first step to eliminating ableism is taking a close look at your municipality’s community engagement process. Consider if there are elements of environmental ableism present, meaning the use of spaces that are inaccessible to disabled groups. This could be a town hall without a wheelchair ramp, or a brightly lit chamber that’s disruptive to individuals with sensory overload.

Next, consider if there are elements of language ableism, meaning the use of languages that exclude certain residents. For example, only offering English materials in a city with a large Spanish-speaking population can exclude many residents.

And lastly, consider if you’re segregating people with disabilities, rather than inviting them into the community engagement process as equals. Every impacted community, regardless of how or why they use a space or service, has the right to engage on the issues that affect them. Review your engagement strategies to make sure that you are not creating silos due to decisions around accessibility.

Work with those who are directly affected

Good intentions aren’t enough. If a municipality really wants to avoid ableism, they need to work alongside those who are directly impacted by it. As you audit and reform your community engagement process, ensure you’re working closely with local disability community advocates. Advocates can assist in identifying past and present instances of ableism, and plan ahead to ensure these issues don’t persist in the future. They can also help avoid a common mistake: using a one-size-fits-all approach to combat ableism. Every community is different and needs different reforms—an off-the-shelf approach is doomed to fail.

Organizations that can help connect you with partners include: the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD); the National Council on Disability; the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities; the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund; and Disabled in Action.

Think broadly

Ableism isn’t limited to community engagement—it’s often layered into the systems and structures all around us. For that reason, municipal leaders should think broadly about ableism during this process. If it’s not present in the community engagement process, might it still be in other parts of government or public spaces? Indeed, countering ableism is not limited to simply changing procedures, but actively combating it within the culture of your community.

The purpose of any community engagement process is to learn from the community and meet their needs. Municipal leaders can’t do that if they’re excluding a portion of the population. As your municipality takes on new projects in 2022 and beyond, ensure you’re listening to all community members, earning their trust and eliminating ableism in its many forms.

Celeste Frye, AICP is co-founder and CEO of Public Works Partners LLC, a WBE/DBE/SBE certified planning and consulting firm specializing in multi-stakeholder initiatives and building strong connections across the government, nonprofit and private sectors.