One of the things I love about my job is getting to work with passionate and talented colleagues across a range of projects, and I love that these often extend beyond my role as BD Director, focusing more on holistic, organisation-wide goals and strategies. One such is the Access Planning Group (APG) – which has seen me collaborate over the past year or more with a number of colleagues to bring our commitment to access and inclusion off the page – and to ensure that Steps – our practices, processes and the work we produce – is inclusive and accessible by design.
We work a lot in the EDI space, and are well aware that we have an important responsibility to ensure we are living our values when it comes to inclusion. We also have a commitment to the communities we represent and serve – and to our clients, to reflect lived experience and ensure that what we create truly holds up a mirror to reality, both how things are and where they could be.
The APG has been led by my colleague Beth – who brought with her a real passion for access inclusion and a wealth of experience from previous roles. Beth played a key part in Steps’ involvement with the Disability Confident Scheme, and has been instrumental in driving forward our commitment to equal opportunities and access, liaising with senior leadership teams and functional heads at Step to build accessibility into our business plans and wider organisational vision.
With Beth at the helm, our team has made good headway – working through a detailed action plan that covers all aspects of our business from casting to social media and from event planning to recruitment. Where are the opportunities for us to do things differently, to improve access to what we do and what we create – and how can we make these changes in a way that feels anticipatory, rather than responsive?
We, and the wider team, have had valuable external support and consultancy along the way. Renowned speaker and activist Barbara Lisicki led a session with the global team at Steps– talking us through the history of disability activism, the difference between the social and medical models of disability – and furthering our thinking on how we can challenge clients around the language they use, how to better influence and inform the decisions they make – and how we can take action within our areas of the business to ensure fairer representation and improved access for all.
We also worked with Diversity & Ability, an award-winning social enterprise led by and for disabled people – who undertook a detailed review of our written communications and our digital presence (website, social media, email, etc). Through this partnership we learnt where we could improve and make adaptations to ensure that are materials are accessible across all formats and channels – and we are making steady progress in implementing their recommendations. There have also been practical up-skilling sessions for colleagues within project teams – to introduce the new materials, and build knowledge and confidence in using them.
Gaining insight and guidance on best practice from those with lived experience of disability was, and will always be, hugely important to us – and we continue to look for opportunities to work together and share learning across our network. We are a global team, and the APG is representative of that too – which has been really valuable in terms of the cultural variances at play when considering disability inclusion and access – an area we continue to navigate.
Through these partnerships, and through the work we’re delivering with clients – we are committed to creating positive change across our organisation and beyond – in order to better connect with, and represent, disabled and neurodiverse people. The work of the APG will likely never be ‘done’ – as the EDI landscape continues to shift and there will always be things to learn and improvements to be made, but with shared commitment and purpose the APG and our colleagues across the globe have laid a great foundation on which to build!