RETHINKING DIVERSITY: Are your communications inclusive?
And should they be? It’s a question that rattles even the most modern of businesses - but without inclusion, diversity simply doesn’t exist.
Image Description: A diverse group of four adults at work chatting and smiling over coffee.
So what is inclusive communication, and how do we achieve it?
In my first graduate role out of uni, at The University of Sydney’s centre of research, teaching and patient care in ophthalmology and eye diseases, I discovered almost instantly that to succeed in the field would require me to adjust both my attitude as well as my language.
And rightly so.
It was the first experience I had with the notion of ‘communications diversity’, which I hadn’t come across in my degree or training. Yet its importance became so clear; how can I call myself a communications professional if I’m not communicating with a variety of people?
Of course, what my training did teach was best PR practices; knowing your audience, community relations and empathy, to drop a few. But what do any of these mean in practical terms, if I’m not actually aware that I’m using discriminative language - or that I’m excluding people, because they can’t access what I say?
At its core, communication is about conveying and sharing information for the purpose of knowledge. It involves people - and if people are diverse, then our communications should be too.
But proper inclusion delves well beyond words. It’s in the form of delivery - written, visual (images), spoken/oral or non-verbal. It’s in what we say, such as adopting politically correct terms or avoiding often offensive terms like ‘suffering’ from or ‘confined to’. And it’s in how we say it, such as adjusting our content so that it can be picked up by assistive techology and adaptive communications devices.
There’s a great deal to learn, and by no means will I ever consider myself an expert; I only have career experience, and not personal after all - and that’s the real expertise.
But what I can say is that inclusion is multi-faceted and needs to be approached on many different levels. And this is precisely why organisations view it as a tick-box ‘issue’ to be solved, rather than the opportunity for positive learning and progress that it really is.
Since my early graduate role and later years working with a disability provider, the most surprising thing I ever learnt is how often discrimination occurs subconsciously.
Image description: An abstract picture of an office desk with a desktop computer, coffee cup, glasses and stationery.
It’s through the negative implications that phrases like being blind to or wheelchair-bound can have for a person.
Or in the offensive us and them discourse that segregates minority groups, and in the outdated disability-first language that has typified the sector.
It can be in our deep-rooted ableist perceptions, or in the complete myth that someone living with a physical or intellectual disability somehow has a lesser experience of life.
And discrimination can most certainly be the product of not accommodating content for diverse audiences, such as those living with a visual or hearing impairment who may require high contrast, captioned images, subtitles or cues for screen readers.
But perhaps the most debilitating attribute of all is the fear of confronting those instances where we haven’t been inclusive. Sure, achieving inclusion can seem daunting and of course it’s a delicate balance. But the bottom line is that we need to be willing to change - and not as experts or only in the workplace, but as individuals in everyday interactions too.
If you’re unsure of which pronoun to use, or if your website is translatable, or if your PDF can be picked up by a screen reader, don’t guess - look it up. Or better yet, ask someone on the other side of your content who does know.
Because if we’re going to talk about inclusion, then we ought to be and act inclusive too.
Take it from those who know - if you want to know more about inclusive practice and communications, here are some helpful resources: