I’m just curious about this. As someone with a chronic illness, I pretty much never hear anyone talk about things related to the sorts of difficulties and discrimination I and others might face within society. I’m not aware of companies or governments doing anything special to bring awareness on the same scale of say, pride month for instance. In fact certain aspects of accessibility were only normalized during the pandemic when healthy people needed them and now they’re being gradually rescinded now that they don’t. It’s annoying for those who’ve come to prefer those accommodations. It’s cruel for those who rely on them.
And just to be clear, I’m not suggesting this is an either or sort of thing. I’m just wondering why it’s not a that and this sort of thing. It’s possible I’m not considering the whole picture here, and I don’t mean for this to be controversial.
Pride makes money. Companies make money off pride merch and it costs them $0 to be inclusive of LGBT+ people.
But god forbid they do anything beneficial if it doesn’t make them money or gasp cost money. That’s why they actively find new ways to discriminate against disabled people without it being too obvious so they can skirt the law. Plenty of disabled people can do just as good or better at a job than an able bodied person with accommodations, but you’re immediately a threat to a company if you request those accommodations. And then of course, just like anti union propaganda, the general public gets told that disabled people are greedy moochers that need to fuck off out of society.
I worked for a company that is vehemently anti WFH. They had everyone working remotely for all of COVID no problem. But now if a disabled person requests WFH as an accommodation they are told it is “not reasonable” and it is denied. It’s very easy to get away with discrimination against disabled people because a lot of us are just trying to get through the day. Sitting in a court room to fight a company that will extend the lawsuit as long as possible sounds like my own personal nightmare. Hell, speaking of court even FUCKING JURY DUTY won’t accommodate a lot of disabled people. That’s literally the government and they don’t give a fuck. I speak from experience.
Like most things, the answer is money. They want able bodied workers they can make money off the back of for the minimum amount possible.
Sorry this turned into a rant lmao
Wholeheartedly agree. My previous employer was very big into pride and DEI since at least 10 years ago, when it wasn’t as normaliaed as it is today.
However, the office wasn’t wheelchair accessible and I complained about it, took me more than 4 years to get them to do something about it because I’m not a wheelchair user, so my requests got denied every time, absolutely zero empathy despite what they used to promote.
As you said, Pride is free marketing, building a ramp costs money
My company sends out an anonymous survey every year and every year I put “what about disabled people for DEI?” every year and every year it is ignored 🥲
We’re done here. We can close the thread. I don’t know if it’s possible to top that.