1. UCU officially follows the social model of disability – a perspective on disability (oppression) developed and pushed for, collectively, by the Disabled People’s Movement in the UK since the 1970s. It is also considered a ‘tool’ for transforming society & many other unions in the UK have officially adopted it. The social model (which itself has been changed over time, becoming an umbrella model – but that might be a discussion for another time) takes a collective perspective on disability politics and posits that there is a distinction between an impairment, chronic illness, etc and ‘disability’ – the latter being the result of oppression and exploitation in current capitalist societies. So, a person with an impairment is disabled by society. 

2. We should avoid the use of terms/expressions such as ‘this is mental/crazy/mad/lame/dumb’, ‘they are a bit autistic’, ‘management were blind to…’, ‘there are blindspots in X policy’, a policy is ‘idiotic’, something has fallen on ‘deaf ears’, ‘their silence is deafening’, ‘crippled by’, ‘they’re acting bipolar’, ‘this is OCD’, ‘confined to a wheelchair’, and so on. These are the oppressors’ terms that reproduce the disablist idea that certain mental distress-, chronic illness, impairments, deafness and so on are defects and negative aspects of a person.

3. Seek to use the term ‘disabled person’ as a default, unless a person has chosen to use a particular term (i.e. experiencing mental distress, being neurodivergent, chronically ill, deaf or Deaf, having an impairment, or if they use a particular diagnosis).

4. The (often employer-driven, but not only) idea that we need to value the ‘advantages’ that neurodivergent people bring to the workplace has disablist undertones due to it creating a hierarchy of impairments/neurodivergence manifestations according to perceived productivity levels. Also, not all features of an Autistic person, for instance, will be perceived by employers as a ‘strength’ – so that kind of talk of strengths has the effect of creating divisions between groups of workers. Also, this kind of talk seeks to set neurodivergent people apart from the larger community of disabled people, and it also portrays them as not needing reasonable adjustments etc.

5. Try to get into the habit (which does take time) of anticipating other people’s experiences and accessibility requirements when you’re organising/pushing for something. This habit can become seamless over time, once you’ve increased your anticipation strategies more and more. For instance (just as a very simple example), you can go to your Zoom settings to enable (once and for all) the setting that enables live captioning. This way, you know for sure that if/whenever someone needs to display captions, they can do so because you’ve offered that option. 

6. Use the term ‘neurodivergent people’ rather than ‘neurodiverse people’ – neurodiversity is a very general term about how society overall is ‘diverse’ in terms of neurotypes – and, for instance, we don’t say that a woman is ‘gender-diverse’ (we also don’t say she’s gender-divergent, but the term neurodivergent has reached most collective consensus among Autistic, ADHD, Dyslexic, Dyspraxis people and others).

7. ‘Disabilities’ (as a plural of ‘disability’) has no meaning other than to reproduce the oppressors’ idea that there is such a thing as a countable ‘disability’ (AKA something deficient that needs to be fixed, to integrate them into society) within a person’s body/mind. Using the term ‘disabilities’ leads to a collapsing of the social model’s distinction between impairment/chronic illness/mental distress/deafness (i.e. a feature of a person) and disability (a form of oppression).

8. ‘People with disabilities’ (from the perspective of the social model), equally, has no meaning – other than to be oppressive and serve the state/professionals/etc’s agenda of identifying a ‘problem’ within a person that the former then have authority to ‘fix’ (or to push the individual to ‘fix themselves’) as a condition for social integration. Worth also adding that ‘people with disabilities’ is generally a term that is quite popular in the US, though in the UK, most people and institutions that seek to take the collective perspective of the Disabled People’s Movement seriously, do not use the term ‘people with disabilities’. 

9. It is the case that many (more or less) problematic terms are often used by members themselves or by management etc – and, within certain contexts, it might feel easier to just repeat the language of the member, in relation to themselves or others. However, as trade unionists / collectivists, and subscribers to the Social Model of disability, it is our job to educate others and to avoid repeating harmful/depoliticising/meaningless/confusing discourses that can have material consequences for disabled people in general, and also in our particular workplace. It doesn’t mean that we need to antagonistically ‘police’ people’s language, but it’s important to develop the skill of making alternative suggestions.

10. In terms of ‘ableism’ vs ‘disablism’ – the former term has become so prevalent everywhere over the past ~5 years that it almost feels odd to stress its problematic assumptions, from a political and trade union perspective because it’s so popular (even UCU nationally use it in their documents).
    1. In short, ‘ableism’ assumes that discrimination takes place because disabled people ‘lack ability’. 
    2. ‘Disablism’, a term used for decades but that has somehow lost its grip due to other liberal models being developed recently, stresses the injustice that disabled people are subjected to – similar to racism, cisheterosexism, etc.
    3. I never use the term ‘ableism’ (and many others don’t either), but can understand why one might just use it nowadays by default as a way of ‘fitting in’ with the general discourse. 
    4. If you’re interested in delving a bit deeper into this, I recommend this blog post by a disability studies scholar: https://stillmyrevolution.org/2013/01/01/disablism-or-ableism/ 
    5. In terms of ‘disablement’ (which I’ve included in the title of this Officer role) – whilst disablism is an action or assumption that is discriminatory, disablement is a wider process of oppression/exploitation.
    6. The term for people who are not disabled is ‘non-disabled people’ – and not ‘able-bodied people’.

Adopted by the BUCU committee, 20 November 2023