By Dan Morgan-Williams, Founder of Visualise Training and Consultancy
Disability remains one of the areas where employees often feel the most awkward. They want to do the right thing, but fear of getting it wrong leads to hesitation, avoidance, or even silence. For blind and partially sighted people, and for those with hearing loss, this creates barriers that have nothing to do with their condition and everything to do with how others interact with them.
The Misconception: ‘We Don’t Need This Training’
Learning and Development (L&D) professionals often hear the same refrain: ‘We don’t need disability training here.’ The assumption is that because an organisation does not employ large numbers of disabled people, or because accessibility policies are in place, further training is unnecessary.
Yet when people with disabilities are asked about their experiences, the opposite becomes clear. Everyday interactions reveal knowledge gaps across industries.
Consider these situations:
– A retail assistant avoids approaching a customer with a white cane, leaving them unsupported.
– A trainer tells participants to ‘read the slide’ without considering a colleague with sight loss.
– An office worker mumbles while covering their mouth, preventing a colleague with hearing loss from lipreading.
– A team leader arranges a social event in a poorly lit venue, unintentionally excluding a partially sighted colleague.
These actions are not malicious. They stem from a lack of knowledge on how to proceed. Until employees are trained, they cannot be expected to interact with confidence and effectiveness.
The Impact of Awkwardness
Fear of making a mistake creates an invisible barrier. Staff hesitate, avoid contact, or overcompensate in ways that feel patronising. The result is exclusion. Disabled employees and customers are left feeling invisible, while staff feel anxious and unprepared.
Awkwardness impacts learning environments, too. In training sessions, learners with visual impairments or hearing loss may find the content technically accessible, but the delivery styles can be alienating. A facilitator who only gestures to a diagram without describing it, or who fails to verify that captions are accurate, undermines inclusion despite their best intentions.
Why Disability Confidence Training Matters
Disability confidence training addresses this gap. It equips employees with the knowledge and behaviours needed to interact naturally and respectfully with colleagues and customers. The benefits are clear:
– Staff gain confidence, reducing fear and hesitation.
– Disabled employees feel valued and included.
– Customers experience higher quality service and trust the organisation.
– Workplace culture shifts towards openness and respect.
Not Just for Customer-Facing Roles
A common misconception is that disability training is only relevant for front-line staff. In reality, it benefits every department. HR needs it to design inclusive policies, IT to ensure accessible systems, finance to understand reasonable adjustments in expenses, and managers to support staff effectively. Inclusion is everyone’s responsibility.
The Role of L&D
L&D professionals are the enablers of culture change. By embedding disability confidence into organisational learning, they move the business beyond compliance and towards genuine inclusion. This can be achieved by:
– Integrating disability awareness within onboarding for all new staff.
– Including scenarios in leadership training to build empathy and inclusive decision-making.
– Offering refresher modules through e-learning to maintain consistency.
– Encouraging staff feedback to adapt training to real needs.
Linking Disability Confidence with Wellbeing
Disability awareness training also creates opportunities to highlight workplace wellbeing schemes. Many organisations provide free eye tests or hearing checks, yet these benefits are rarely promoted effectively. Training normalises the importance of regular health checks, making staff more likely to use what is already available.
The Business Case
Investing in disability confidence training delivers tangible benefits:
– Higher employee engagement and retention rates.
– Increased uptake of existing health and wellbeing offers.
– Stronger customer loyalty through inclusive service.
– Reduced complaints, grievances, and reputational risks.
Conclusion
The phrase ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ captures the challenge perfectly. Without training, employees are left to guess how to support colleagues and customers with disabilities. The result is awkwardness, exclusion, and lost opportunities. Through training, staff acquire the skills and confidence to overcome social barriers, thereby fostering a culture where inclusion is a natural part of the organisation.
Our Visual Impairment, Hearing Loss, and Disability Awareness e-learning, available in SCORM format, provides organisations with a scalable and cost-effective way to consistently build disability confidence across the workforce.
To find out more or book training, visit https://visualisetrainingandconsultancy.com/trainingÂ