The Legal Reasons - Attitudes
The attitude of your staff to customers is important if you are to get and keep business. It's even more important when dealing with disabled people, where fear or ignorance can make a situation uncomfortable for both the disabled person and the staff member.
Your staff should always address the disabled person, regardless of who is with them. They should also be encouraged to look straight at customers and not cover the mouth when they are speaking to them. This will benefit in particular people who use any level of lip reading, including many who would not consider themselves to have a hearing impairment. Allowing extra time, and repeating back to the customer to check accuracy and understanding, can benefit customers with learning difficulties and with speech impairments.
If in doubt, your staff are better to ask the disabled person what method of communication suits them best. In addition to the telephone, textphone and email can benefit a range of customers. You should also consider installing systems such as induction loops that can enhance communication for people with hearing impairments.
You should strongly consider ensuring your staff have disability equality training to assist them to communicate effectively with your disabled customers. With 1 in 6 of the population being disabled you can be certain your staff are already communicating with disabled people.
Language
The golden rule is to refer to someone directly and by their name. Ignore their disability unless it is important and ensure they are referred to as a person and not just disabled. For example, someone should be referred to as 'a deaf person' and not 'deaf'.
There is generally accepted terminology which should be used in place of offensive terminology:
The golden rule is to refer to someone directly and by their name. Ignore their disability unless it is important and ensure they are referred to as a person and not just disabled. For example, someone should be referred to as 'a deaf person' and not 'deaf'.
There is generally accepted terminology which should be used in place of offensive terminology:
- > 'Disabled person' should be used in place of 'handicapped'.
- > Someone who isn't disabled is referred to as 'non-disabled' rather than 'normal'.
