Why We’re Proud Not To Be 100% Inclusive
Seen other training companies who claim to be 100% inclusive and wondering why Jackafal doesn’t?
We’re here to explain why we’re proud to not be 100% inclusive or accessible (and what we are instead).
In the field of Diversity and Inclusion, you will often see organisations or events referring to themselves as ‘100% inclusive’ or ‘100% accessible’. We are very proud not to use that label, and are passionate about educating people on why it’s not a good idea for any business or event. Does that mean we’re not an inclusive training provider? You can read the article and decide for yourselves…
Why is ‘100% inclusion’ a problem?
For starters, being 100% inclusive or accessible is a problem because it’s physically impossible. In order to be inclusive or accessible to absolutely everyone, that would mean having considered, planned for and taken into account the needs, experiences and perspectives of every individual on this planet - all 8 billion of them! If a company is claiming to be 100% inclusive, they are either lying to you, or have fundamentally misunderstood what it means to be inclusive.
If an organisation is claiming to be 100% inclusive or accessible, it implies that they don’t fully understand and appreciate that there is always more work to do. There is always room for improvement, and while it’s important to celebrate your successes, it’s also important to recognise where you aren’t yet doing the best you can do.
If it’s impossible to be 100% inclusive, why try?
Just because perfection is impossible, doesn’t mean that inclusion isn’t important. In addition to the business benefits of inclusion being well-proven, it’s simply good practice as a fellow human being on this planet to try and make everyone feel included. You don’t have to be perfect to make a difference.
So if Jackafal isn’t 100% inclusive, are you actively excluding people?
Absolutely not! It just means we don’t subscribe to that way of thinking and framing things. If you look through our website, you’ll notice that we talk about making our sessions as inclusive as possible. By that, we mean we work hard to ensure we get feedback from our clients around how inclusive our sessions are, update our materials and web content according to new accessibility tricks we’ve learnt, and include people with lived experience in our materials wherever possible. If someone reaches out to us and lets us know we’re excluding them, whether by oversight or lack of knowledge, we will do everything in our power to get clued up and make them feel included.
But we are completely aware that as human beings running a small company, sometimes we will have overlooked something or won’t have the budget and resources yet to do things as well as we’d like. So we’re completely unwilling to use the label 100% inclusive because we don’t want to mislead people, and we also want to make it clear that we view improving inclusion as an ongoing process, not a final destination.
But if we can’t say 100% inclusive, how do we explain that we want to welcome everyone?
You can change the wording to something that demonstrates exactly what was written above! Make it clear on your website that you want to welcome everyone, but that you are still working as an organisation to improve your inclusion and/or accessibility. That could mean providing space for feedback, outlining the steps you are taking to be more inclusive, and stating your ethos as a company.
For events, pointing out which accessibility measures are in place is a great way to do this. People tend to use ‘100% accessible’ as a label to mean ‘wheelchair accessible’, but haven’t considered provisions for people with other disabilities. If your event is accessible to people in wheelchairs, has sign language interpretation, or includes quiet zones for people with sensory issues, be explicit about that in the materials. If someone has a particular access need not mentioned and thinks they won’t be included, they can reach out to clarify, and this might highlight things you need to fix now or in the future to make your events more inclusive and accessible.
Want to improve inclusion and accessibility in your organisation, and make sure that what you’re doing has real lasting change all year round? Why not contact us to see what we can do to help you.
