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Benefits of the New Approach

The new way of thinking about disability offers a number of benefits to providers that make creating welcoming environments and meeting the needs of women with disabilities easier.

Benefits

Provides a practical way to solve problems and remove barriers

By emphasizing functional limitation over a medical diagnosis, we get beyond the flawed idea that a medical diagnosis offers a prescription for what a person can do and what a person needs. Rather, the emphasis is on understanding the practical issues of a functional limitation. Starting from “this woman may have difficulty concentrating and following instruction” rather than “this woman has an anxiety disorder,” offers a more practical way of solving problems. Serving women with disabilities becomes a process of building competence and comfort.

Meets the needs of survivors with disabilities who don’t disclose

The new approach moves us toward a way of thinking that avoids the pitfalls of assuming that disability is easily identified and categorized. Some people embrace an identity as a person with a disability and derive a sense of affirmation and community from identifying with disability culture. Far more people, however, with the same functional limitation see their identity as a person with a disability well down the list of ways in which they define themselves. They may not identify as having a disability and may not even respond affirmatively to a direct question about disability. The goal of improving access to services and support can still be met by creating environments that anticipate and prepare to accommodate a broad diversity of ability among survivors.

Improves services for your current population

Because many women with disabilities do not disclose as having a disability, it is inevitable that victim service programs are already serving women with a wide variety of functional limitations. Even those providers who have been most cautious about their ability to serve women with disabilities are serving people who may not disclose or even be aware of a non-apparent limitation. More likely than not, these women have non-apparent limitations. For example, they may be women with the sight, tactile and circulatory results of long-term diabetes or the fatigue and pain of a connective tissue disorder.

This new context for thinking about disability offers us a way to think about the women that we have traditionally served, many of whom may have some level of limit to functional ability. It invites us to imagine things that we already do, or can easily begin doing, that would minimize disabling experiences for these women, the majority of whom have non-apparent limitations.

Creates a positive interactive and liberating role for service providers

With this new approach, providers can seek out ways to change the things they can: the physical, communication, information, and social and policy environments. Of course, there are specific needs for accommodations that some women will have in order to have equal access to services and support. These needs will be met far more easily if providers establish an environment that anticipates diversity of ability. In so doing, providers can create a more welcoming and supportive environment for every woman and minimize the experience of disability for women with functional limitations.

Invites a new type of engagement between staff and survivors

The new definition of disability offers a framework for progress that invites a different type of engagement between staff and survivors with disabilities.

• If we accept that disability is contextual and exaggerated or minimized based on the intersection between the person and the environment, then staff can make powerful contributions to reducing disabling experiences.
• In order to be effective, the process of designing more welcoming environments for women with disabilities requires that the users be involved.
• People with functional limitations have expertise about what works and what doesn’t for them.
• Respecting that knowledge is a first step to the kind of solutions that build transformative change through a mix of process and results.

With a starting place of legal guidance and building on the body of literature developed within the domestic violence and sexual assault movements, the next step is to engage both staff and survivors in identifying the things that redefine the context, that alter the environment to not only remove barriers but also to facilitate a positive experience.

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