Mastercard Foundation We Can work
In partnership with Light for the World
Partnership with African Disability Forum
In partnership with Light for the World
Partnership with African Disability Forum

Inclusive Communication

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Inclusive communication ensures that information is shared in a way that everyone, including people with disabilities, can understand, using accessible formats such as sign language, Braille, or verbal descriptions to overcome communication barriers.

What Do We Mean By Communication?

Communication is the process of reaching mutual understanding, with participants sharing information, ideas and feelings. This can be written, verbal or nonverbal.

Persons with disabilities can experience barriers in education, work, social life and at home. The barriers may differ per person as individuals with disabilities have different types of impairments, but also other differences in other characteristics, such as being a woman, or their refugee status.

Inclusive communication relates to all modes of communication including written information, online information, telephone, and face to face. It involves sharing information in a way that everybody can understand and implies the use of tools that are necessary for supporting specific communication needs of an individual with disabilities.

What can you find in this section?

The UN CRPD

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) does not specifically identify communication as a separate principle but considers it as a core element of accessibility.

In Article 9 (b) the UN CRPD claims the responsibility of governments to “include the identification and elimination of obstacles and barriers to accessibility …[in] information, communications and other services, including electronic services and emergency services”.

Besides, in Article 21 the Convention states the right of persons with disabilities to freedom of expression and opinion , and access to information, specifically the provision of information to people with disabilities in accessible formats and technologies, “facilitating the use of sign languages, Braille and other alternative sources of information”.

Communication Barriers

Communication barriers are experienced by people who have impairments that affect hearing, speaking, writing, and/or understanding, and who use different ways to communicate than people who do not have these disabilities.
For example:

  • Written health promotion messages on a poster are not accessible for people with visual impairments.
  • Auditory messages without videos, images, or caption shown during events are not inclusive of people with hearing impairments.


Lack of access to communication does not allow people with disabilities to experience productive interaction with other people, which intensifies their experience of exclusion.

Inclusive Communication Styles

Effective communication allows persons with disabilities to build and maintain relationships, to work, to study, to manage their affairs on their own and to express themselves.

To ensure that information shared is understood by all persons, these steps are recommended.

  • Address a person with disability and not their caretaker or guide;
  • Use simple language to make your point when communicating with someone with an intellectual disability
  • Identify yourself when you are talking to a person with visual impairment;
  • Provide verbal descriptions of content on images, videos or in printed text;
  • Invite sign language interpreters to meetings and events;
  • Position yourself at the eye level with a person in a wheelchair when talking one to one.

Also, we must keep in mind that communication and information materials or training materials need to be available in accessible formats. This accounts for people with visual impairments who might prefer to receive materials in braille or as a digital copy that is accessible through screen reader software. Also, many people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing who went to special schools for the Deaf and are used to communicating in sign language are not very fluent in grammar.

It is also important to realize which communication channels reach out to whom. Where radio might work well to reach out to persons with visual impairments, posters, other printed materials or social media messages might work well for people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing.

Self Reflection

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Self Reflection

Think about a time when you had trouble communicating with a colleague. How did it make you feel? Now imagine this happening every time you were in a meeting, went to a supermarket, took public transportation etc. What would that be like for you?

We all face communication challenges that are frustrating, exhausting, and difficult to manage.

Maybe in the story you thought of, you didn’t feel listened to during an important decision, or maybe you did not understand information that was shared with you in a particular way. In a workplace, there are usually supports to manage these occurrences and they don’t happen too often. For persons with disabilities, especially people with hearing and visual impairments, these instances happen every day, and often the right supports or reasonable accommodations are not provided. Communication barriers, if left in place, can lead to people developing negative attitudes. For example, in a meeting, if a slide deck has a lot of text, and is not shared with participants, someone with a visual impairment might be lost and not fully grasp what is being presented. Not only will this hurt their ability to work effectively, it may also lead to others thinking that they are not capable because they don’t understand. In reality, the information was just not shared in a way that would enable them to understand. All of these barriers are interconnected.