Participation: Active Involvement
Participation implies that a person with a disability can fully take part in everyday, ordinary aspects of life, with an emphasis on building lasting connections with their community.
What Do We Mean By Participation?
Participation implies that a person with a disability can fully take part in everyday, ordinary aspects of life, with an emphasis on building lasting connections with their community.
However, the principle does not only highlight the physical presence of persons with disabilities in societal actions and events, but stresses the importance of political engagement of people with disabilities in decisions that relate to them so that actions affecting people with a disability are not planned or performed without their input.
"Nothing about us without us" is a slogan that has long characterized the principle of participation within the disability movement.
What can you find in this section?
The UN CRPD
The principle of participation is also mentioned in Article 3(c) as one of the general principles of the UN Convention. Besides, in Article 33(3) the UN CRPD emphasizes the importance of involving persons with disabilities fully in monitoring processes.
Article 29 of CRPD speaks directly about involvement of people with disabilities in civil society to “effectively and fully participate in the conduct of public affairs without discrimination and on an equal basis with others…”.
Barriers To Participation
Accessibility, discrimination and negative attitudes can serve as the main barriers to full participation of people with disabilities in society.
For example, prejudices and stereotyping create barriers on the way to education, employment and/or social involvement.
Ensuring Participation
In order to enable people with disabilities to participate fully in societal activities, it is essential to consider different ways of engaging them to ensure meaningful representation, information sharing, consultation, collaboration, mutual decision-making and empowering strategies that help them raise their self-confidence.
To increase the participation of people with disabilities, it is important to create an environment that welcomes the presence and input of people with disabilities. For example, when planning an event, it is important to ensure that people with disabilities are invited and are offered the possibility to share their ideas on a subject.
Policy as a Starting Point for Improved Participation
While inclusive policies alone only tackle some disability inclusion challenges, policies that have exclusionary language and do not explicitly reference disability can be a major barrier to participation. Adopting a disability inclusion policy can be a great start to any actor’s disability inclusion journey.