Disability Awareness for All

People with hidden disabilities often display behaviours that are misunderstood and labelled with prejudice, e.g. lower frustration thresholds, socially inappropriate behaviours, lower energy levels. Not everyone with these conditions will consider themselves disabled and those that do may not want others to perceive them as disabled.

• Sunflower lanyard
  • A simple visual indicator with a positive symbol to show that someone might need extra time, additional support, or simply patience and understanding.
• Sometimes hidden disabilities are dynamic disabilities.
  • People experience barriers and obstacles in some spaces but not in others.
  • They may experience varying severity of symptoms at some times and not others.
  • It can be unpredictable.
• Masking
  • Masking describes when a person conceals their disability to meet normative expectations and ‘blend in’.
  • This is often done to avoid prejudice, discrimination, and stigma.
  • Everybody masks in some way, e.g. politely pretending we have heard or understood what someone else is saying.
  • Often the ability to mask relies on the person with hidden disabilities being at their peak health-wise, i.e. generally good health, slept well, well-fed.
  • Being ill, hungry, sleep-deprived can compromise the ability to mask.
• Expectations
  • Often disabilities are hidden because we have socio-normative expectations of the ways people should think and behave in certain situations,
  • We can start to make our world more welcoming and inclusive for people with hidden disabilities by recognising, confronting and challenging these expectations and ‘lowering the bar’ for criteria how to participate.
  • To ensure everyone feels welcome and able to participate, we need to celebrate each person for who God has created them to be.