People with disabilities aren’t just customers. They’re also members of the workforce, and there is a good chance that you have worked with or worked for someone with a disability. How can you make sure that your workplace environment is accessible for employees with disabilities?

• Employees with disabilities provide a vital perspective on inclusive customer service.
• The hospitality workforce already has people with disabilities, and it is important to support them to thrive in their chosen career by creating a healthy workplace.
• Ask all your employees and colleagues, “how can I make it easier for you to do your job?”

People with disabilities are already in the hospitality workforce. There’s a good chance that you’ve worked with or for someone with a disability, and not even known it. Maybe it was a manager with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a server with Autism Spectrum Disorder or a chef with dyslexia. These people might have been your favorite colleague or your workplace spouse. While they may have survived in an inaccessible workplace, they might have found it difficult to thrive.

If your business is serious about being accessible and adopting an inclusive mindset, it is very important to hire employees with a lived experience of disability. People with disabilities understand what it is like to feel excluded, and will provide different perspectives on how to build an inclusive hospitality business.

“Reasonable adjustments” is a term used in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Australian Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). It refers to the changes workplaces can make to ensure that employees are able to do their job comfortably and to the best of their abilities. These changes can include things like

• purchasing a step stool so employees can reach higher shelves
• allowing an employee to arrange their workspace in a way that suits them
• adding sound dampening to a workplace to make it less noisy
• having a trolley to help employees transport heavy items around the workplace
• and more.

There is no set list of what constitutes a reasonable adjustment. Reasonable adjustments can be anything that an employee decides is necessary for them to do their job.

Asking for medical or professional proof that the adjustment is required for the employee to do their job is completely unnecessary. This just adds more work for the employee to do and shows that you do not trust them.

The best thing to do is to ask all employees, regardless of whether they have a disability or not, what you and the workplace can do to make it easier to do their job.

This means that you are not singling out employees with disabilities and treating them differently. It means you are giving the same opportunities to employees who are not ready to disclose their disabilities and employees who do not identify has having a disability.

It also means that you get to show your employees and colleagues that you trust their expertise and experience, and that you understand that they know what to do and how to do it.

• Reality Check by Cole Youngner on SPILL magazine provides a checklist on creating a workplace that is inclusive, sustainable and humane.
• Please Hustle Responsibly is a a collective of hospitality advocates and community organizers working with mental health professionals to change the structure of the food and beverage industry. They provide lots of resources on topics like mental health and how to avoid ableist language.
• The Chicago Hospitality Accountable Actions Database (CHAAD Project) provides lots of suggestions on how to change your work culture on their Instagram page, from things like normalizing breaks and mental health check ins and making space for workers to provide feedback and suggestions on how to improve things.
• Healthy Pour provides educational mental health resources to the food and beverage industry.
• Kenji Lopez-Alt posts on Instagram about the negative impact of violence in commercial kitchen culture.