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Reasonable Access Remit
Reasonable Access is primarily for:
- Disabled and Deaf people.
- Carers/Proxies who are people representing or supporting disabled people under 18, individuals without full legal capacity, or individuals who need support to assert and enforce their disability access rights,
- Allies of disabled people who challenge discrimination and campaign for disability rights.
Reasonable Access is a Deaf and Disabled Persons (DDPO) Led Organisation with a mandate in our Founding Constitution to have 75% of trustees being Deaf or Disabled people. At present, 100% of trustees meet this criteria.
Geographical location
Reasonable Access is aimed at people based in:
- England, Wales and Scotland which has the Equality Act and
- Northern Ireland which has various Disability Discrimination Acts.
Social Model of Disability
We are strongly influenced by the Social Model of Disability which we interpret in simple terms to mean that people are disabled by barriers in society in addition to restrictions imposed by our impairments.
In general we will use “identity first” language such as “disabled person” or “autistic person” unless different styles are preferred by any particular group. Where relevant, we may refer to someone with person-with-impairment language e.g. “Person with limb difference”. When dealing with individuals we will try to use and reflect their preferred terminology.
Learn about the Social Model of disability
We can recommend the following resources to learn more about the Social Model of Disability:
- Shape Arts social model page [Formats: Text, Easy-Read, Animated video with captions and audio description version]:
- Scope social model page [Formats: Video with captions and audio description, text]
- Inclusion London social model page [formats: British Sign Language Video with English captions but no voiceover]
Other personal and protected characteristics
Reasonable Access are committed to treating all people with equality and respect regardless of their:
- Age.
- Disability – or impairment type.
- Ethnicity or nationality.
- Faith or religion.
- Gender-identity.
- Intellectual ability.
- Marriage or civil partnership status.
- Occupation.
- Pregnancy or parenthood.
- Sex.
- Sexual orientation.
- Socio-economic status, wealth or income.
- Unrelated criminal convictions.
We recognise that equal treatment is not the same thing as identical treatment and different treatment is sometimes needed.
Further intersectional disability discrimination issues
We recognise that there is often oppression related to the above characteristics and that people can experience discrimination on the basis of experiencing oppression because of two or more characteristics at the same time e.g. for being female and disabled, or black, male and disabled.
We recognise that people in different impairment groups can experience disability discrimination and barriers to challenging discrimination in different ways. Examples include inaccessible information for people with sight impairments, access to spoken communication and telephony for deaf people and understanding complex written language for people with cognitive impairments. We also recognise that some marginalised groups such as women, People of Colour, working class and those from Traveller communities can receive significantly poorer responses from authorities and people in positions of authority.
We accept trans and non-binary people as their self-identified gender for all purposes. We recognise and will provide opportunities for everyone (cis and trans alike) at Reasonable Access events or online spaces to indicate their correct pronouns. We will have a conduct policy which asks all people in Reasonable Access spaces or events to use other people’s declared names and pronouns. Our trustees indicate their pronouns in their online profiles. We recognise navigating formal complaints and legal systems may have additional challenges for women including trans women, trans and non-binary people and others who use different names, pronouns or titles to their identity and birth certificate paperwork.