Standards & Practices.

This is a constantly evolving statement of intent

Language

Our definition of disability - We currently use the definition set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which aims to set a global standard.

The Convention protects all persons with disabilities, who are defined in Article 1 as including “… those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.”

This broad definition adopts what is known as the social model of disability. It recognises that disability is an evolving concept, and that we are often prevented from exercising all of our human rights and fundamental freedoms by barriers of attitude and environment which have been placed in our way. In other words, the Convention seeks to alter social attitudes by ensuring that governments, individuals and organisations recognise that we have the same human rights and fundamental freedoms as all other persons.

Labels & Terms

The word ‘disabled’ is a description is does not refer to a group of people. Therefore, we use ‘disabled people’ or ‘people with disabilities’ as the collective term, not ‘the disabled’ or ‘those with disabilities’.

We avoid using medical labels as they don’t say much about people as individuals but rather reinforce stereotypes of people with disabilities as ‘patients’ ‘unhealthy’ or ‘unwell’. This is particularly relevant to the ongoing discussion of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which disabled people have been regularly described as ‘vulnerable’. We prefer to use the term ‘at risk’ as we think this is a more accurate description of how people with disabilities are affected by the pandemic, without the additional negative connotations.

Ableist Language

The following words and phrases are highly offensive to many people with disabilities, and therefore we avoid using them:

  • Wheelchair-bound

  • Handicap/ Handicapped

  • Retard/retarded

  • Mentally defective

  • Cripple

  • Invalid

  • Spastic

  • Dwarf

  • Midget

  • Mental patient, insane, mad

  • A depressive

  • Handicapable

  • Otherly-abled

  • Special needs

  • Exceptional abilities

  • Super able

These words should never be used about a disabled person unless they have explicitly given their permission for you to do so.

Intersectionality

Intersectionality is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression and we must consider everything and anything that can marginalise people – gender, race, class, sexual orientation, disability, etc.

Intersectionality provides a lens through which we can examine the processes, practices, policies, and structures that increase the risk of people experiencing disadvantage or discrimination because of their intersecting identities.

We try to look at everything through the holistic lens of intersectionality and listen to a diverse range of voices and opinions to make sure we are considering a wide range of different experiences in our work.

Accessibility

TOUCH is committed to ensuring that all its products and services are as accessible as possible to everyone. Read our accessibility statement.

Please contact us if you have any queries about our work and accessibility.

Website

When creating the TOUCH website we asked for feedback from people with wide range of disabilities and assistive technology users, and we will continue to engage others as our website evolves and changes.

We have endeavoured to make our website, and all our digital products as accessible and usable as possible. We’ve done this by using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) produced by the World Wide Web Consortium, aiming for Level AA compliance. 

This website is managed by the TOUCH Talent Contracting and we are constantly auditing and updating our website to ensure that our design and content is accessible by everyone. For more information about what we have done and continue to do, please take a look at our Accessibility Statement here.

Social Media

When using social media, we make full use of the accessibility features provided by the relevant platform, for example; Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter - and take all possible measures to ensure our content can be enjoyed by everyone.

These include:

  • We add alternative text to images AND image descriptions (image descriptions are primarily helpful for those who do not have access to assistive technology, such as screen readers.)

  • We attempt to always use camel case for hashtags

  • We avoid creating “images” with text such as: ( ͡❛ ʖ ͡❛)

  • We are aware not to overuse caps. Full-caps can be difficult to read and misinterpreted by screen readers.

  • We use emojis sparingly

  • We include Trigger warnings to notify viewers of sensitive content

We also work hard to create social media content that is accessible to all. This means:

  • Checking colour contrast to maximise legibility

  • Avoiding large blocks of text without headings

  • Adding human-generated captions to all video content (automatic captioning and auto generated alt text on images must be reviewed by a human for accuracy)

Video Content

When producing video content, we aim to include as many people as possible. Therefore, we consider how the content will be enjoyed by people with a wide variety of different needs.

This includes:

  • Captioning – We provide closed captions on all our video content, either by embedding a subtitle file or by using Youtube’s captioning tool.

  • Audio description – We provide audio-description on all video content that features on-screen text, and in interviews or panel sessions, we ask speakers to provide audio-description.

Events

At TOUCH we help faciliate many third party and external events, as well as hosting our own events as well as taking part in external events as a guest. Unfortunately it is not always possible to control the accessibility of these events, but we have a policy that we will not participate in any events that do not provide venue accessibility and closed captioning at the very minimum.

At our own events, we aim to provide:

  • An accessible registration and joining process

  • Human-generated live captioning

  • Sign-language interpretation

  • In-event audio description of any slide material and speakers