Legit Legislation?!

Accountability and The Legitimacy Gap

 

This post discusses the lack of explicit acknowledgement and addressing of ableism (discrimination imposed on disabled people) in legislation, organisational policies and practices. It argues that there is a "legitimacy gap" where the intent to support disabled people is stated, but the oppressive reality of ableism is not directly named or confronted. It calls for greater accountability and co-constructed narratives that explicitly articulate ableism as an injustice that is opposed - but rarely opposed. It states that simply adding to definitions of "disability" without addressing underlying ableist attitudes and discrimination is insufficient. It highlights the need to rebuild trust with the disabled community by genuinely listening to their voices, perspectives, and lived experiences as respected holders of knowledge. This requires moving beyond minimum compliance towards authentically upholding the human rights of disabled people. Many have expressed concern about the absence of a disability perspective in public discussions. They note a lack of attention from mainstream human rights bodies, which may give the impression that violations of disabled people’s rights aren't considered serious human rights violations. Regarding the workplace, although the Disability Discrimination Act has made discrimination illegal since 1999, it doesn’t address ableism directly. Instead, it focuses on specific instances of discrimination, without clearly defining institutionalised ableism. This leads to a common misunderstanding where impairment is seen as defining a person's identity. Consequently, it becomes challenging to police, report, or prosecute disability discrimination or hate crimes. 

 

Here I suggest a more nuanced language is needed that decisively opposes ableism as part of the core purpose, similar to how some groups explicitly embrace opposing racism, homophobia or violence against women. Without this anti-ableist framing, accountability becomes haphazard. Ultimately, it calls for extending accountability that reimagines disability narratives. Similarly, legislation needs to demonstrate accountability by taking concrete actions that positively impact disabled people's lives, not just rhetorical commitments.

 

Successive failures to name ableism suggest a glaring legitimacy gap in the existing policy. More legitimacy is urgently needed for conversations to be extended - within and between domains - to demonstrate a true notion of reciprocity in organisational accounts. Research suggests that more must be said explicitly because language becomes an implicit shorthand for the harm imposed on disabled individuals. Without a clear articulation of ableism in disability-related texts, strategic intent cannot be conceived as legitimate.

 From an institutional standpoint, accountability, as defined by the nature of discrimination, plays a crucial role in articulating intentional actions within purpose in daily operations.

Drawing from Sinclair’s work, the concept of a chameleon serves as a fitting metaphor for accountability. Similar to how a chameleon adapts its colours to blend with its environment, an institution can uphold its integrity and purpose while explicitly acknowledging the interests of the disabled population in accounts/policies. This implies a responsibility to provide an authentic account of voice, ensuring fair representation of all voices. Failure to do so results in a legitimacy gap, where organisational storytelling diverges from the interests of Disabled People's Organisations (DPOs), thus undermining equity and fair participation. The legitimacy gap, reflects a biased response rooted in myth rather than recognition of diverse voices. It signifies the disparity between institutional narratives and the interests of the population that is disabled.

Legislation authors who recognise the importance of disability equality do more effectively engage in personal, organisational, and public dialogues by addressing barriers and injustices from an institutional perspective. Achieving pragmatic equality, or justice for disabled people, entails ensuring that discrimination does not exacerbate existing inequalities. In essence, a world that is pragmatically equal regarding disability should exhibit the same level of inequality among disabled individuals as among other individuals.

While legitimacy is often interpreted as about merely "being seen" rather than "being done", a human rights intent rests on dialogue - not solely the telling of the institutional account. More importantly, texts need to reframe those long-established narratives in ways that benefit society more equitably than simply adding the word "disability" without any reference to ableism. Articulating ableism adds justice within language itself, highlighting oppression explicitly by peeling back its insidious layers.

 

The careful weighting of evidence-based knowledge, while adjusting for the ableism that underpins testimonial injustice, may provide a pathway through this challenge of existing texts towards more emancipatory ideals. With an intersecting web of accountabilities giving direction to conversations about human rights, disabled people's interests can be centred within a dialogue of far broader scope. By articulating this shared authority more explicitly, storytelling as co-constructed knowledge could hold greater legitimacy extending beyond organisations. Storytelling, seen as part activism and part craft, can hold a deeper commitment to social and environmental interests within a more nuanced definition of reporting that signals critical and strategic intent.

The Struggle for Change

As I found in my research, articulating institutional reputation ultimately proves harder than working to break free of confining narratives, because addressing injustice involves identifying it first. Legislation reports rarely account for the ways in which institutional culture does or does not stand against pervading ableism in wider society. Like much practice, accommodating individual needs is far easier than strategically engaging with the injustice that imposes systemic hardship.

 

Therefore, achieving true accountability and legitimacy are both crucial for reputations that impact the policies harming disabled people. Without more defined, nuanced language expressing the need for greater explicitness, real change will remain an immense challenge. So far, I have yet to find an organisation which treats ableism as a core part of its purpose in the same way that say Women's Aid embraces feminism by naming violence against women, stating gender equality as part of their vision to challenge sexism.

 

The words given to ableism - the vocabulary of oppression itself - need to directly articulate an opposition to the injustice faced by the disabled population. Even if it begins as a nebulous, fluid notion, language is needed to speak to the relationship between institutions and disabled people's interests. Without an anti-ableist language in place, accountability becomes a matter of happenstance; and institutions are unable to specifically challenge ableism, institutional discrimination, and societal inequality. This suggests it is far harder to establish legitimacy within reputation-building narratives that don't challenge society's storytelling more broadly.