Disability Access Toolkit for Communities

The Church has often struggled with disability inclusion, thinking only of access needs as an afterthought, only for specific disabilities or, sometimes, not at all. Because of this, many disabled people have faced exclusion or felt invisible within faith communities. We want to help church spaces and communities recognise ways in which they could be more honest about their welcome for disabled people, and think about the ways they can make their spaces even more welcoming and accessible. Through the Disability History Month x Honest Church Pop-Up, we aim to foster spaces where disabled people know what to expect when approaching a new community. 

Why a Pop-Up?

We've decided that, for now, the disability focused section of the Honest Church campaign will be a temporary addition*, as opposed to an ongoing new focus of the campaign. This is for a few reasons, including:

• Disability theology and ableism in the church is often of a slightly different nature to LGBTQ+ exclusion, and the exclusion of women. Whilst there are no doubt churches in which harmful disability theologies exist, these are (usually) not concealed in the same way as policies limiting women's roles or LGBTQ+ exclusion, and the exclusion is usually borne of ignorance rather than a thought-through theology. 
• Our friends at Inclusive Church already do a brilliant job of helping churches recognise and improve their inclusion for disabled people, so rather than reinvent what they are doing we want to amplify their work.
• We don't want to overwhelm the campaign work we are already doing with Honest Church around LGBTQ+ welcome and women's roles. While we recognise that disability and inclusion are intersectional, we want to make sure we have the capacity to continue the original Honest Church campaign well.

Nevertheless, there are important things to say about disability and honesty in church, and we are really excited to share these resources with you!

*Whilst the specific focus of the campaign is temporary, the resources are here to stay! You will be able to find them here to download whenever you need.