First anger, then action: why you should sign the Feminist Accessibility Protocol | Blogs
A few years ago, a group of women got angry, and I was one of them.
We were angry that we couldn’t participate in the 2021 Generation Equality Forum, a major international conference on gender equality organized by UN Women with the governments of France and Mexico.
We were unable to participate because the platform used for the virtual forums was not accessible to the majority of women and girls with disabilities.
Why couldn’t we participate when we had worked so hard? We were sad and angry. But in my years as an activist and advocate for people with disabilities, I’ve learned that anger needs to be accompanied by activity, so we got active. We wanted to not only show that this wasn’t good enough, but also create something to guide and advise organizations on how to do better.
Collective Equality Inclusive Generation
The first thing we did was organize a side event, where some of us got together to talk about it. Led by Women Enabled International, we form the Inclusive Generation Equality Collective, an informal group of disability feminists. We did many interventions; I cannot count the number of meetings I had only with the organizers of the Generation Equality Forum and with the disability advisor they hired.
How the Feminist Accessibility Protocol was born
The next thing we did was write the Feminist Accessibility Protocolan innovative set of commitments that seek to ensure that women and girls with disabilities are not excluded from debates on gender equality and decision-making spaces.
The protocol includes 13 disability-related commitments for national governments, feminist civil society organizations, United Nations entities and other feminist actors. These include commitments to make gender equality debates and decision-making spaces fully accessible and inclusive for women and girls with disabilities, as well as gender minorities with disabilities.
The protocol has guidelines that any agency, organization or group that wants to organize meetings or conferences must take into account to implement accessibility measures. It includes resources and contact information if help is needed to organize a barrier-free conference, and is relevant to digital and in-person events. It can be used by anyone, not just feminist organizations.
