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Lessons to introduce disability equality

1. You can help to introduce disability equality issues to your class by inviting a disabled adult or young person, who subscribes to the social model of disability, to talk to them (Disability Equality in Education Tel: 020 7359 2855 have a national network). Prepare the class by covering what 'disability' and 'impairment' mean, and discussing who is disabled. For more information, see 'Medical model' v. 'social model'.

• Ask the disabled person to talk from their own experience, which is most powerful. They should cover in what ways disabled people are discriminated against, eg being bullied just because they are disabled. Children/students need to understand that disability discrimination is an oppression and is not an individual problem. This can be linked to racism, sexism and homophobia.
• The class should discuss bullying because of how someone looks, sounds, seems intellectually (eg people with learning difficulties) or behaves. This can be done from KS1 upwards as even very young children respond to this. The children will talk about their own experiences and about disabled people they know, eg their relatives and friends. They should be encouraged to talk about how any experiences of bullying made them feel. Any disabled children in the class should feel empowered and able to talk, including those with hidden impairments (epilepsy eg).
• The teacher can point out any aptitudes or achievements of the disabled speaker and any disabled children in the class.

2. Discuss what is fair and, using the statistics about the position of disabled people in the UK today, ascertain if the class think this situation is fair or unfair, and what should be done about it.

3. If you have not already done so, explain the difference between impairment and disability (definitions below). Read more about this in 'Medical model' v. 'social model'.

Disabled people are people with an impairment who are discriminated against or oppressed because of the barriers and negative attitudes in society. Disabled people choose to be called disabled people because they recognise that, whatever their impairment, they are subjected to a common oppression.

4. Explain the difference between being short-term ill or injured and having an impairment. Get the class to list all the impairments which might lead to people discriminating against you.

5. Get the class, in groups or as a whole class, to complete a table like the one below, with blanks in some columns, or randomly across the whole chart.

6. Either working on the board with the whole class, or working in groups on flip chart paper, get the class to list all the words they have ever heard to describe disabled people. Write these on the white- or blackboard in one colour. Now ask the class or groups to identify all the words that are negative. Have a discussion about how they might feel if called these names. For KS1, have some cards with the origins of these words on (for KS3 and KS4, get them to find the origin of the words. (See Word power in Student handouts (PDF) and Origins of negative words associated with disability.)

Specifically for KS2 and KS3:

7. Take the class on a trip around your local shopping centre with a large-scale map of the area and individual units. Get them to use a pre-agreed coding system to record the types of shop or service - food, supermarket, hardware, hairdresser, bank, restaurant, chemist etc - in given sections. Also get them to note down barriers to deaf or blind people, wheelchair users and people with learning difficulties which they identify. Ask them to note any adaptations they see that enable disabled people to use the service. On return to the classroom, map and graph the results and hold a discussion on them, and what they think about the inequalities they have discovered. Arising from the discussion, groups in the class could undertake these different activities, or do all of them sequentially:

a. Write a letter to the service provider explaining what you found out about access and what impact this may have on disabled people.

b. Design and make a poster getting across the message that access is good for everyone, and why.

c. Devise a short play showing the problems that are presented to disabled people by lack of access to services.

d. Hold an assembly where the class presents what they did to the rest of the school.

Bear in mind that The Disability Discrimination Act says that by October 2004, all service providers have to make permanent reasonable adjustments to their service so that disabled people can access it and that, since October 2000, they are meant to have made temporary adjustments.

8. Get a large-scale map of the school. Divide it up into sections, allocated to small groups, and visit all areas on the map to ascertain whether someone who uses a wheelchair could access the place and take part in activities there. Record the outcomes on the map. Now determine what would need to change so the wheelchair user could access and participate fully. Discuss the outcomes and write letters with your findings to the Headteacher and Chair of Governors of the school. Discuss the issues raised by all forms of access to mainstream schools for disabled children. (A good source of information is your school's Access Plan.)

9. Have a general discussion about the portrayal of disabled people on television and in film. Get the class to list all the portrayals they can think of. Then discuss stereotypes and group the portrayals they have mentioned under the different stereotypes.

Now you are well prepared to look at a particular moving image text in detail.

Further activities:

10. Analyse imagery in magazines and on TV. Use this to combat accepted images of what is desirable (KS2, Year 5 and above).

11. Examine the treatment of disabled people throughout history eg the Nazi euthanasia programme. (See The history of attitudes to disabled people.)

12. Examine the barriers and discrimination in further and higher education, training and employment, to explain the high proportion of disabled people not working (see A recent poll in Statistics). Discuss the possible solutions that would help increase the proportion of disabled people in work.

13. At KS3 and KS4 it is appropriate to discuss sexual relationships and disabled people.

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