Last year I had the biggest dose of FOMO ever after seeing Laura Robinson from Worditude and Andrew & Pete from Atomic, come back from #2020sorted and talk about how they had their content planned out for the whole of the following year after attending Janet’s live event.
I didn’t even know who Janet Murray was.
(Shh, don’t tell anyone. 😂)
I’m on the diversity in business panel along with Sam Hill, Elliot Reid and Suzi Grant. We will be talking about how you can be more inclusive in your marketing.
I was a complete noob to the content marketing world. I’d been making dance costumes for pole dancers for years, but my disability meant I could no longer keep up with demand.
The final decision to stop making costumes came after I experienced an episode of optic neuritis, a fairly common but debilitating symptom in people with MS. I had just handed over a finished costume to a customer who was competing the following weekend when I went blind in one eye. Within three days the vision in my right eye had gone completely. It took nearly five months for it to return.
Had I not finished that costume that week I would have been devastated. My customers put so much effort into their competition entries. The music, the costume and the choreography all perfectly balanced and coordinated. I would have hated to let my customer down and there would have been nothing I could have done about it.
So once I had discovered Janet I started listening to her podcast. Which is totally ass backwards to how most people find Janet. Then I signed up for a free month in her signature programme Build Your Online Audience.
That was January 2020.
I am still a member now and I have also bought several other products from Janet including the digital version of #2020Sorted from last year. The progress I have made in my business can be attributed to a number of key people, but Janet is definitely a major factor in how I have progressed.
I’ve gone from being a costume maker who was struggling to keep up due to physical limitations, to an online business owner selling my digital content to other dance costume makers around the world. I have launched a podcast after taking one of Janet’s courses and totally overhauled my branding and online presence.
When I first started following Janet I never could have imagined any of this was possible. Learning about digital courses, memberships and content marketing has opened up a whole new world of business opportunities for me.
My first online course that helps dance costume makers price their costumes properly and earn an income from their talents launched this month. By following Janet’s advice I was able to sell out within days of putting the course on sale.
So now I have 10 fabulous beta testers who are helping me iron out the wrinkles and make the course as amazing as possible before I make it more widely available. I’m enjoying this new part of my business so much because it means my illness isn’t beating me and I can continue to feel like I have a purpose.
This is not a bid to get sympathy for my illness, my health condition plays a huge part in my work life, but I do not let it define me. I don’t want to be anyone’s ‘inspiration’ just for doing normal stuff that people do, like having a job and getting on with life.
When people say they are inspired by a person who has a disability, I wonder if they are inspired by what the person has achieved, or are they inspired because the person managed to achieve it ‘despite being disabled’.
If it’s more to do with the disability than the achievement it’s probably ‘inspiration porn’.
If it’s more to do with the disability than the achievement – it’s probably ‘inspiration porn’.
Yes, we do sometimes need help and reasonable adjustments to be made, but that’s only to enable us to continue living our lives as closely to a non-disabled person as possible. We still have so much to contribute. Even if we cannot work, we can still think and have opinions and express ourselves.
This can lead to the idea that someone with a disability would never need certain services like business advice, social media management, marketing help and many other areas of business that are catered for in the online marketing world.
So when a person with a disability does something cool, other people start behaving weird and saying things like “If they can do it, then so can I!”
It’s fab if you’ve found inspiration in this way and I’m happy if it has helped you overcome something challenging in your life, but I ask you to take a moment to reflect on what it actually says about the person with the disability.
Is the same as…
“If someone with such an awfully crap life can do it, so can I”
Which also means…
“Their life is so utterly rubbish that I feel I should be able to do something that even a disabled person can do.”
This is not a good way to think about disability.
If ‘people’ think that a person with a disability is not likely to become their customer, they often will determine that they don’t need to be inclusive in the content they put out. I’m hoping that by sharing my experiences as a person with a disability who still does exciting and cool things, I can show people that it’s always worth considering how their content might be accessed by others.
Don’t assume that someone with a disability won’t want to be your customer or that your products aren’t suitable for them. A few basic adjustments can be made that will create an environment where a disabled person can be a part of what you are doing without having to request for additional help.
💎 Do you offer written versions of your content for people who find it easier to consume content this way?
💎 If you hold in person events (hopefully this will be a thing again one day) do you ensure the venue is accessible to those with limited mobility?
💎 Do you include accessibility information on your sales pages?
💎 Do you expect people who need these things to have to make a special request?
Making these requests can increase the feeling of being a burden instead of reaffirming the idea that we can contribute and be a part of everyday life like those people who take this for granted.
I happily share my story because I want to help other small business owners create a safe and welcoming space for people with disabilities to be accepted and part of ‘the norm’.
Being unique and an individual is definitely important to me, but sometimes I just want to be a part of something without having to request special measures. Being inclusive in your business doesn’t need to be hard.
Helping other business owners change their perspective about disability and realise how they can make small changes in their work to be more inclusive is super important to me. So when Janet asked me to speak at #2021Sorted about diversity and being inclusive in business I jumped at the chance.
I must admit, I am nervous. I haven’t done anything like this before. But I’m keen to talk to other delegates and see how I can help them make changes in their business to become more inclusive.
The first step is to radically change the way you see disability and the impact it has on a person’s life. Then try and break down every contact point your customers may have with you and ask yourself if it is truly inclusive and welcoming to people who may have different needs to you.
💎 Are you printouts available in larger print?
💎 Does your website meet the criteria of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1)?
💎 Do you have an accessibility statement?
💎 Do you include people with disabilities in your market research?
💎 Do you even know if you have any customers with disabilities?
💎 Is there an alternative text element to your online images?
💎 Can your website be navigated without using a mouse?
Try not to assume that a person with disabilities won’t want to access your products or services. Even if someone is not able to do certain things, they should still have the right to read about it and make a decision about whether or not they want to pursue it.
My website is not perfect and I have a lot of work to do to get it as accessible as I would like it to be. It’s an ongoing journey and there’s always more to learn as we discover more about how other people access the internet and the services and products they want to buy.
While making these changes you will come across people who don’t agree with you. There will even be people with disabilities who don’t understand or get what you are trying to achieve. That’s ok. You can’t cater for absolutely everyone in every possible situation.
But you can do the work and you can make a difference to a whole group of people you might never have considered before.
Web Usability
https://www.webusability.co.uk Web Usability is a consultancy specialising in UX (User Experience). Their blog posts are easy to read, understand and implement. The following blog posts may be of particular interest.
https://info.webusability.co.uk/blog/uk-government-accessibility-requirements – UK Governement Requirments
https://info.webusability.co.uk/blog/why-we-hate-pdfs – Why we hate PDFs
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
https://www.w3.org/WAI/ – making the web accessible. This is an amazing resource, but it can appear overwhelming if it’s the first time you have started to look at the issues faced by people with audio / visual disabilities.
You might want to try this page first https://www.w3.org/WAI/roles/writers/ (resources for content writers) while you start to understand how you can make your online content more accessible.
If you only remember one thing, remember this. A person with a disability should have the right to access content, even if the content is not relevant to them.
