Women Enabled International, a Channel grantee partner dedicated to fighting for the rights of women with disabilities, released a new Feminist Accessibility Protocol on April 26, 2023 along with the Inclusive Generation Equality Collective (IGEC). The Protocol is a “groundbreaking set of 13 commitments setting the standard for disability accessibility in feminist and gender equality spaces.”
The Inclusive Generation Equality Collective is a group of activists with disabilities and allies from around the world advocating for the inclusion of feminists with disabilities. The IGEC created the Protocol in response to accessibility barriers present in gender equality spaces that hindered the participation of feminists with disabilities. The Protocol serves to raise awareness about the importance of accessibility and inclusivity and “encourage action from States, feminist organizations, UN entities, and other actors.”
The thirteen commitments are as follows: Recognition, Participation & Belonging, Intersectional Inclusion & Leadership, Budget for Accessibility, Culture of Access, Respectful Registration Processes, Physical Accessibility, Communication Access, Information Access, Psychosocial Accessibility, Inclusive Outcomes, Continual Measurement & Learning, From Pledge to Practice, and Dismantling Systems of Oppression.
In addition to these commitments, the Protocol also consists of an Annex with “good practices on accessibility and the outcomes of focus groups on accessibility in gender equality spaces.” The commitments and good practices presented in the Protocol emphasize that those with physical, visual, auditory, and psychosocial disabilities, among others, should not only have accessible access to events and information within the feminist sphere, they should be involved in the planning and execution of these events, in order to best decrease the barriers to entry.
The Feminist Accessibility Protocol is accessible in various formats. There are English, Easy Read, International Sign and Spanish versions of the Protocol.