Providing Information and Advice On Disability Confidence
The Business Disability Forum raises awareness and provides information and definitive guidance on best practice through its website, networking events and publications. While information on some specific topics, such as legislative briefings, are available to members only, the group shares a lot of disability and business-related information with the wider audience as well. It has a media centre with facts and figures and case studies to be used by journalists, which is seen as important to promoting disability as a business issue.
The former EFD's first major publication, ‘Disability etiquette' was launched in 1991 and has sold well over 2 million copies. Since then, it has published a multitude of guides, often in collaboration with their members, among them ‘Guides on disability communication’ geared at different audiences and ‘Line manager guides’ on managing disability at work.
It also issued a set of 18 ‘EFD Briefing papers’ that provide employers with practical guidance and case studies on various issues related to the employment of people with disabilities.
The Business Disability Forum recognises that many large corporations want to provide their employees and customers with information which is specifically relevant to them. Therefore, all of the groups publications can be tailored to feature particular corporate brands, and many guides are available either in hard copy, or as licensed versions for use on the corporation’s intranets.
Although the Business Disability Forum has always offered a helpline service to its employer members in some form, a specific service, ‘Disability Directions’, was established in 2007.
It is provided by a team that answers a range of disability-related queries of members by phone, email, textphone, post or online. The service is confidential and tailored to the needs of the particular client. Calls can be about any aspect of business and disability. Examples of queries include, for example, how to recruit someone with a mental health condition; how to design an accessible conference; or feedback on specific policies affecting disabled people.
Read more about this topic: Employers' Forum On Disability
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—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)