Why Disability Inclusion in Company Events is Still an Afterthought - And Why That Needs To Change

July is Disability Pride Month.

And while a lot of companies are marking it with policy updates, awareness emails and rainbow-adjacent communications, very few are asking a more uncomfortable question.

What does your last company event say about how inclusive your business actually is?

The Uncomfortable Truth

Most company events are designed for the majority. The physically able. The extroverted. The ones who don't need anything adapted, adjusted or reconsidered.

Everyone else is expected to keep up.

And they do - because the alternative is drawing attention to themselves in a way that feels worse than struggling through an event that wasn't designed for them in the first place.

That's not inclusion. That's tolerance. And there's a significant difference.

How It Usually Goes

A company event gets booked. The HR team picks something active - a race, a challenge, an outdoor adventure. The venue is chosen. The date is set.

And then, two weeks before the event, someone remembers.

"Does everyone on the team have mobility issues we need to think about? Is the route accessible? Are the activities going to work for everyone?"

The scramble begins. Adaptations are made. A quieter version of the event is hastily constructed for the people who can't fully participate.

And those people know exactly what's happened. They're not in the main event. They're in the adapted version. The afterthought version.

That's the moment the message lands - however unintentionally. You matter. Just slightly less than everyone else.

What Genuine Inclusion Actually Looks Like

It doesn't start two weeks before the event. It starts at the brief.

When inclusion is designed in from day one - not retrofitted at the end - something completely different happens. The route is accessible from the start. The activities are built around different strengths, not just physical ones. The pace works for everyone. And nobody needs an adapted version because the main version already works for them.

The team doesn't notice the inclusion. They just notice that everyone had a brilliant time.

That's the difference between bolting inclusion on and building it in.

Why This Matters More Than One Month a Year

Disability Pride Month is valuable. But the company events you run in August, October and February send just as loud a message about inclusion as anything you do in July.

If your company events programme only considers accessibility when prompted by an awareness month, that's not a culture of inclusion. That's a culture of compliance.

The companies that get this right aren't the ones that add an accessibility checkbox to their event planning process. They're the ones that never had to add it - because it was never an afterthought in the first place.

The Question Worth Asking

Before you book your next company event, ask yourself one question.

If every member of your team attended this event, would every single one of them feel like it was designed for them?

If the answer is anything other than an immediate yes - it's worth having a different conversation about what company events actually mean in your organisation.

We Build Events That Work for Everyone

At Get Together Events we design every event from the ground up with inclusion at the centre - not the edges. Because the best company events don't work for most of your team. They work for all of them.

Get in touch today and we'll come back to you ASAP.

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