This quote is from a powerful article exploring how people with disabilities were thinking and feeling one year into the pandemic. We strongly recommend reading it here. You can also follow Pulrang on Twitter or visit his website Disability Thinking.

What the article makes very clear is that ableism, the discrimination against people with disabilities, is “not theoretical but real” and that the pandemic has made that clearer than ever.

While this new attention is certainly coming too late, the data suggests a lot more people are aware of ableism compared to a couple of years ago.

Search interest in the topic of ableism had been growing for many years until 2015, when interest stagnated. But by June 2020, this subject started to skyrocket across the world. While numbers have fallen since their peak in November of the same year, interest remains far above what it was pre-pandemic.

We can see a similar trend when looking at mentions of ableism on Twitter, forums, and blogs.

Again, we see growth for a number of years until the pandemic when mentions shot up. Much of this was driven by what was happening to people with disabilities due to the pandemic, including discussions around care homes, shielding, and making sure people were getting the support they needed.

We also found that the big spikes in the conversation were caused by tag-chain tweets that mentioned ableism.

And just as with search interest, online mentions remain far, far above their pre-pandemic levels. With attention to the issue much higher than normal, this a prime time for people and organizations to think about what changes they can make to tackle ableism.

One area for companies to focus is of course around their workers.

Looking at employment

We teamed up with Monster to take a deep dive into this topic for a new report. You can read the whole thing here.

The data specifically covers conversations relating to employment and people with disabilities, but despite conversations around ableism increasing during the pandemic, these conversations didn’t.

Our report suggests this was due to a ‘pause’ in the job market, as hiring freeze and in-person events meant focus was elsewhere. But whatever the reason, it highlights how important it is to get those conversations going again now.

It also looked at the biggest themes within this topic.

We can see that mentions are fairly evenly spread across all areas.. This isn’t just about the legal ramifications or pay, it’s about everything. This is a good sign and shows that a lot of aspects are being considered.

The issue of flexible and remote working is also noted in the report, being the fastest growing topic. It’s yet to reach the volume of the five topics above, but it again shows how the pandemic has refocused conversations.

Find out more

Our report on this topic, The Changing Conversation Around Work and People with Disabilities, can be read for free here. It offers lots of more data, research, and insight we hope you’ll find useful

What should we cover next?

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Send any and all ideas to [email protected] and let’s talk.

Thanks for reading

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Stay safe,

The Brandwatch React team