Welcome to
AXIS Live.
Your DEIB toolkit, here whenever you need it. This sample opens one section: disability.
Reach for it when a real moment lands.
A living reference for the language, ideas and situations that come up in your workplace. Every page ends with prompts that turn your organisation's AI assistant into a personal guide, on whatever you're dealing with right now.
What it isn't: a course.
No homework, no modules to finish, no test at the end. Read one page or fifty. Nobody is keeping score.
When to reach for it
Ask it. Don't just read it.
Every page ends with prompts. Copy one, paste it into your organisation's AI assistant, and keep replying. The prompt sets things up. The conversation is yours.
Copy the prompt.
One tap on the button.
Paste it into your organisation's approved AI tool.
Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise or whatever your company uses. Not a personal account.
Keep going.
Reply, pick an option, push back, ask it to go simpler. It gets more useful the longer you stay.
Learn it
You want to understand something properly.
The AI explains it in a work setting, gives you a real example, then offers three ways to go further. You pick; it follows.
Challenge me
You're not sure you agree, or want to test your own thinking.
The AI makes the sceptic's case, then the other side, then asks where you land. No audience, no judgement.
Help with a real situation
Something has happened, or is about to.
You describe it without names or client detail. The AI asks a few questions, helps you think it through, and gives you words you could use.
Plan my path
You want to know where to go next.
The AI asks about your role and what you're facing, then suggests where to start and what to read next.
AI can be wrong, and it can sound very sure while it is.
Treat it as a thinking partner, not an authority. Anything involving policy, discipline or the law goes to HR or your formal routes, not a chatbot.
Disability.
People move when they feel invited, not indicted.
AXIS Live doesn't tell you what to think, and it doesn't blame. It gives you the language and the context to act with confidence.
Disability and access.
This is a sample of AXIS Live. Links shown faded go to pages in the full toolkit.
Disability covers a wide range of conditions: physical, sensory (sight and hearing), intellectual, psychosocial (mental health) and neurological. Some people are born with a disability; others become disabled through illness, injury or age. Some disabilities are visible. Many are not. Some are constant, and others come and go, with good days and bad days.
Disability is also the one identity group any of us can join at any point in our working lives. That alone makes it worth getting right.
Two ways of seeing disability
The social model was developed by disabled activists in the UK in the 1970s and named by the academic Mike Oliver. Run to the Monster puts it simply: disabled people are not inherently disabled. They are people who enter spaces that disable them by denying them access and mobility. Medical care still matters to many disabled people. The social model adds a second, more useful question for a workplace: what is in this person's way, and can we move it?
The social and biomedical models, as taught in The Inclusion Challenge, Run to the Monster.
Nothing about us without us.
A guiding principle of the disability rights movement: decisions about disabled people should be made with disabled people in the room. That applies to a building refit, a new HR system and the team offsite.
What it is not
The Employment Equity Act defines people with disabilities as people with a long-term or recurring physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairment which, in interaction with various barriers, may substantially limit their prospects of entry into, or advancement in, employment. That wording, updated by the 2022 amendments, echoes the social model: the barriers are part of the definition. People with disabilities are one of the Act's three designated groups, with Black people and women, and disability is a listed ground of unfair discrimination.
The 2015 Code of Good Practice on the Employment of Persons with Disabilities sets out what employers should do: look at the effect of a disability in the working environment rather than the diagnosis, reasonably accommodate people's needs, and keep disability status confidential unless the person agrees otherwise.
The numbers show a wide gap. In Census 2022, 6.0% of people aged five and older had a disability on the UN measure, and 15.7% on a broader one. In the 2025 employment equity reporting cycle, people with disabilities were 1.3% of the reported workforce, a share that has sat just above 1% for years. The two figures measure different things, and low workplace numbers also reflect people choosing not to disclose. Sector targets in force since April 2025 raise the disability target from 2% to 3%; they are being challenged in court.
South African activists helped carry "Nothing about us without us" into the global disability movement: the American author James Charlton, whose 1998 book took the phrase as its title, first heard it in talks by South African disability activists Michael Masutha and William Rowland. And South African Sign Language became the country's twelfth official language when the constitutional amendment came into force on 26 June 2026.
- Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, s1 definitions (Acts Online)
- Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr: Q&A on the Employment Equity Amendment Bill (2022)
- Employment Equity Act, s6 prohibition of unfair discrimination (Acts Online)
- Code of Good Practice on the Employment of Persons with Disabilities, 2015 (WorkInfo)
- Stats SA: Census 2022 disability statistics (2024)
- Department of Employment and Labour: 26th Commission for Employment Equity report statement (2026)
- ClearComply: Employment equity targets in South Africa (2026)
- Wikipedia: Nothing about us without us
- Acts Online: Proclamation 321 of 2026, commencement of the Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Act
Preferences vary. Some people prefer "disabled person" (identity-first) and others "person with a disability" (person-first); South African law uses "people with disabilities". Neither is wrong. Listen to how someone describes themselves, or ask. The same goes for help: if you wonder whether someone needs a hand, ask, and accept the answer.
- Treats access as good design, which helps far more people than the ones who asked.
- Moves disability from charity to rights and contribution.
- Names invisible disability, so people stop having to prove what they live with.
- Fear of getting it wrong, so people hold back: "I see a person in a wheelchair, I don't know whether to shake a hand, so I just don't say hello."
- Worry about cost, and about what accommodation will mean for workloads and fairness.
- Suspicion that invisible conditions are exaggerated to get special treatment.
These reactions are understandable, and the first is the most common. Pulling back feels safe, but it leaves disabled colleagues isolated, which is the opposite of what anyone intended. You won't get every word right. Saying hello, asking what helps and listening will take you most of the way.
In five sentences, explain the difference between the biomedical and social models of disability, and what the social model means at work. Give me one realistic scenario from a South African workplace where a team unintentionally shuts out a disabled colleague. Then give me three options (a, b or c) for where to take this next. I'll pick one and we'll continue.I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I want to test my thinking on disability at work. First, make the strongest honest case that disability inclusion is expensive, and that accommodating some people is unfair to others, and say what is understandable about that view. Then make the strongest case against that view. Don't tell me which is right. Ask me one question about where I stand, and respectfully challenge my answer.I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I want help with a real situation involving disability, accessibility or a colleague's access needs. I won't use names or details that identify anyone, so please don't ask for them. Ask me up to three questions to understand it. Then help me think through what to do, and give me a few words I could actually say.
Here's the situation: [describe it using "a colleague", "my manager" or "someone on my team"]I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I've just read about disability at work in AXIS Live, a DEIB toolkit. It covers foundations (psychological safety, power, identity, bias, microaggressions, allyship, inclusive leadership, repairing mistakes, resistance), dimensions of diversity (race, gender, LGBTIQ+, disability, neurodiversity, health, age, religion and culture, language, class, nationality, carers) and real workplace situations. Ask me four questions, one at a time, about my role, my team and what I find hard. Then suggest the next three topics I should look at, in order, with one line on why each.
No names, no client details. Keeping it confidential
- Social model of disability
- The idea that people are disabled by barriers in their surroundings, systems and attitudes, not only by an impairment. It moves the question from "what is wrong with you?" to "what is in your way?"
- Ableism
- Prejudice or discrimination against disabled people, including the assumption that non-disabled bodies and minds are the norm. It shows up in buildings, systems and processes as well as in individual behaviour.
- Nothing about us without us
- A principle of the disability rights movement: decisions that affect disabled people should be made with disabled people involved.
- Reasonable accommodation
- A change to a job or to the working environment that lets a person with a disability get into work, take part and progress. In South Africa employers must provide it unless it would cause unjustifiable hardship.
- Invisible disability
- A disability that isn't obvious to other people, such as chronic pain, epilepsy, hearing loss or many mental health conditions. People with invisible disabilities are often doubted, and have to decide again and again whether to disclose.
Seen and unseen.
A visible disability is one other people can see, or think they can: a wheelchair, a white cane, a guide dog, a limb difference, a hearing aid. An invisible disability is one they can't: chronic pain, epilepsy, diabetes, partial loss of sight or hearing, chronic fatigue, many mental health conditions and some forms of neurodivergence.
The line between them isn't neat. Many conditions fluctuate, so someone may use a walking stick on some days and not on others. Some people live with both. And because so much disability is invisible, you almost certainly work with disabled colleagues you don't know about.
- People decide what you can do before you've said a word.
- Personal questions about your body from people you've just met.
- Help you didn't ask for, and conversations aimed at whoever is with you.
- Colleagues who avoid you because they don't know what to say.
- Being doubted: "you don't look disabled".
- Deciding, again and again, whether to tell anyone.
- Bad days read as unreliability or a lack of commitment.
- The effort of hiding it all day, on top of the work.
One burden is being seen only as your disability. The other is not being believed. Both use up energy that could go into the work.
The migraine test.
If you have never had a migraine, it is tempting to think a dark room and a day off are a bit dramatic. Just take a painkiller. That reaction says more about what you haven't lived than about what someone else is going through. Not having experienced something doesn't make it less true. It asks more of you: to believe people.
The migraine analogy, Run to the Monster.
Someone managing a condition nobody can see carries an extra, hidden load. Will they notice my hand shaking? Can I get to the bathroom in time? Is it showing? Every one of those questions uses energy that could have gone into the work.
- Say hello. Greet a disabled colleague the way you greet anyone. If you're unsure about a handshake, follow their lead.
- Ask before helping, and accept "no, thanks".
- Speak to the person, not their interpreter or companion. Don't pet or distract a service dog.
- Believe people about what they live with, even when you can't see it.
- Judge the work, not the pattern of good and bad days, and agree in advance how bad days will be handled.
- Make access the default: captions on, documents that work with screen readers, step-free venues, agendas sent early.
- Never ask for proof in front of others. You usually don't need a diagnosis to agree a simple adjustment.
- Notice who is missing from the room, the social events and the informal chats.
"Would you like a hand with that, or are you fine?"
"We're booking the venue now. Is there anything that would make it work better for you?"
"Thanks for telling me. What would help?"
"I'm sorry, I assumed instead of asking. What would you prefer?"
In five sentences, explain the difference between visible and invisible disability, and the different assumptions each one attracts at work. Give me one realistic scenario from a South African workplace where a colleague's invisible disability is misread as a performance or commitment problem. Then give me three options (a, b or c) for where to take this next. I'll pick one and we'll continue.I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I want to test my thinking on visible and invisible disability. First, make the strongest honest case that people with invisible conditions can exaggerate them to get special treatment, and say what is understandable about that view. Then make the strongest case against that view. Don't tell me which is right. Ask me one question about where I stand, and respectfully challenge my answer.I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I want help with a real situation involving a colleague's visible or invisible disability, or my own. I won't use names or details that identify anyone, so please don't ask for them. Ask me up to three questions to understand it. Then help me think through what to do, and give me a few words I could actually say.
Here's the situation: [describe it using "a colleague", "my manager" or "someone on my team"]I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I've just read about visible and invisible disability in AXIS Live, a DEIB toolkit. It covers foundations (psychological safety, power, identity, bias, microaggressions, allyship, inclusive leadership, repairing mistakes, resistance), dimensions of diversity (race, gender, LGBTIQ+, disability, neurodiversity, health, age, religion and culture, language, class, nationality, carers) and real workplace situations. Ask me four questions, one at a time, about my role, my team and what I find hard. Then suggest the next three topics I should look at, in order, with one line on why each.
No names, no client details. Keeping it confidential
- Invisible disability
- A disability that isn't obvious to other people, such as chronic pain, epilepsy, hearing loss or many mental health conditions. People with invisible disabilities are often doubted, and have to decide again and again whether to disclose.
- Social model of disability
- The idea that people are disabled by barriers in their surroundings, systems and attitudes, not only by an impairment. It moves the question from "what is wrong with you?" to "what is in your way?"
- Retreat from relations
- Pulling back from colleagues out of fear of getting it wrong: not mentoring, not asking, not giving honest feedback, not saying hello. It feels safe and quietly damages trust and opportunity.
- Microaggression
- An everyday comment, question or action, often unintended, that sends a slighting message to someone about a group they belong to. The impact comes mostly from repetition. The term was coined by Chester Pierce and developed by Derald Wing Sue; some researchers debate how it is defined.
Reasonable accommodation.
Reasonable accommodation is a change to a job or to the working environment that lets a person with a disability get into work, take part fully and progress. It is not a favour. It is how a capable person gets a fair shot at the same standard as everyone else.
Many accommodations cost little or nothing. What they need is a conversation and a decision.
Accommodation fixes a gap after someone has hit it. Run to the Monster encourages organisations to go further. When you design anything, a policy, a project team, an event, a delivery schedule, think about the range of people it is for: someone pregnant, someone religious, someone with a disability. Then design around their needs from the start, instead of adding a fix later. If you don't know what someone needs, ask. Asking is one of the quickest ways to build trust.
Being catered for.
Accessibility is about being catered for, and being catered for communicates that your needs have been considered, that you matter here.
Design for, don't accommodate, and Being catered for, from The Inclusion Challenge, Run to the Monster.
The need comes up.
Usually the employee asks. Sometimes the need is obvious, and a good manager raises it gently instead of waiting.
Talk about the need, not the diagnosis.
What gets in the way, and what would help? The person usually knows best. Ask for medical information only if the decision genuinely needs it, and through HR.
Agree what is practical.
If the exact request isn't possible, look for another way to meet the same need. Involve HR where there is cost, policy or a formal assessment.
Put it in place, quietly.
Agree with the person what, if anything, the team needs to know. Then move quickly. A slow yes feels like a no.
Check it is working.
Needs change, and so do jobs. Review after a few weeks, and again when the role changes.
For the conversation itself, see Someone asked for an adjustment or accommodation.
- Lets skilled people do jobs they were always capable of.
- Many changes turn out to help the whole team.
- Shows people the organisation will back them if their circumstances change.
- "If we do it for you, we'll have to do it for everyone."
- Worry about cost, and about colleagues picking up extra work.
- Concern that adjustments will be abused, or that standards will slip.
Each of these deserves a straight answer. Accommodation doesn't lower the standard of the work; it removes a barrier to meeting it. Fairness means giving people what they need, which isn't always the same thing. And "we'd have to do it for everyone" is often a sign the change would help everyone. Where there is a real cost or workload impact, say so, and solve it in the open.
"You mentioned the screen strain is getting worse. What would make the work easier?"
"I can't do exactly that, but I want to meet the need. Can we look at other options together?"
"It's been a month. Is the new set-up working, or do we need to change it?"
"We've changed a few things so everyone can do their best work. The details are theirs to share."
The 2015 Code of Good Practice on the Employment of Persons with Disabilities says employers must reasonably accommodate the needs of people with disabilities. It describes accommodation as any modification or adjustment to a job or to the working environment, including adapting facilities, reorganising workstations and restructuring jobs so that non-essential tasks are reassigned. An employer doesn't have to make an accommodation that would cause unjustifiable hardship, which the Code describes as significant or considerable difficulty or expense. The focus is the effect of a disability at work, not the diagnosis.
This is a plain-language summary, not legal advice. Involve HR in anything formal, and see The law in plain language.
In five sentences, explain what reasonable accommodation is, and the difference between accommodating people and designing for them. Give me one realistic scenario from a South African workplace where a manager handles a request for an accommodation well. Then give me three options (a, b or c) for where to take this next. I'll pick one and we'll continue.I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I want to test my thinking on reasonable accommodation. First, make the strongest honest case that accommodations are special treatment and unfair to colleagues who don't get them, and say what is understandable about that view. Then make the strongest case against that view. Don't tell me which is right. Ask me one question about where I stand, and respectfully challenge my answer.I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I want help with a real situation where someone has asked for an accommodation, or where I need one myself. I won't use names or details that identify anyone, so please don't ask for them. Ask me up to three questions to understand it. Then help me think through what to do, and give me a few words I could actually say.
Here's the situation: [describe it using "a colleague", "my manager" or "someone on my team"]I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I've just read about reasonable accommodation in AXIS Live, a DEIB toolkit. It covers foundations (psychological safety, power, identity, bias, microaggressions, allyship, inclusive leadership, repairing mistakes, resistance), dimensions of diversity (race, gender, LGBTIQ+, disability, neurodiversity, health, age, religion and culture, language, class, nationality, carers) and real workplace situations. Ask me four questions, one at a time, about my role, my team and what I find hard. Then suggest the next three topics I should look at, in order, with one line on why each.
No names, no client details. Keeping it confidential
- Reasonable accommodation
- A change to a job or to the working environment that lets a person with a disability get into work, take part and progress. In South Africa employers must provide it unless it would cause unjustifiable hardship.
- Universal design
- Designing spaces, systems and ways of working to suit as many people as possible from the start, instead of adding fixes later. Run to the Monster calls this designing for people, not just accommodating them.
- Social model of disability
- The idea that people are disabled by barriers in their surroundings, systems and attitudes, not only by an impairment. It moves the question from "what is wrong with you?" to "what is in your way?"
Disclosure, on their terms.
Disclosure is telling someone at work about a disability or health condition. It is the person's choice: whether to tell, when, whom, and how much. Nobody owes colleagues an explanation of their body or their mind.
Disclosure is rarely a single moment. People decide again with every new manager, team and job. Someone might tell HR for employment equity reporting, tell their manager to get an adjustment, and tell nobody else. Each is a separate choice.
Keeping it private has costs too. People go without adjustments that would help, and bad days get read as poor performance. They also carry an extra question into every meeting. Run to the Monster names one many people know: is my mental health showing? Organisations invite people to bring their whole selves to work, while the signals around them show how much of a self is actually welcome.
- Explain why employment equity forms ask about disability, who sees the answer and how it is protected.
- Make adjustments easy to request, with a process that starts with the need, not the diagnosis.
- Show that disabled people progress here, and involve them in decisions that affect them.
- Keep health information confidential and limited to the people who need it.
- Ask everyone, regularly, what helps them do their best work. That makes it normal to answer.
- Respond well to small disclosures. People test the water before they share more.
- Never pass on what you've been told without permission, even with good intentions.
- Judge the work. Don't let what you know change the opportunities you offer.
Thank them.
They have trusted you with something. Keep your response calm and warm: no pity, no drama.
Ask what they would like.
Do they want anything to change, or did they just want you to know? Both are fine.
Agree who else knows.
Ask whether anyone else should be told, who tells them, and what is said.
Keep it confidential.
Don't pass it on, even to "help". If HR needs to be involved, agree that with them first.
Follow through.
Do what you agreed and check in later. Otherwise, treat them exactly as before.
"Thank you for telling me. Is there anything you'd like to change, or did you just want me to know?"
"I won't share this. Is there anyone you'd like to know, and how would you like them told?"
"How is the arrangement working for you? Anything we should change?"
The 2015 Code of Good Practice on the Employment of Persons with Disabilities says people with disabilities are entitled to keep their disability status confidential and may disclose it at any time, and that an employer may not share it without the person's written consent unless the law requires it. For employment equity reporting, employees can choose not to disclose, to disclose openly or to disclose confidentially. Under POPIA, health information is special personal information, with stricter rules on how it is collected, used and stored. See The law in plain language.
In five sentences, explain why people often choose not to disclose a disability or health condition at work, and what makes it safer. Give me one realistic scenario from a South African workplace where an employee is deciding whether to tell a new manager about a condition. Then give me three options (a, b or c) for where to take this next. I'll pick one and we'll continue.I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I want to test my thinking on disclosing a disability or health condition at work. First, make the strongest honest case that employees should simply disclose so the organisation can help, and that staying private is their own problem, and say what is understandable about that view. Then make the strongest case against that view. Don't tell me which is right. Ask me one question about where I stand, and respectfully challenge my answer.I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I want help with a real situation where someone has told me about a disability or health condition, or where I am deciding whether to tell someone. I won't use names or details that identify anyone, so please don't ask for them. Ask me up to three questions to understand it. Then help me think through what to do, and give me a few words I could actually say.
Here's the situation: [describe it using "a colleague", "my manager" or "someone on my team"]I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student.
I've just read about disclosing a disability or health condition at work in AXIS Live, a DEIB toolkit. It covers foundations (psychological safety, power, identity, bias, microaggressions, allyship, inclusive leadership, repairing mistakes, resistance), dimensions of diversity (race, gender, LGBTIQ+, disability, neurodiversity, health, age, religion and culture, language, class, nationality, carers) and real workplace situations. Ask me four questions, one at a time, about my role, my team and what I find hard. Then suggest the next three topics I should look at, in order, with one line on why each.
No names, no client details. Keeping it confidential
- Disclosure
- Choosing to tell someone at work about a disability, health condition or other private part of who you are. It is voluntary, can be partial, and is often decided again with each new manager or team.
- Invisible disability
- A disability that isn't obvious to other people, such as chronic pain, epilepsy, hearing loss or many mental health conditions. People with invisible disabilities are often doubted, and have to decide again and again whether to disclose.
- Stigma
- Negative beliefs attached to a characteristic, such as a health condition, that lead people to be judged or treated as less. Stigma often makes people hide what they need support with.
Someone asked for an adjustment.
Someone on your team has asked for something to work differently. A different chair or screen, flexible hours for treatment, a quieter place to work, written instructions instead of verbal ones, time to pray, a change to how meetings run. You want to help. You are also wondering what you are allowed to ask, what it will cost, and what the rest of the team will think.
Asking took courage. Many people put off asking for months, or never ask, because they worry about being seen as difficult or less capable. The person asking usually knows best what helps; your job is to work out, with them, what is practical.
In South Africa, employers have a legal duty to make reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities, and many requests (for health, religion or family reasons) are good management anyway. Many adjustments cost little or nothing. And many of them help more people than the one who asked.
Thank them and take it seriously.
A positive first response makes everything after it easier.
Ask what would help, not what is wrong.
You need to understand what they need to do the job well. You usually don't need a diagnosis, and you shouldn't ask for more personal detail than the decision needs.
Work out what is practical, together.
If the exact request isn't possible, look for another way to meet the same need. Involve HR where there is cost, policy or a formal process.
Keep it confidential.
Agree with them what, if anything, the team needs to know, and who tells them.
Review it.
Check after a few weeks whether it is working. Needs change.
- "If I do it for you, I'll have to do it for everyone." Fairness means giving people what they need, not the same thing.
- Asking for medical proof straight away. Sometimes documentation is needed. Lead with the conversation, not the paperwork.
- Explaining their situation to the team. It is their information to share.
- Treating it as a favour. It makes people feel they owe you, and less likely to ask next time.
- Letting it drift. A slow answer feels like a no.
"Thanks for raising it. Let's work out what would help."
"What gets in the way at the moment, and what would make it easier?"
"I can't do exactly that, but I want to meet the need. Can we look at other ways?"
"Who, if anyone, would you like the team to know, and what would you like them to know?"
Requests linked to a disability fall under the Employment Equity Act and the Code of Good Practice on the employment of persons with disabilities. Health information is protected personal information. If a request involves cost, a formal assessment or a change to someone's contract, involve HR. See Reasonable accommodation and The law in plain language.
Someone on my team has asked for an adjustment and I want to handle it well. I won't use names or details that identify anyone, so please don't ask for them. Ask me up to three questions: what they asked for, what the job needs, and what constraints I have. Don't ask about their diagnosis. Then help me think through what is practical, what alternatives might meet the same need, and what I should involve HR in. Give me a few short words for the conversation.
Here's the request: [describe the adjustment, not the person]
No names, no client details. Keeping it confidential
Glossary, A to Z.
Every disability term in this sample, defined once. Definitions describe real people and real identities, so they are written to be accurate and neutral. Where a word is still contested, we say so.
- Ableism
- Prejudice or discrimination against disabled people, including the assumption that non-disabled bodies and minds are the norm. It shows up in buildings, systems and processes as well as in individual behaviour.
- Designated groups
- Under the Employment Equity Act: Black people (African, Coloured and Indian), women and people with disabilities who are South African citizens by birth or descent, or who became citizens by naturalisation before 27 April 1994 (or would have, but for apartheid policies). Employment equity plans aim at their equitable representation.
- Disclosure
- Choosing to tell someone at work about a disability, health condition or other private part of who you are. It is voluntary, can be partial, and is often decided again with each new manager or team.
- Invisible disability
- A disability that isn't obvious to other people, such as chronic pain, epilepsy, hearing loss or many mental health conditions. People with invisible disabilities are often doubted, and have to decide again and again whether to disclose.
- Microaggression
- An everyday comment, question or action, often unintended, that sends a slighting message to someone about a group they belong to. The impact comes mostly from repetition. The term was coined by Chester Pierce and developed by Derald Wing Sue; some researchers debate how it is defined.
- Nothing about us without us
- A principle of the disability rights movement: decisions that affect disabled people should be made with disabled people involved.
- Reasonable accommodation
- A change to a job or to the working environment that lets a person with a disability get into work, take part and progress. In South Africa employers must provide it unless it would cause unjustifiable hardship.
- Retreat from relations
- Pulling back from colleagues out of fear of getting it wrong: not mentoring, not asking, not giving honest feedback, not saying hello. It feels safe and quietly damages trust and opportunity.
- Social model of disability
- The idea that people are disabled by barriers in their surroundings, systems and attitudes, not only by an impairment. It moves the question from "what is wrong with you?" to "what is in your way?"
- Stigma
- Negative beliefs attached to a characteristic, such as a health condition, that lead people to be judged or treated as less. Stigma often makes people hide what they need support with.
- Universal design
- Designing spaces, systems and ways of working to suit as many people as possible from the start, instead of adding fixes later. Run to the Monster calls this designing for people, not just accommodating them.
Every disability prompt, in one place.
Filter by the kind of help you want, or by section. Every prompt works in your organisation's approved AI tool. No names, no client details.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. In five sentences, explain the difference between the biomedical and social models of disability, and what the social model means at work. Give me one realistic scenario from a South African workplace where a team unintentionally shuts out a disabled colleague. Then give me three options (a, b or c) for where to take this next. I'll pick one and we'll continue.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I want to test my thinking on disability at work. First, make the strongest honest case that disability inclusion is expensive, and that accommodating some people is unfair to others, and say what is understandable about that view. Then make the strongest case against that view. Don't tell me which is right. Ask me one question about where I stand, and respectfully challenge my answer.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I want help with a real situation involving disability, accessibility or a colleague's access needs. I won't use names or details that identify anyone, so please don't ask for them. Ask me up to three questions to understand it. Then help me think through what to do, and give me a few words I could actually say. Here's the situation: [describe it using "a colleague", "my manager" or "someone on my team"]
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I've just read about disability at work in AXIS Live, a DEIB toolkit. It covers foundations (psychological safety, power, identity, bias, microaggressions, allyship, inclusive leadership, repairing mistakes, resistance), dimensions of diversity (race, gender, LGBTIQ+, disability, neurodiversity, health, age, religion and culture, language, class, nationality, carers) and real workplace situations. Ask me four questions, one at a time, about my role, my team and what I find hard. Then suggest the next three topics I should look at, in order, with one line on why each.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. In five sentences, explain the difference between visible and invisible disability, and the different assumptions each one attracts at work. Give me one realistic scenario from a South African workplace where a colleague's invisible disability is misread as a performance or commitment problem. Then give me three options (a, b or c) for where to take this next. I'll pick one and we'll continue.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I want to test my thinking on visible and invisible disability. First, make the strongest honest case that people with invisible conditions can exaggerate them to get special treatment, and say what is understandable about that view. Then make the strongest case against that view. Don't tell me which is right. Ask me one question about where I stand, and respectfully challenge my answer.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I want help with a real situation involving a colleague's visible or invisible disability, or my own. I won't use names or details that identify anyone, so please don't ask for them. Ask me up to three questions to understand it. Then help me think through what to do, and give me a few words I could actually say. Here's the situation: [describe it using "a colleague", "my manager" or "someone on my team"]
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I've just read about visible and invisible disability in AXIS Live, a DEIB toolkit. It covers foundations (psychological safety, power, identity, bias, microaggressions, allyship, inclusive leadership, repairing mistakes, resistance), dimensions of diversity (race, gender, LGBTIQ+, disability, neurodiversity, health, age, religion and culture, language, class, nationality, carers) and real workplace situations. Ask me four questions, one at a time, about my role, my team and what I find hard. Then suggest the next three topics I should look at, in order, with one line on why each.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. In five sentences, explain what reasonable accommodation is, and the difference between accommodating people and designing for them. Give me one realistic scenario from a South African workplace where a manager handles a request for an accommodation well. Then give me three options (a, b or c) for where to take this next. I'll pick one and we'll continue.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I want to test my thinking on reasonable accommodation. First, make the strongest honest case that accommodations are special treatment and unfair to colleagues who don't get them, and say what is understandable about that view. Then make the strongest case against that view. Don't tell me which is right. Ask me one question about where I stand, and respectfully challenge my answer.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I want help with a real situation where someone has asked for an accommodation, or where I need one myself. I won't use names or details that identify anyone, so please don't ask for them. Ask me up to three questions to understand it. Then help me think through what to do, and give me a few words I could actually say. Here's the situation: [describe it using "a colleague", "my manager" or "someone on my team"]
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I've just read about reasonable accommodation in AXIS Live, a DEIB toolkit. It covers foundations (psychological safety, power, identity, bias, microaggressions, allyship, inclusive leadership, repairing mistakes, resistance), dimensions of diversity (race, gender, LGBTIQ+, disability, neurodiversity, health, age, religion and culture, language, class, nationality, carers) and real workplace situations. Ask me four questions, one at a time, about my role, my team and what I find hard. Then suggest the next three topics I should look at, in order, with one line on why each.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. In five sentences, explain why people often choose not to disclose a disability or health condition at work, and what makes it safer. Give me one realistic scenario from a South African workplace where an employee is deciding whether to tell a new manager about a condition. Then give me three options (a, b or c) for where to take this next. I'll pick one and we'll continue.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I want to test my thinking on disclosing a disability or health condition at work. First, make the strongest honest case that employees should simply disclose so the organisation can help, and that staying private is their own problem, and say what is understandable about that view. Then make the strongest case against that view. Don't tell me which is right. Ask me one question about where I stand, and respectfully challenge my answer.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I want help with a real situation where someone has told me about a disability or health condition, or where I am deciding whether to tell someone. I won't use names or details that identify anyone, so please don't ask for them. Ask me up to three questions to understand it. Then help me think through what to do, and give me a few words I could actually say. Here's the situation: [describe it using "a colleague", "my manager" or "someone on my team"]
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. I've just read about disclosing a disability or health condition at work in AXIS Live, a DEIB toolkit. It covers foundations (psychological safety, power, identity, bias, microaggressions, allyship, inclusive leadership, repairing mistakes, resistance), dimensions of diversity (race, gender, LGBTIQ+, disability, neurodiversity, health, age, religion and culture, language, class, nationality, carers) and real workplace situations. Ask me four questions, one at a time, about my role, my team and what I find hard. Then suggest the next three topics I should look at, in order, with one line on why each.
I work in a South African organisation. Keep your answers short, plain and direct. No jargon. Treat me as a capable adult, not a student. Someone on my team has asked for an adjustment and I want to handle it well. I won't use names or details that identify anyone, so please don't ask for them. Ask me up to three questions: what they asked for, what the job needs, and what constraints I have. Don't ask about their diagnosis. Then help me think through what is practical, what alternatives might meet the same need, and what I should involve HR in. Give me a few short words for the conversation. Here's the request: [describe the adjustment, not the person]
