Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about resistance to change—especially when it comes to disability inclusion.
Not the loud kind. Not the outrage or flat-out refusal.
I’m talking about the quieter kind.
The “We’ve always done it this way” kind. The “We’ve never had any complaints” kind. The “Let’s just wait until the next strategy cycle” kind.
Resistance doesn’t always look like saying no. Sometimes, it sounds like a polite delay. Sometimes, it hides behind a process that’s too complex to challenge. And sometimes, it’s disguised as concern about fairness, workload, or budget.
More often than not, it’s fear.
Fear of doing it wrong. Fear of being exposed for not having thought of it earlier. Fear of setting a precedent you’ll be expected to follow. Fear of change itself.
Inclusion pushes up against comfort
Disability inclusion challenges what’s familiar.
It asks us to look at the structures and habits that many people have never needed to question. To confront the parts of our systems that prioritise convenience for some over access for others. To rethink the pace, format, and expectations that we’ve come to treat as “standard.”
It might start with small things:
- Why are meetings always scheduled at times that exclude people with caring responsibilities or fatigue-related conditions?
- Why does your application form time out after 15 minutes, even when someone is using assistive tech?
- Why is the committee still meeting in a building without an accessible toilet?
But it doesn’t stay small.
These patterns reflect a deeper truth: When we don’t intentionally design for inclusion, we unintentionally reinforce exclusion.
And questioning those patterns can make people uncomfortable. Because it means recognising that what has worked for you might be actively excluding someone else.
The systems that feel smooth for some are barriers for others
It’s easy to assume a process works when it’s always worked for you. But that perspective is limited.
The application form that’s “quick and easy” might be unusable with a screen reader. The lively, interactive workshop might be overwhelming for someone with a cognitive disability. The “just drop in and say hello” culture might exclude people with anxiety or chronic illness.
Inclusion isn’t about making everything perfect. It’s about recognising who keeps getting left out — and doing something about it.
Because comfort, left unchecked, becomes culture. And culture, if it’s not inclusive by design, will keep doing what it’s always done: Making some people feel welcome while quietly pushing others to the margins.
Discomfort isn’t a problem — it’s a signal
Resistance is uncomfortable. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Discomfort tells us we’re pushing up against something that matters. It shows up when we’re being asked to look again at things we’ve taken for granted. And it often signals that inclusion work is finally moving beyond the surface.
Here are a few questions I find useful when resistance shows up:
- Who benefits from how things currently operate?
- Who keeps getting left out, even though they were “technically included”?
- What’s being protected by delaying or downplaying change?
If you’re not asking questions like these, there’s a good chance your inclusion work is staying safely in the comfort zone — where nothing really shifts.
If you’re hitting walls, you’re not alone
Inclusion work doesn’t always fail loudly. Sometimes it just fades out. It gets stuck in draft documents. It becomes a series of one-off actions without follow-through. It falls off the agenda when something more “urgent” comes along.
None of that means you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re doing work that requires culture change — and that’s rarely linear, neat, or universally welcomed.
But if you’ve noticed the resistance and kept going anyway — if you’ve asked the harder questions, pushed for the better process, or simply sat with the discomfort and refused to look away — you’re doing the work.
And that matters.
Final thought: Keep going
Disability inclusion isn’t a checkbox, a training module, or a once-a-year event. It’s a challenge to the way things have always been done — and that will always come with resistance.
But that resistance? It’s not a stop sign. It’s an invitation.
To pause. To reflect. And to ask: Are we protecting comfort, or are we creating change?
I’d love to hear from you — where are you seeing resistance in your work? And what’s helped you move through it?
