Most organisations would say their disability inclusion work is rights-based. Ask why they do it, and you’ll get language about equity, dignity, and legal obligation. That’s the frame on the label.
It’s rarely the only frame actually running underneath — and the gap between the label and what’s actually driving decisions is where most of the invisible barriers in this newsletter tend to live.
Why this matters more than it sounds like it should
Trained as an applied anthropologist, I keep coming back to the idea that organisations don’t operate on a single, clean model of disability. They operate from several, layered on top of each other, usually without anyone noticing the layers exist. Research on workplace disability inclusion has traced at least five frames that tend to coexist inside the same organisation: biomedical, charity, social, rights-based, and economic. Rarely is it just one. Almost never is the one an organisation publicly names the one actually shaping its day-to-day decisions.
This isn’t a minor academic distinction. Which frame is operating determines what gets funded, what gets consulted on, and who gets to speak for the work. Two organisations can have near-identical DIAPs, near-identical policy language, and still produce completely different lived experiences for disabled staff — because the frame quietly running underneath the paperwork was never the one written on it.
Here’s what each one actually looks like in practice, not in theory:
Biomedical treats disability as an individual deficit to be assessed, managed, or accommodated around — the language of “conditions,” “cases,” and “capacity.” You can spot it when adjustment conversations focus entirely on what’s “wrong” with the person, rather than what’s wrong with the environment around them. It’s the frame that produces sentences like “we need to understand her limitations” instead of “we need to understand what this role currently assumes about how someone works.”
Charity treats inclusion as generosity — something the organisation is doing for disabled people, out of goodwill. You can spot it in language like “giving someone a chance,” or in initiatives that never involve disabled people in the design, only as beneficiaries of it. It often shows up as genuine warmth from the people closest to it, which is exactly why it’s hard to name as a problem — the individuals involved usually mean well. The frame is the issue, not their intent.
Social treats disability as produced by the mismatch between a person and their environment — the barrier is the badly designed process, not the person navigating it. This is the frame most organisations say they operate from, and the one that shows up in almost every values statement and DIAP introduction.
Rights-based treats inclusion as a legal and moral entitlement, not a favour — the language of obligation, not generosity. It sits closest to what most compliance and governance documents are actually built around.
Economic treats inclusion as a business case — diversity as a driver of performance, innovation, or market reach. Useful for getting budget approved, but it quietly makes inclusion conditional: valuable only for as long as it can be shown to pay for itself.
None of these is wrong on their own. The problem is that most organisations believe they’re operating purely from one — usually social or rights-based — while a charity or biomedical frame is quietly doing the actual work beneath the surface, shaping which decisions get made and which don’t.
How to tell which frame is really running things
Look at your language, not your intentions. If workplace adjustment conversations centre on what an employee “can’t do,” that’s biomedical framing, whatever your policy document says. If leadership talks about disability inclusion as something the organisation is “proud to offer,” that’s charity framing wearing a rights-based document as a coat. If a business case is the only argument that ever gets initiatives funded, that’s economic framing — useful, but worth naming honestly rather than dressing up as principle.
Here’s a concrete version of how this plays out. Two organisations both approve a workplace adjustment for the same kind of request. In one, approval comes because the adjustment is a legal entitlement —full stop—rights-based framing in practice, not just on paper. In the other, the approval comes because someone made the case that it’s cheap, low-risk, and reflects well on the team — economic and charity framing, doing rights-based work by accident. From the outside, both look identical: the adjustment was approved. Ask what happens with the next, more expensive or more disruptive request, though, and the two organisations diverge sharply. The rights-based one has a principle to fall back on. The other has to win the business case again, from scratch, every time — and eventually loses one.
This is exactly the kind of invisible barrier I keep returning to. It’s not that organisations are lying about their values. It’s that stated frame and operating frame quietly diverge, and almost nobody checks which one is actually driving decisions until a harder case tests it.
What to do with this
Takeaway 1: Listen to how your own organisation talks about disability inclusion in an unscripted moment — a hallway conversation, an off-the-cuff comment in a meeting — not the polished language from your DIAP. The gap between the two tells you which frame is actually operating.
Takeaway 2: Ask what happens when an initiative has no clear business case. If it stalls, your organisation’s real operating frame is economic, regardless of what your values statement says. That’s not necessarily bad — but it’s worth knowing honestly, because it tells you exactly what kind of argument you need to make to get anything funded, and what happens the day that argument stops working.
Takeaway 3: Check who designs your initiatives versus who they’re designed for. If disabled staff are consulted only after the design is set, that’s charity framing, no matter how rights-based the language around it sounds. Genuine co-design — paid, resourced, involved from the start — is one of the clearest tells of which frame is actually in charge.
Takeaway 4: Notice whether adjustment conversations start with “what does this person need” or “what’s wrong with this person.” That single framing choice, repeated often enough, is the biomedical frame either receding or entrenching — and it’s usually visible in the first sentence of the conversation, before anyone’s consciously chosen a position.
Over to you
If you had to guess honestly — not aspirationally — which frame is actually running your organisation’s disability inclusion work, which one would it be? Tell me in the comments. Most people find it’s not the one on their DIAP’s cover page.
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