Free Webinar Series: Introduction to Disability Awareness
Top TLDR:
Kintsugi Consulting's free disability awareness webinar series gives organizations a structured, accessible entry point into disability inclusion education—covering the language, etiquette, accommodation, and intersectionality topics that matter most in today's workplaces. Each session is led by Rachel Kaplan, MPH, a disability consultant with both lived and professional expertise. Register for the next available session and use the companion resources to reinforce learning across your team.
Most organizations know they need to do more on disability inclusion. Fewer know where to start. Awareness is thin, training budgets are limited, and the stakes of getting it wrong feel high enough that many teams stay stuck in planning mode indefinitely.
This free webinar series is designed to remove that barrier. Introduction to Disability Awareness is a multi-session live webinar program led by Rachel Kaplan, MPH, Disability Consultant at Kintsugi Consulting. Each session is focused, practical, and built around the real questions that come up in workplaces—not a survey of everything that could possibly be said about disability, but a grounded introduction to what every professional actually needs to know to show up better.
The series is free. It is open to individuals and teams. And it is specifically designed for people who are early in their disability inclusion journey and want a credible, honest starting point.
What Makes This Series Different
There is no shortage of disability awareness content available online. What is in short supply is content built by someone with genuine expertise and lived experience, designed to generate real understanding rather than superficial exposure.
Kintsugi Consulting's approach to disability inclusion is intentionally person-centered, intersectional, and grounded in the social model of disability—meaning it treats barriers as problems to be solved by systems and environments, not by disabled people themselves. That philosophy runs through every session in this series.
You won't find inspiration narratives here. You won't be asked to simulate a disability to build empathy. What you will find is honest, well-structured education that equips participants to do their jobs more inclusively—from how they communicate to how they handle accommodation requests to how they recognize when something has gone wrong and what to do about it.
Rachel's consulting philosophy and methods provide the foundation for this series. Her work is shaped by both personal disability experience and more than a decade of professional practice in disability consulting, public health, and community advocacy.
Who This Series Is For
The Introduction to Disability Awareness webinar series is designed for a broad audience. No prior disability knowledge is required or assumed.
HR Professionals and People Operations Leaders who are building out disability inclusion programming, responding to accommodation requests, or preparing managers to handle disability-related situations more competently.
Managers and Team Leaders who want to show up better for colleagues and direct reports with disabilities and need practical, actionable guidance—not just awareness.
Educators and Nonprofit Professionals working with youth, families, or community members with disabilities who want to deepen their practice and communicate more effectively.
Customer-Facing Teams who interact with the public and want to build the etiquette and communication skills that serve all customers well—including those with visible and invisible disabilities.
Individuals who want to build their own knowledge base as an ally, advocate, or person navigating a disability-adjacent life or career.
The series structure works whether you're attending as an individual professional or registering a team. For organizations looking to extend the learning into a customized format, Kintsugi's full range of services includes tailored training and consultation options built around your specific context.
Session 1: Foundations of Disability Awareness
Focus: What disability is, who it includes, and why the framing matters
The first session establishes the foundation that everything else builds on. Many professionals carry unconscious assumptions about disability—that it's primarily visible, that it primarily affects older people, that it's defined by medical diagnosis, that it's separate from other dimensions of identity. This session challenges all of those assumptions with data, context, and the conceptual frameworks that have shaped modern disability rights and policy.
Key topics covered in Session 1:
Definitions of disability: legal, medical, and identity-based frameworks
The medical model vs. the social model—and why it changes everything
Disability prevalence: who has a disability, and what most disabilities actually look like
The spectrum of visible and invisible disability, including chronic illness, mental health conditions, and neurodivergence
Why intersectionality matters in disability inclusion work
Participants leave Session 1 with a clearer, more accurate mental model of disability—one that prevents the most common assumptions that lead to harm. For deeper reading on neurodivergent employees specifically, neurodiversity in the workplace: inclusive training for all cognitive styles is a strong companion resource.
Session 2: Disability Language and Etiquette
Focus: How to communicate respectfully and navigate everyday interactions with confidence
Language is one of the highest-anxiety areas for people new to disability inclusion. The fear of saying the wrong thing is real—and it often leads to avoidance, which causes its own harm. Session 2 addresses that anxiety directly with clear, current guidance on how to communicate, what words to use and why, and how to navigate common situations gracefully.
Key topics covered in Session 2:
Person-first vs. identity-first language—and how to follow someone's lead
Outdated and harmful terminology: what to stop using and what to say instead
Basic disability etiquette principles across common professional contexts
How to interact with someone who uses a mobility device, communication device, or service animal
What to do when you make a mistake—because you will, and how you handle it matters
This session pairs directly with Kintsugi's disability etiquette 101: communication best practices resource, which participants are encouraged to download and share with their teams after the session. The disability language guide is also distributed to all registered attendees as a reference tool.
Session 3: Invisible Disability, Mental Health, and Intersectionality
Focus: Expanding who we picture when we think about disability—and why it matters
The most common failure in disability awareness training is a narrow picture of who disability includes. Session 3 addresses that failure directly. The majority of disabilities are not visible, and a meaningful proportion of employees with disabilities will never formally disclose—which means inclusion cannot depend on disclosure to function.
Key topics covered in Session 3:
The prevalence and variety of invisible disabilities, including chronic pain, autoimmune conditions, and mental health disabilities
The relationship between disability and mental health: where they overlap, where they diverge, and how stigma shapes both
How disability intersects with race, gender, sexual orientation, and age—and what that means for inclusion
The impact of COVID-19 on disability prevalence, including long COVID as a disability category
Why inclusion systems must work for people who haven't disclosed, not just those who have
For additional depth on the intersection of disability and mental health, Mental Health Awareness Month: A Comprehensive Guide offers valuable context. Participants looking to understand how microaggressions operate in this space can follow up with recognizing and preventing disability microaggressions.
Session 4: Accommodation, ADA Basics, and Inclusion in Practice
Focus: Translating awareness into action—what organizations and individuals are actually required to do and what doing it well looks like
Awareness without action isn't inclusion. Session 4 bridges the gap between knowing and doing. It covers the legal fundamentals of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) without turning into a compliance lecture—because compliance is the floor, not the ceiling, of disability inclusion.
Key topics covered in Session 4:
What the ADA requires, what it doesn't, and where it falls short
The reasonable accommodation process: what it is, who owns it, and common mistakes
How to discuss disability and accommodation without overstepping or underserving
Inclusion practices that go beyond legal minimums: universal design, accessible communication, and proactive workplace culture
What bystander intervention looks like in disability-related situations
Managers who attend Session 4 are strongly encouraged to follow up with reasonable accommodation training for managers and ADA compliance training: essential elements for every employer to reinforce and extend what they've learned.
How to Get the Most Out of This Series
Attending all four sessions sequentially is the most effective way to engage with the series. Each session builds on the one before it, and the full arc—from foundational concepts through practical action—is more than the sum of its parts. That said, individual sessions can stand alone if your schedule or team's needs make that more practical.
A few things that significantly increase impact:
Attend with your team. Shared learning creates shared language. When a team attends together, they can reference the same frameworks in their day-to-day work—making behavior change more likely and more durable.
Use the debrief guide. Each session includes a post-webinar discussion guide that teams can use in their next meeting to process what they heard and connect it to their specific context.
Take the knowledge check. The free disability awareness training quiz works well as both a pre-series baseline and a post-series measure of what's been retained.
Plan for what comes next. A webinar series is a starting point, not a complete disability inclusion strategy. After completing the series, review the complete guide to disability awareness training and consider whether your organization is ready for a more tailored engagement.
Continuing the Work After the Series
The Introduction to Disability Awareness series is intentionally designed as an on-ramp—a place to build foundational knowledge and confidence before taking on more complex work. It doesn't replace a comprehensive disability inclusion strategy, and it's not meant to.
Organizations that complete the series and want to keep building have several clear paths forward. Kintsugi's prepared trainings offer deeper dives into specific topics—sexuality and disability, harm reduction through storytelling, adapting content for youth with disabilities, and more. Consultation services are available for organizations ready to assess their policies, audit their programs, and build a plan that goes beyond individual training sessions.
For organizations looking to build sustainable internal capacity, the building organizational resilience through disability inclusion resource outlines what that longer arc looks like and why it matters.
To learn more about Rachel Kaplan's background, expertise, and approach before registering, visit the consultant profile. To register for the next available session or ask questions about bringing the series to your organization, use the scheduling page or reach out directly through the contact page.
Disability inclusion is a practice. This series is where many organizations begin theirs.
Bottom TLDR:
The free disability awareness webinar series from Kintsugi Consulting delivers four structured sessions covering disability foundations, language, invisible disability, and ADA accommodation—giving professionals the practical knowledge base they need to act more inclusively at work. Sessions are led by Rachel Kaplan, MPH, a disability consultant with lived experience and over a decade of professional expertise. Register for the next session, attend with your team, and use the post-series resources to build a disability inclusion strategy that goes beyond awareness.