Learning Disability Week 2025, taking place from Monday 16 June to Sunday 22 June, invites all of us to consider a simple but powerful question: “Do you see me?” Organised by Mencap, this year’s theme puts visibility, understanding, and authentic inclusion front and centre.
Across the UK, people with learning disabilities are navigating a world that still too often overlooks them. In education, in healthcare, and especially in the workplace, they face barriers that others may never even notice. Yet they bring creativity, insight, loyalty, and skills that enrich our communities and organisations. Learning Disability Week isn’t just about awareness—it’s about shifting mindsets, practices, and policies.
Seeing Beyond the Surface
The theme “Do you see me?” speaks to something deeper than physical presence. It’s a question about recognition, voice, and value. Many people with learning disabilities still feel invisible in workplaces that don’t cater to different ways of learning, processing, or expressing. This invisibility can take many forms—from job adverts that assume advanced reading comprehension, to software that isn’t designed for ease of use, to attitudes that equate competence with academic ability.
This invisibility shows up in low employment rates, inaccessible recruitment processes, and a lack of tailored support once in a role. According to Mencap, just 5% of adults with a learning disability known to social services are in paid work in England. That’s a statistic that should concern every employer committed to equality. Too many employers assume hiring people with learning disabilities is complicated or risky. The reality is, the barriers are created by the system—not the person.
Seeing someone fully means making the effort to understand their needs—and redesigning systems that were never built with them in mind.
Inclusion That Starts with Listening
Real inclusion isn’t top-down. It begins by listening. What do your employees with learning disabilities need to thrive? What does support look like—for them, not for what’s convenient for a manager or system?
This might include offering plain English materials, giving more time in interviews, allowing flexible ways to complete training, or adapting communications for different cognitive processing needs. It could also involve supported internships, buddy programmes, or job carving—where roles are designed around someone’s strengths. Crucially, listening must be ongoing, not just a one-off exercise. People’s needs evolve. So should our systems.
Inclusion must also respect autonomy. Too often, assumptions are made about what someone with a learning disability can or can’t do. But every individual has unique strengths, preferences, and ways of working. The only way to truly support them is to ask—and listen without judgement.
From Tokenism to Transformation
It’s not enough to have policies on paper or to mark a day on the calendar. Inclusion must be embedded in your culture. Too often, organisations celebrate Disability Awareness Month but fail to make structural changes that allow disabled employees to succeed.
Ask yourself: Is our hiring process accessible? Do our training materials assume a particular reading level or learning style? Are our systems flexible enough to accommodate different needs without requiring constant disclosure and justification? Have we created a workplace where people feel confident declaring a disability—or do we still attach stigma?
Tokenism shows up when we highlight success stories without examining why they’re still the exception. Transformation happens when we examine our systems with honesty, when we ask tough questions, and when we centre people with lived experience in designing solutions.
Inclusive Employment Is Smart Employment
Hiring people with learning disabilities isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s a smart business decision. Studies have shown that inclusive workplaces benefit from better morale, higher retention, and increased innovation. Teams that reflect the diversity of society are better at solving complex problems, understanding customer needs, and building trust.
People with learning disabilities often bring incredible focus, reliability, empathy, and creative thinking to their roles. They often excel in tasks that require consistency, routine, or attention to detail. But without inclusive recruitment practices, they never get the chance to show it.
When you open your doors to learning-disabled applicants, you also open the door to their networks, their communities, and their talents. Inclusion fuels innovation. It signals to your staff, customers, and stakeholders that you are serious about fairness, equality, and vision.
Real Stories, Real Change
Throughout Learning Disability Week, many organisations will be sharing stories from individuals with learning disabilities about their experiences in work and life. These narratives are powerful. They bring statistics to life and remind us what inclusion looks like in practice.
Whether it’s someone thriving in a supported role, an intern gaining confidence and skills, or an employee finally getting the adjustments they needed, these stories show what’s possible when people are seen and supported.
But these stories shouldn’t just be broadcast. They should be heard. Listen to what they’re telling us. Hear the pain, the frustration, but also the joy and the growth. Learn what worked—and replicate it. Understand what failed—and fix it.
If your organisation doesn’t have these stories yet—ask why. And then ask what needs to change to make space for them.
Practical Steps to Take This Week
This week is about more than awareness—it’s about action. Here’s what your organisation can do:
Review your recruitment and onboarding processes. Are job descriptions easy to read and jargon-free? Can candidates submit applications in multiple formats?
Talk to your employees. If someone has a learning disability, ask what support works best for them—confidentially and respectfully. Do they feel they can be honest with their manager?
Review your training and development offer. Are there accessible formats? Do managers understand what ‘reasonable adjustments’ really means in practice?
Connect with external organisations. Partner with Mencap, Includability, or local charities that support learning-disabled people. Look into supported employment programmes.
Use your platforms to amplify lived experience. Publish interviews, videos, or blogs from staff, interns, or alumni who can speak to both the barriers and breakthroughs.
But above all, commit to long-term change. Don’t let the momentum fade once the week ends.
Beyond the Week: Building Long-Term Inclusion
One of the risks of awareness weeks is that once they end, the energy disappears. But inclusion is not a marketing campaign. It’s a culture. It needs to be nurtured year-round.
That means setting clear, measurable targets for recruiting and retaining learning-disabled employees. It means providing line managers with tools and training to create psychologically safe environments. It means building inclusion into your performance reviews, your employee feedback processes, and your leadership pipeline.
And it means recognising the intersectional experiences of people with learning disabilities—many of whom may also be Black, Asian, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, or from working-class backgrounds. Our efforts must account for these layered identities if we truly want inclusive cultures.
It’s also about sustainability. If your inclusive practices rely on a single passionate HR leader or one supportive manager, they are vulnerable. Build systems that are repeatable, fundable, and part of how you do business—not an optional extra.
Final Reflections: Do You See Me?
Learning Disability Week 2025 gives us all a chance to ask—and answer—that central question: “Do you see me?” For employers, the answer must be more than a poster or social media post. It must be lived.
Seeing someone means recognising their worth, respecting their contributions, and removing the barriers in their way. It means paying attention to who’s in the room, who’s missing, and why. It means creating environments where all people can participate, contribute, and grow.
If we want to be seen as inclusive leaders, we must start by truly seeing others—not as an obligation, but as a responsibility. Not just during Learning Disability Week, but every single day.
Let’s move from awareness to action. From visibility to voice. From tokenism to transformation.
Let’s make the answer to “Do you see me?” a resounding yes.