O2 Ability Awards winners are aware of legal responsibilities, but also see long-term benefits of accommodating people with disabilities, writes Claire Shoesmith

Pat Coffey, equality officer at Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, doesn't believe that his employer is doing anything special in being named among the 50 winners of this year's O2 Ability Awards. In fact, he believes that it's doing what every other company should be doing - valuing its employees as they are.

"We set ourselves a challenge that the awards could be used as a benchmark by which to measure whether we were giving all people the same chances," says Coffey, who has worked in his current position since 2002.

"What we found was that we had actually been doing this sort of thing for quite a while and that a lot of it has become second nature to us."

While Coffey believes that equality between all workers is particularly important for a community organisation like the council, which needs to be able to reflect the community it represents in the people that it employs, he says that it's not something that should just be confined to Government bodies.

"For many people, their staff are their most valuable resource and they need to be able to look after that resource in the proper way," he says.

The 50 winners, selected from more than 100 entries, represent a cross-section of business in Ireland, ranging from multinationals including Diageo and Hewlett Packard, right through to local councils and smaller organisations such as the Waterfront Hall in Belfast.

All the groups will attend a ceremony in Dublin Castle on February 15th, where six category winners will be announced and two overall best practice awards will be given.

The six award categories are:

customer service;

environmental accessibility;

leadership;

learning, development and progression;

recruitment and selection;

retention and well-being.

Experts in disability management, equality management and corporate affairs carried out the judging, with entrepreneur Denis O'Brien chairing the final judging panel. According to the organisers, the awards, which are in their second year and are sponsored by mobile phone group O2, have already begun to change the way Irish organisations approach the employment of people with disabilities.

Caroline Casey, founder of the Aisling Foundation and the Ability Awards, believes that companies are now becoming more aware of their responsibilities under the equality legislation to "reasonably accommodate" people with disabilities and in many cases, are doing it because they realise the long-term benefits it can bring to their business rather than because they're legally bound to do it.

"The awards are showing that it's not all about legality," says Casey, adding that it's not all about physical environment and accessibility either.

"It's about choosing the right person for the job and, where employing someone with a disability makes sense, doing just that."

However, while Casey is pleased with the increased number of entries for this year's awards - 30 more than last year - she's disappointed that some areas of business are still under-represented.

"We really wanted to get an airline in there this year, but we have failed again," she says. "What they don't realise is that by not getting involved, they are missing out on a whole sector of people who want to spend money on travel."

The same goes for the retail sector, which is also not highly represented in the awards. By not making themselves accessible to people with disabilities, Casey says that they are missing out on the estimated €3.3 billion these people have to spend.

"There is a very strong business case for making your business accessible to people with disabilities," says Casey. "That's part of it that many people don't realise."

This is a lesson that Gar Holohan, head of Aura Sport & Leisure Management, and Mairtín Kelly, group human resources manager of Kernans Services, have taken on board.

For Holohan, adapting his group's leisure facilities for people with all types of disabilities has become second nature.

After winning several awards last year, Aura Sport & Leisure Management has this year received awards in five of the six categories and, according to Holohan, it's the awards' assessment process that helped the group realise what it is it had to do to make itself more accessible to people with disabilities.

"We realised that there were large groups of people who were excluded from many activities because they couldn't climb down the steps into a swimming pool or because they couldn't read the small print on the exercise machines," he says.

After that, he did a bit of research and discovered that it wouldn't take much money to adapt some of the equipment.

"If you're spending some €10,000 on a treadmill, you only need to add an extra €200 and you can make it suitable for visually impaired people, with a large start button and brighter colours," he says.

The same goes for many of the weights apparatus, which now feature illuminated markings to make them visible to all.

"Just by doing something as basic as this, we opened ourselves up to a whole new group of people. It makes sense in every way."

Adapting his working model also made business sense for Mairtín Kelly, whose Kernans Services operates a food market, filling station and post office in Co Donegal. This is the second time that Kernans has been commended for its commitment to people with disabilities.

More than 10 per cent of the group's workforce has some sort of disability and as well as promoting good employment practice, it also helps the company's business financially.

"I employ someone for their ability rather than their disability and the local community sees that, appreciates it and wants to support us by shopping here," says Kelly.

"It's all about community awareness."

So, while there are many reasons why these companies initially get involved with the Ability Awards, the end results are similar for all.

"It's about changing the mindset of an organisation," says Casey. "And by doing that, opening up markets to new groups of people. In the end, no one is a loser."