Last week Friday, 30th September 2022, the Gauteng Department of Social Development Gender, Youth and Disability Mainstreaming (GYDM) Directorate hosted an internal Disability Awareness session at the Holiday Inn Sunnyside Park Hotel, Parktown.

The celebration was in honour of the Casual Day for Persons with Disabilities. This year's celebrations were held under the theme of #ICelebrateSA.

Casual Day, which held annually on the first Friday of September, is one of the leading awareness and fundraising campaigns in South Africa benefiting persons with disabilities. The project was launched back in 1995 by the National Council for Persons with Disabilities (NCPD).

The purpose of the event was to raise awareness and advocacy whilst sensitizing the audience on some of the challenges and stereotypes persons with disabilities are commonly subjected to.

Among the stakeholders who attended the event were representatives from the Reasonable Accommodation Committee (RAC), Bokamoso Foundation, Casual Day Initiative and Dr Anlia Pretorius from the Wits University Disability Rights unit

The GYDM Director, Leonie Van der Merwe outlined the role of her directorate. She stated that it was responsible for ensuring that the needs of the employees with disabilities are considered and mainstreamed in terms of universal access, employment equity, skills development, gender sensitivity and diversity.

Facilitating the program was GYDM Assistant Director Simon Moroke, who presented findings from the Disability Survey Report conducted internally that revealed that as of August 20, 2020, the department had a total of 134 employees with disabilities. Since then, the number has increased exponentially.

In essence, employers are obliged to provide reasonable accommodation when present and prospective employees voluntarily disclose a disability. So reasonable accommodation is relative to a myriad of disabilities, is a cross cutting issue and must thus be budgeted for, Van der Merwe explain.

32-year-old intern, Nikiwe Thalaza from the National Council for People with Disabilities (NCDP) who has a physical disability, started working for the NCDP in July 2022 as an intern and said she learned a lot in just a short space of time as the facilities enable access by mandating reasonable accommodation. A considerable amount of organizational infrastructures still restrict physical accessibility such as restroom accommodation for persons with disabilities.

Each year, NCPD lobbies for the full inclusion and equity of persons with disability and encourages the public to contribute donations in order to raise funds and awareness on the challenges persons with disabilities often come across. Additionally, the campaign encourages South Africans to go to work dressed differently and to wear the official casual day R20 sticker and merchandise such as T-shirts, hats and caps to express their support for persons with disabilities.