Last updated: 13 October 2025
First steps – Sources of external support
You are now on your way and ready to take the next steps, building on what you have already achieved.
There are some tools that can help you with this next step and which you can use to promote your progress to colleagues, customers, and clients.
Disability Confident
Disability Confident is a UK government scheme to help employers be more inclusive. Other countries have similar schemes. It is a tiered system with three levels designed to help employers become more disability inclusive within their organisations.
The levels are:
- Disability Confident Committed (Level 1)
- Disability Confident Employer (Level 2)
- Disability Confident Leader (Level 3)
For further information, refer to:
- The Disability Confident website
- Our resource on ‘Being a Disability Confident employer.’
Disability Smart suite
Our Disability Smart suite is a collection of management tools to help you understand how well your organisation is performing on disability inclusion. These are available to BDF Members and Partners.
At its heart is the Disability Smart self-assessment. This gives your organisation everything you need to self-assess against the Disability Smart framework.
The Disability Smart framework has covers ten business areas:
- Leadership
- Learning and development
- Workplace adjustments
- Recruitment
- Retention
- Customers and service users
- Procurement
- Communication
- Built environment
- Technology.
We have created a Disability Smart Toolkit to help you complete the self-assessment.
After completing a Disability Smart self-assessment, you can follow it with an in-depth Disability Smart Audit. This is designed to help you measure and improve.
Disability Smart Awards
Every year, we host our Disability Smart Awards to showcase and celebrate the work of organisations that are improving the life experiences of disabled employees and consumers. Finalists and winners come from organisations of all sizes and stages in their disability inclusion journey.
The Awards are also an opportunity to host the 3 Disability Confident Awards for organisations registered for the UK Government’s Disability Confident employer scheme. These categories are independent of the Disability Smart Awards, and are judged by the Department for Work and Pensions Disability Confident Team.
- Disability Confident Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Workplace Award
- Disability Confident Impact Award
- Disability Confident Small Business Award.
The awards ceremony is a great way to:
- Share your work to inspire others
- Gain recognition for your organisation’s impact on the lives of disabled people
- Meet and network with others who are leading the way in disability inclusion at our awards ceremony.
More information on the awards, including testimonials and video clips of previous winning entries, can be found on our Disability Smart Awards pages.
Further information
Toolkits
The law
- Legal Ease – The legal definition of ‘disability’
- Legal Ease – Types of disability discrimination
- Legal Ease – Reasonable adjustments and employment.
If you require this content in a different format, contact enquiries@businessdisabilityforum.org.uk.
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