Empowering People With Disabilities - 5 Tips To Make Your Workplace More Inclusive

According to Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends, 69 per cent of HR leaders rate Diversity and Inclusion as an important issue. For many companies, the priority is to create an equal work environment with the right and fair representation of Women, LGBTQ2SIA, Aboriginals, Asians, Latinos, Blacks and other minorities. Very few companies are also including People with Disabilities as part of the Diversity and Inclusion initiatives, and it is alarming. 

The world population is over 7 billion people. More than one billion people, or approximately 15 per cent of the world's population, live with some form of disability. 80 per cent live in developing countries.

What does disability mean?

According to United Nations, a disability is a condition or function judged to be significantly impaired relative to the usual standard of an individual of their group. The term is often used to refer to individual functioning, including physical impairment, sensory impairment, cognitive impairment, intellectual impairment, mental illness, and various types of chronic disease. This usage has been described by some disabled people as being associated with a medical model of disability. 

Persons with disabilities, “the world’s largest minority,” have generally poorer health, lower education achievements, fewer economic opportunities and higher rates of poverty than people without disabilities. This is largely due to the lack of services available to them (like information and communications technology [ICT], justice or transportation) and the many obstacles they face in their everyday lives. These obstacles can take a variety of forms, including those relating to the physical environment, or those resulting from legislation or policy, or from societal attitudes or discrimination. 

70% of all disabilities are invisible to the eyes and can be permanent, temporary or situational. The same person with disability can be part of other minorities and face greater challenges to find job opportunities and inclusion. From this perspective, "the world's largest minority" should be the first to be prioritized.

Victor Pineda, Urban Planner and Filmmaker, who also happens to be disabled, quoted: "As people with disabilities, there is this very clear understanding that you either are able to contribute to society or you are just left out of society. Technology can change this equation" - his video is worth watching. 

People with disabilities don't usually disclaim their disabilities to employers, which makes their inclusion even harder. The concern is to be treated differently compared to people without disabilities. An inclusive and open dialogue with employees, including managers and individual contributors, can be a good start point to create the platform for trust and respect. 

Where should we start?

Considering the number of people with disabilities around the world, you might probably find good insights and ideas from your own employees or organization. They understand your culture, market, industry and can bring executable insights and ideas to build your plan. Also, consider learning best practices from other organizations and do consider hiring an expert to assess your plan. Below I list some ideas and suggestions: 

1.      Define a leader for People with Disabilities as part of the Diversity and Inclusion organization: it does not need to be a dedicated full-time employee and a resource from HR. You can find a passionate volunteer in your organization to co-lead (or lead) the program. This person should be empowered to communicate across all levels of the organization and also be supported equally in the D&I investments and priorities. 

2.      Assign a leader to sponsor the initiative. Ideally, CEOs should take the role of sponsoring this group. The reason is simple: this is a sensitive subject and people with disabilities might not feel comfortable to disclaim their disabilities. Bringing credibility and a leadership commitment is imperative. 

3.      Invite employees for an Inclusive Dialogue. I suggest hosting small sessions (1 hour, up to 20 people), to discuss questions like:

a. Tell us your thoughts on what it is like for a person with a disability to work in our company or industry. What are the challenges and opportunities?

b. Have you disclosed a disability at work? Or worked on a team where someone disclosed a disability? How did it go? How receptive was your Manager? HR? the Team? Could we have done something differently to make this experience better?

c. Are you aware of our company accommodation policy / process (if you have one)? Have you ever required accommodation? How did you find the process? What went well? What suggestions do you have to make this process better?

d. How accessible do you think our offices are? What about our products and services? What more could we be doing in this area?

e. What ideas / suggestions do you have for our company to be more inclusive of People with Disabilities?  

4.      List your action plan. I bet you will collect a good list of actions. You will not be able to execute them all but there is a good way to structure your plan. Try to consolidate your learnings and insights as follows: 

a. Employee Education: Initiatives to drive awareness and readiness. You should definitely consider using this material shared by Microsoft. This is the training available for all employees worldwide and it is an initiative led by the Microsoft Chief Accessibility Lead Jenny Lay-Flurrie (I recommend you to follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn).

b. Accommodation: Identify opportunities to better accommodate people with disabilities. It can be a good idea to hire a company to assess your building or even review your health benefits to identify opportunities to improve. Small changes and adjustments can create a huge impact, especially for people with disabilities. 

c. Inclusive hiring: Adapt your hiring process to be more inclusive. There are great toolkits and articles available to support your plan. Also, and more important, identify job opportunities for people with disabilities in your organization. Make sure you have commitment from the hiring manager to support and create the right environment for the new hire, not treating him/her differently. Learn what other companies are doing as benchmarking/best practices. 

d. Join LinkedIn Groups: There are existing groups of people and organizations discussing ways to increase awareness for people with disabilities, like Campaign for Disability Employment, Disability Advocates and Diversity and Disability @ Work 

5.      Bring the right technology and create a Modern Workplace. Technology empowers people of all abilities and create the right environment to collaborate, communicate, and produce. Microsoft Accessibility technology is embedded in Microsoft 365 services (which includes Windows 10 and Office 365), creating an opportunity to accommodate many kinds of disabilities, like:

a. Visual: Colorblind, low vision and blind - check this link for more information.

b. Hearing: Hard of hearing and deaf

c.  Cognitive: Dyslexia, seizure, learning disabilities and autism

d.  Speech: Speech impediment and unable to speak

e.  Mobility: Arthritis, quadriplegia and spinal cord injury

f.   Neural: Bipolar, anxiety, PTSD, OCD and depression

Technology will only work when processes are defined, like permission to work remotely, and when people are trained and using the right tools, including hardware and software. That's why it is crucial for HR leaders to take a leading role in this conversation, helping IT leaders to better define a modern workplace. Consider an expert to assist you through this process and attend sessions & demonstrations to envision what is possible. 

With these 5 steps addressed, now is time to execute the plan. List all activities using the matrix (important vs urgent) - I am sure you will have a lot of ideas and things to do but prioritization is necessary.  

After completing the matrix, invite an expert in Microsoft Project to build out a process and assign owners, investments and dates. From this point, it is all about execution. 

"This is the greatest time in human history to be blind"

With examples like this, I feel even more excited about the opportunity ahead of us. I truly believe technology will enable a massive inclusion of people with disabilities in our society. While I read some concerns about displacement and "jobs at risk" caused by #AI (Artificial Intelligence), I experience the opposite. In my job, I have the privilege of helping people and organizations to achieve more. Technology is empowering people of all abilities, in particular people with disabilities. 

Let's keep this conversation going. If you have more ideas, insights and suggestions, please post your comment. If you feel this article will be relevant to someone in your networking, please share it. Thank you for reading. 

Ricardo Wagner is Brazilian, living and working in Canada. He is an Economist with an MBA in Business/Marketing. Ricardo has worked for Microsoft since 2006, and he is currently the Senior Product Marketing Manager responsible for helping organizations to build Modern Workplaces. Subject matter expert in Accessibility, he is co-leading the Disability initiative at Microsoft Canada. He is also an Ambassador for Microsoft Myskills4Afrka program, with volunteering assignments in Rwanda, Kenya, Angola and Mozambique. His philosophy is to live deeply and intensively, sharing compassion, inspiration and love along the way. He wrote this article in support to a very special person in his life.