Small, yet MIGHTY!

How to drive accessibility into the company without authority or centralized accessibility leadership.

Many professional people with disabilities (PWD) working within major companies look at other companies which have their own accessibility initiatives like Microsoft and IBM, with Jenny Lay-Flurrie and (formerly) Frances West as their Chief Accessibility Officer with absolute befuddlement and awe. What makes those companies so enlightened that they understood the value of accessibility and hired leadership at the C-level to drive accessibility in the company? How were they able to make the business case in doing so? What convinced the CEO and the board of directors to incorporate accessibility initiatives in their enterprise-wide business plan??The line usually cited by those accessibility leaders follows along the generic statement “Accessibility doesn’t need a business case, it’s a business imperative! If they require a business case, they really don’t understand it. It’s all about doing the right thing.” Not much of a help for the rest of us, is it? Not that we don't agree, we do. . . it’s not us that needs convincing.?

Can we drive accessibility without authority? Yes! The purpose of this article is not to explain away the current leadership rationale for not fully engaging but to tell you that there’s a way to get accessibility initiatives set up within your company without requiring formal authority or title, purely through networking and influencing. Keep in mind the reward that we’re all chasing after here really is making PWD successful within a corporate environment that was never designed for them, or at least mitigating some of the barriers preventing them from being fully productive. Leading by influence and educating others why accessibility is a business necessity is not easy and requires a significant amount of perseverance and willingness to volunteer their time on the individuals’ part. If you’re up to the task, I’ll list what a close knit group of allies did in our company mainly from my experience, which puts me in a favorable light, inadvertently. I apologize for not remembering everybody’s names and their efforts. You’ll start noticing the same names constantly pop up. They’re always seemingly small, yet mighty, telling everybody to get out of their way, nicely of course!

1. Vicki Curtis, who led Boeing’s first Accessibility Design initiative, William Harkness partnered with her on the Deaf/HoH segment.
2. Boeing employees from Winnipeg Canada, established Boeing’s first Smart Phone (Blackberries) for all Deaf employees’ program.
3. William Harkness and Josh Goldschmid partnered with former Executive Steve Atkins and SAE in creating Steven M. Atkins Ability and Achievement in Science, Engineering and Technology award, the first award to recognize talented PWDs in the aerospace engineering industry.
4. William Harkness and Josh Goldschmid partnered with Mark Shearer in getting Video Phones for Deaf employees at every desk.
5. Josh Goldschmid partnered with Dan Freeman (VP for Safety Management System) in establishing the Accessibility Steering Committee. William Harkness led the future cabin design initiative within that committee.
6. Josh Goldschmid, Chris Jeckel, and Dan Freeman partnered on initiating the Accessibility Lavatory Design.
7. William Harkness co-founded with 8 other folks to develop Boeing’s first resource group known as Boeing Employees Ability Awareness Association. Angela Anderson and Jennifer Lindal hyper-accelerated the org, growing it from 3 different sites and 20 members to over 30 and over 1,000 members, championed by an executive VP and Chief Engineer (Greg Hylsop)
8. William Harkness, Angela Anderson, Josh Goldschmid, Jennifer Lindal, and Ryan Gibson created the first Tier 1 partnership with Disability:IN
9. William Harkness partnered with Ryan Gibson to create the first deaf support group in Boeing known as Boeing Deaf Employees and Friends (BDEAF)
10. William Harkness started the iPhone initiative in Boeing (the company primarily favored blackberry and androids) to fulfill accessible needs of mobile PWDs. We established multiple studies/surveys to understand the needs of people with disabilities and their device of choice. Ryan Gibson carried the project to completion. iPhone is now the company standard for mobility needs.
11. ?William Harkness worked with Tim Cook (CEO Apple) and was able to establish a partnership with Boeing IT director of mobility to get the iPhone accepted and considered at Boeing.
12. Wiliam Harkness, Will Roach and James Shapard initiated the first Onsite Sign Language service at Boeing in Puget Sound.
13. William Harkness worked with executives, Steve Atkins and Marc Nance, to establish Boeing’s first ever Business Unit level charge-line for accommodation service, starting with Commercial then moving onto Research, Services, and Enterprise.
14. William Harkness worked with Communication VP to get buy-in that all the videos produced internally for communication (at business level) be mandated with close caption.
15. William Harkness, Josh Goldschmid, Will Roach, and Ryan Gibson, and Elizabeth Tsukimura established an enterprise standard deaf awareness training in the learning catalog available to everyone to obtain credit.
16. William Harkness, Kelly Workman and Boeing WebEx team partnered with Cisco to remove Disability fee for activating accessibility features.
17. William Harkness and Chris Jeckel started promoting “Talents has No Limits” initiative going on marketing video for #inclusion works.
18. Angela Anderson, Jennifer Lindal, William Harkness, Josh Goldschmid, and Ryan Gibson led Boeing’s first executive-level workshop with SVP Jenette Ramos on removing Accessibility Barriers across Enterprise.

These are just few of the key-events throughout the last 15 years I’ve been at Boeing, with the intent of pointing out that none of us really had a formal title or authority yet we were able to accomplish so much, internally and externally.?Does it mean that we don’t need an accessibility organization? Hardly, if anything, imagine what we could’ve done if we actually had a daily full time job and were placed appropriately with a formal title and right level of authority, doing this? That’s why I consider these allies as being small yet mighty, we had the passion and desire to make our company a better place, not only for others but for ourselves as well.?We have only begun to scratch the surface here. . . we can only keep pushing.??

What’s your history and who are the super allies, small yet mighty, within your company? What are you doing to acknowledge and recognize these folks in your company? It’s overdue.

#nothingaboutuswithoutusisforus