HP Innovation Journal Issue 13: Winter 2019 | Page 59
JESSICA MISENER
The Inclusion Effect
As companies across industries make diversity and inclusion a priority, hiring
and supporting people with disabilities has never been more important.
Jennison Asuncion, who focuses on digital accessibility
within LinkedIn Engineering, is completely blind. On
any given day at work, he uses JAWS, software that reads
what’s on the screen or display, to access web applications
and websites. On mobile, he uses the VoiceOver screen
reader setting on his iPhone. Tools and accommodations
like the ones Asuncion uses daily have never been more
important—for employees and employers.
Today, one in four adults in the US lives with some kind
of disability—some of which may not be obvious to the
people around them. “Many people living with disabili-
ties aren’t living with visible ones,” says Jennifer Laszlo
Mizrahi, president of RespectAbility, an organization
that fights stigma and advances opportunities for people
with disabilities. So-called “invisible” conditions such as
chronic pain, dyslexia, bipolar disorder, lupus, Crohn’s dis-
ease, or migraines are federally protected, yet many people
aren’t even aware their colleagues have them—and many
workplaces aren’t fully empowering employees who do.
The traditional office setup of a computer, keyboard,
mouse, and maybe a landline phone doesn’t meet every-
one’s needs. Chronic pain can make using a traditional
keyboard and mouse difficult, for example, and people
with colorblindness or dyslexia might struggle reading the
slides in a presentation on a laptop screen.
As companies across industries make diversity and inclu-
sion a priority, some are making full use of design and
technology to create the accessible workplaces of the
future today. Companies who strive to make their offices
accessible set themselves up to hire great candidates and
tap into a much larger talent pool.
INCLUSION BY DESIGN
Asuncion says that good inclusive design starts at the
beginning of the process and includes users with disabili-
ties in testing.
“Companies who are doing it right are thinking about
accessibility immediately at the beginning of the proj-
ect,” he says. “Not weeks from launch, when everything’s
basically signed, sealed, and delivered and then they’re like,
‘OK, now we have to think about accessibility.’”
For example, Google’s new hires in engineering and
product design receive training from the company’s
accessibility team as part of their onboarding program,
and testing with users with disabilities is baked into the
research and development processes.
“If tech companies don’t design for accessibility from
square one, they’ll spend more resources trying to fix or
patch something later that would have made business
sense to do in the first place,” says Michael Rohwer, a
director at Business for Social Responsibility who works
with technology companies on being more inclusive.
“Designing for accessibility from the beginning also sends
the important message that users with disabilities are
more than an afterthought.”
This article originally appeared on the Garage by HP.
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