Making Work Accessible: HR Practices for Inclusive Employee Experiences

So the session today is Making Work Accessible and has a very long title here, HR Practices for Inclusive Employee Experiences. What we really wanted to do today is kick off National Disability Employment Awareness Month. That happens every October in the United States. You may see it with the hashtag #NDiEM. So we are celebrating NDiEM here at Inclusive Pixelation. I will introduce myself and my staff. As soon as we get into the presentation a little bit further, I wanted to let everyone get a chance to get in the Menti if they choose. And then we also have Q&A in the Menti as well. So if at any time while I'm speaking, you don't wanna interrupt the presentation, you can use the Mentimeter Q&A to drop a question at any time. I'm also keeping an eye on the Zoom chat. So if you're more familiar with Zoom, more comfortable with Zoom, that's okay too. We do have captions enabled in Zoom, and you can use the chat feature in Zoom, uh, to reach us at any time. So if you're still logging into the Mentimeter, that is okay. Any slide that requires some participation will have these instructions at the top of the screen. So the menti.com and that 1-466-5576 in the little white box, you'll see that on any screen where participation is necessary. So I am going to go ahead and jump to our first participation activity. Again, the instructions are still up on the top of the screen, but this one should ask you a couple of questions. Take a moment and respond to each one of these prompts on a scale of 1 to 3, 1 being this is not my responsibility, or 3 is I do this thing every day, uh, 2 being somewhere in the middle. I do this sometimes. I do this occasionally. Let me know of these. Kind of broad areas of HR, where is it that you have responsibility in your job? So do you do any employee attraction, employee recruitment, employee onboarding, learning and development, retention, or if you're involved in something else, that's okay too. I know we had, uh, more than just HR professionals joining us. I've got some small business owners. I have DEI professionals, accessibility professionals. So if something else not in HR is your wheelhouse, that is really okay We're gonna have a broad look at accessibility at work today. We are going to cover all of these areas, but this does give me a little pulse check on the audience, letting me know, uh, what areas you are going to probably get the most out of in this presentation. So we're seeing, uh, people involved in learning and development and retention doing that quite a bit. Recruitment's inching up there as well. So like I said, we'll cover all of these areas. If you are a business owner, an executive, uh, a DEI professional, something else, we're going to make this fun and interesting for you as well. So without any further chitchat from me, I will actually introduce myself for those that have not met me. I am Britne Jenke, and I have spent a long time in accessibility and learning and development, and I am absolutely thrilled to be here with you today, uh, celebrating the National Disability Employment Awareness Month. A quick visual description of me, since I do look a little bit different than my headshot on the screen. I've been trying out the natural gray lately, so we're, we're seeing how that works. I do have short salt and pepper gray hair, still wearing yellow and pink lipstick because that's my thing. I do have several non-visible disabilities and I do have one condition that would be considered in the umbrella of neurodivergence as well. I am here today with my business partner, Mike. He is in the chat. So if you have any questions that relate to his area of expertise, which is more in the space of physical spaces, construction, ADA compliance, building codes, he brings that expertise to our business and he is here to help answer accessibility and accommodation questions from his area of expertise. But like I said, I have been in learning and development, human resources, accessibility for quite some time, and we are going to focus on more of the digital today with some of our practices in the HR space. Let's do a quick dive into what does disability in the workplace look like? So according to the latest CDC estimate, about 29% of the US adult population is disabled in some way. Worldwide, this number varies, but on average, it's about 1 in 6, or over a billion people worldwide living with some kind of disability. How many people do you think though are disabled in your workplace? So let's take a vote. If you're in the Mentimeter or if you just wanna drop a number in the Zoom chat, that's okay too. How many people do you think are disabled in your current place of work Or, uh, if you're maybe a, a contractor, work for other agencies, maybe the agency you're working with right now, how many percentage-wise, how much disability are we seeing in that population? And I'm seeing some numbers come in, but I will give you a hint. So we said 29% of the population is disabled. We may not see that many people employed in the workplace with a disability, but people have surprised me. So I wanna tell you a quick story as you're entering your numbers here. I had asked this question as part of a different presentation at another conference, and someone surprised me. They voted 100%, and someone did here too. So it was a person who their organization employed people with autism and other neurodivergent conditions considered disabilities. And they said 100% of their workplace was disabled, and they knew this. And so they did surprise me. Someone has surprised me here as well. So I'm, I'm sure if you're working with one of those populations, thank you for doing so, and thank you for employing so many disabled people during National Disability Employment Awareness Month. So let's see what the answer is. 5 here, and I'm going to tell you how I got to that number because I am seeing some higher numbers here, closer to 20%, uh, and you wouldn't be completely wrong, but this 5 number comes the percentage of people who self-identify on demographic surveys in the workplace. So when a workplace asks for things like your race, your gender, uh, other demographic characteristics about you, and they ask the question about disability, they have found that about 5% of people answer in the affirmative that, "Yes, I have a disability." Now we can compare this. Know about 1 in 5 people with a disability is employed, Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared with about 2/3 of the population without a disability having gainful employment. We know that workers with a disability are nearly twice as likely to work part-time compared to those without a disability, and a larger share of people with a disability are self-employed. Than those without disability. So all of these numbers are coming from the Bureau of Labor Statistics recent data. This was earlier this year. Um, another number shocker that came out and only keeps rising— this number is from, uh, July of this year— that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is nearly twice that of people without a disability. So we're looking at about a 7.5 percent rate of unemployment for people with disabilities compared to 3.5% without disabilities. So why does all of, all of this matter, these numbers, this data? Because these numbers tell us there are so many more disabled people looking for work, wanting to work, or already in your workplace than we realize. And we need to be prioritizing accessibility. At every step of the employee experience. So this is what we're going to talk about in our session today. We are talking about making work accessible at every step of the employee journey. So we're going to examine some of our current workplace practices. This is, again, jumping back to the Mentimeter. We're going to have some fun. We're going to examine the practices that we currently have, and I'm going to draw on some of your expertise as well. I can sit here and give you ideas all day, but I want to hear from you what you're doing in your workplace that works, and maybe what you're doing that isn't working where you'd like ideas from others. So let's do a pulse check. We already, we talked about where our responsibilities in the area of HR lie, but how accessible do you think your areas of HR are? So let's do a quick Menti poll. Which is the most accessible in your current environment? Now, this is a, a different kind of activity. You have a little pin in the center of your image. Drag it to the area around the wheel where you think your organization is the most accessible. And so if you're having trouble with this, we've got attraction approximately 2 o'clock in a wheel, recruitment at 4, onboarding down at 6, learning and development over at like 8, retention up around 10, and separation is 12 o'clock or noon. So we go completely around the clock. It is spaced out every 2. And yes, using the Zoom chat is just fine. We had someone else say development in the Zoom chat. So we think learning and development is probably the most accessible in a lot of our workplaces. And I do love to hear that because those of you that know me came— that know that I came from a long career in learning and development before I broadened into HR and other areas of accessibility. So I could talk to you for days about making your learning materials accessible, but I'm glad that you are already doing that. And these are the most accessible for just about everyone that answered, it looks like. So we may need your help later as we are discussing areas for improvement. So let's do the same activity again. But which time— this time, let's do which is the least accessible in your current organization. So all of the images are in the exact same place. Attraction at 2, recruitment at 4, onboarding 6, development 8, retention 10, separation 12 noon. Which of these do you think is the least accessible practice in your current environment? And this one's seeing— we're seeing some separation here. Retention based on If the company has evolved their ERGs, I like that response. So depending on status of ERGs and other employee supports in the workplace, retention may or may not be accessible. Excuse me. Attraction and hiring are probably the least accessible. Another one from the Zoom chat there. Yes, we're saying recruitment is probably the least accessible. I do find that a lot, especially in that attraction and recruitment phase that people do have a lot of trouble making those areas accessible because they don't yet know what their employees or future employees may need for accommodations. Uh, so we're gonna talk about ways we can make our processes a little more accessible in the attraction and recruitment phases and the onboarding development and recruitment phases. We'll go through some best practices in just about all of these areas, um, except for separation. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time there. I don't wanna spend time talking about separating your disabled employees on the start of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. We're going to save that for a separate conversation, and we're gonna focus on keeping our disabled employees today. All right. So for this next section that we're going to go through, I'm going to jump into each of these areas of HR, and I want you to not worry about taking a lot of notes here. Just participate in either the Menti or the Zoom, whichever you choose. Because what I'm going to do is save all these slides. It's going to capture your responses, and I will send you the slides afterwards. So you do not have to take notes here. You will get these slides with everyone's responses included, and I will include the transcript and the chat from the Zoom as well. So any of the responses that came up in Zoom, we'll have those, uh, and we'll send those out to everyone that is watching this recording or, uh, that has signed up and is here in person. So really just have some fun. We're gonna talk about these different areas of HR. Don't worry. About taking any notes. So for the first area I wanna talk about is employee attraction. How is it that we're going to make employee attraction more accessible? So a few of the best practices that I share most often is starting with accessible job application software. I know many of the providers out there, the major ones, if you're using Workday, it has some accessibility challenges, unfortunately. There are other major providers, though, that do a better job of accessibility than others. And I'll say, if you're not in the place to do an overhaul of your HR software for its accessibility right now, I understand, but consider ways that you might provide an accessible application otherwise. So maybe that's a PDF version of an application, or maybe it's an alternate format, send in a resume and cover letter to a certain person. However it is that you can capture, um, if someone is is really unable to complete your application because of an accessibility barrier, you should have another way around it and have another way to participate in that application process. While we're talking about things like job applications, let's think about our job descriptions, making sure we're writing them in very clear, concise terminology, uh, we're explaining any acronyms and, uh, special language that applies to the job, and including an invitation in the job application to request an accommodation. So, there are ways to make this very inviting to your candidates. If they do need an accommodation, include it as part of the job application at the bottom of the job description. "If you require any accommodations for this interview process, then please let us know." We'll talk about a few things in the recruitment, in the interview itself that we can do to make it more accessible, but offering accommodations from start, makes you a very proactive, accommodating employer instead of thinking reactively and after the fact. So those are a few of my best practices. Again, those will be shared after, but what is it that you would add in the areas of employee attraction? So you have a chance here. You've got a text box in the Menti, or you can use the Zoom chat. Drop in what you would add for, uh, best practices in accessible employee attraction. I do have a couple more thought starters if you can't get started. I see one come up in the Zoom here. The awareness of the number of vendors provide tailored attraction and recruitment products that complement systems like ICMS. So, HRIS, not my wheelhouse, not my area of expertise. So I am, I am unsure. I cannot provide an exact recommendation of a new HRIS to go with. I will look into that. I know that some are better than others. I would look for things like an accessibility page on your vendor's help or about them, how they are making their software accessible. They may include something like a VPAT, a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template. So it's a, a very standardized form that a software provider would provide to its clients or to its users. To benchmark certain areas of accessibility. So you can look for VPATs on the software that you are considering as well. But I do not have a specific recommendation, but I know I hear people complain about the Workday accessibility so much in my space. I hate that, that something so big has come so far, I guess, without some of those best practices in accessibility. So let's see what we've got up on the Menti. An accessible company website. Yes. With a blurb about how to request accommodations. So making sure that the website overall, where you are listing your jobs, where you have your job applications, where that candidate starts that process, is an accessible website. Another one I'll throw in here, maybe diversify where it is you are posting the jobs in the first place. So you may direct everyone to your company website to apply, But you may want to partner with other agencies or other platforms that specifically target some of the disability populations. There are a lot of work programs that get people with disabilities into employment, and by partnering with some of these organizations, you may be able to fill roles even faster. And then one more up on the Menti, a dedicated hire that specializes in sourcing disabled talent. I love that. A particular role on your team, in your recruitment team, your talent acquisition, Maybe partner with your DEI team that sources disabled talent among other groups of underrepresented talent in your organization. So a lovely idea there. And then another one, an open house with employees that shares their journey in the company. I love this. There are some companies that do this so well. I think it's CBS has a series on YouTube. CVS Health, the pharmacy and health company, they are very big on employing people with disabilities and they have some of those employee journeys and employee stories on their websites and on their YouTube channel. I believe Pepsi does as well. PDF's not considered the most accessible documents. Offering a Word document to bypass an inaccessible application, even better if you can come up with a better way. I know PDFs are notorious for, for being difficult. Uh, PDF forms are like the worst at being accessible. So if you do not have a tool that creates those accessible forms or accessible PDFs for you, you do not have someone on your team that knows how to do the remediations, I would definitely lean towards a more accessible format like a Word document or an invitation to email. I have seen that as well. If you qualify for this job and need accommodations, please email us at— send your resume and cover letter to a special inbox. So lots of ways around inaccessible job applications. Thank you so much for sharing that. And accommodations at the job fair. How wonderful. A lot of us participate in job fairs where we're setting up a booth, we've got some kind of interaction with future candidates, and if we can offer accommodations to candidates to better approach us, approach our booth, and learn more about us as an employer, a wonderful suggestion there too. Great job on the Menti. What I'm going to let you do now Let's see if it works. You should be able to vote on which you think is the best of these. There we go. Voting. I'll let you pick of all of the ones that were submitted, which is your favorite. Give it a couple seconds here. We've got a vote in. Let's see if we get another vote in. We won't, we won't take too long in the voting. Let's see which was the best response here. We've got a couple popular ones. Love it. So an accessible company website with a blurb about requesting accommodations and a dedicated hire that specializes in sourcing. I love both of these responses. I am glad that both of them got some upvotes. So wonderful. Let's move on and talk about employee recruitment. I know this is an area where a lot of you said this was probably your least accessible, and I, I found this happens with a lot of our clients as well. So employee recruitment, once we we get them attracted to our company and we're actually conducting interviews and moving them through the interview process, whether that's a work product or another skills test, anything that we're doing in this recruitment process until they are given an offer and start their onboarding, there are a lot of places where accessibility can go wrong. So again, with offering accommodations early in the process, providing them during the interview. So making sure that you're not just making the offer, that you are actually following up with each candidate, making sure that the accommodations they have requested are enabled for that, that meeting, whether that's turning on those closed captions, whether that's providing a sign language interpreter if they need one, making sure that any accommodations that were requested are actually in place. What we have done in some of our practices, and I know others have done as well, giving the candidates the option to choose their interview format. So some candidates may not be comfortable getting on a Zoom call, on a face-to-face meeting. If you want to provide a phone call as an alternative option to a face-to-face meeting, that may help some with various disabilities or neurodivergence that may not wish to disclose a condition to you immediately. They may be more comfortable on the phone. So letting that recruitment process be directed by the candidate allows for a bit more accessibility. And then explaining the interview format and any of the interview panel, introducing them in advance. So this is, uh, things like technical requirements. If it does need to be a Zoom meeting, letting the candidate know so they can, uh, prepare any assistive technology that they may use in the background. And the sharing names and of all the interviewers lets them prepare by knowing who is interviewing them and being able to kind of get a better idea who's on the panel. It lessens the maybe nervousness or anxiety that happens when you're thrust into an interview and you don't know who you're speaking with. If it is a large panel, it really helps to do introductions well in advance, providing that to the candidate even well before the interview starts. Let's talk now that we've got some ideas. I do have some more ideas for you, but let's hear from you as well. Anything you would add about making the interview and the rest of the recruitment process more accessible? So I'll throw another one out there that didn't make the, the top 3 list on the other slide that comes up quite a bit for me. Great one in Zoom, sending questions ahead of time. Yes. So that's something that we do as well. I wanted to see if anyone else would, would throw that one out there, but providing the interview questions, or maybe even just the topics to the candidates in advance, lets them prepare to the best of their ability. So this is something we do for the roles we hire for at our company. We do provide interview questions in advance. For us, it's not a test of, of how fast you can, you can think up an answer or a test of thinking on your feet. It's, it's more of an accurate reflection of your skills and your abilities when you're able to prepare your examples, knowing those questions that you'll be asked well in advance. The other one that comes up for me that I was about to say before that one got dropped in Zoom was getting training for your interviewing team on things like reducing bias and preventing ableism. So this may mean training your hiring managers in some inclusive practices, unconscious bias training, things like that may help your managers make some more inclusive decisions. And yes, and Zoom here, more of a conversation. It gives the candidate time to bring evidence of previous career successes. I love that. When you provide those interview questions in advance, letting the candidate show their strengths Provide examples. We use skills-based interviewing, so we don't really care what your title was or if you have a degree, that's great, good for you, but we, we want to know skills, what you can do, what you have done, what you are able to do, and the potential that you have to grow in a role. So interviewing that way, a very inclusive practice, is a great one. Another one I've heard often is If you've got a long series of interviews, panel interviews, anything that's— anything you're expecting the candidate to do for maybe more than an hour, allow for breaks in the interview process. It's going to help your candidates not only balance their workload, it's going to help let them reset, let them bring new ideas, bring their fresh, refreshed self to each call in a panel. I've done this before where I have, uh, been on back-to-back panels. It was a 4-hour interview with 5 different people. Each of them got 45 minutes. And by the end, I was exhausted. For them, it was 45 minutes each, but for me it was several hours of interviewing and I was done. Um, it was not a pleasant experience. I think I couldn't even tell you. I think I did end up getting the role and ended up telling them that I was not thrilled with their all-day interview process. And then another one up in the Menti here, don't call a potential candidate, use email to reach out and set up next steps. I love this. This is a great way to level the playing field for everyone. Information is in writing. No one has to remember what was said on the phone call. Instructions can be clear, concise, direct. Candidates If they do need to have a phone call, send the email first and set up the phone call so they know what to expect and at what time. So we've got various ways we can make the interview recruitment process more accessible. I think voting for this one isn't going to work too well because we only had one pop-up on the Menti. That's okay. We had some in the Zoom. We had some other great practices that we were talking about. There we go. All right. Best one. I do love that one. Use email to reach out and set up the next steps. Making the next steps in that interview process very clear what's happening and when, when they can expect feedback, when they can expect to schedule a next step. All of that, that we can include in writing makes it more accessible to everyone. All right. So employee onboarding, we are right about, uh, in the middle of our process here. How are we making employee onboarding more accessible? So we've already gone through attraction, recruitment, they have signed their offer and filled out their paperwork, and here we are, maybe day 1, or even some of this pre-day 1 paperwork, send over your I-9. What is it that we can do in this space to make things more accessible for our new employees? And the first one, of course, is providing accessible materials. This means those PDFs that we talked about earlier that may or may not be accessible. Make sure that your employee handbooks are in an accessible format. You may need to convert them to Word, or you may need to have some PDF remediation happen. Hire someone on Fiverr. It's great. Get someone to redo the accessibility of your PDF and make sure that what you're providing to your new employees, they can access. In whatever format that it, it is. Introducing your new employees to any available assistive technology, accommodations, employee resource groups, anything that you make available to your new employees. Make sure that people with disabilities know what they can take advantage of. So if they haven't already requested accommodations, make sure that as part of onboarding, just as any other process, hey, if you need accommodations, here's how We request them. This is the person in HR to talk to, however your process works, making it just another task in the onboarding process, not something that the employee needs to go searching for information later. And then things like the technology, if it's a simple request to IT to get a monitor riser or a screen cover for glare, lots of these little accessible things in the workplace, employees don't know that it's a simple IT request. And they can grab some assistive technology from the IT team, they have it on hand. So if anything like that is part of your onboarding, make sure that assistive technology, any software that might need installed, if they need to install a screen reader, any instructions like that, who they need to talk to in IT for specific software, all of those things are included in that onboarding. And then if possible, if it works for your work situation, I always encourage employers to offer flexible work if it works for you. So that may mean flex time where, let's say everyone's in the office between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM, but your start time and end time can vary outside of those hours. A, a core hours for business and flexible time around it lets people with disabilities and chronic conditions really manage their health, manage their availability. I know with one of my conditions, I am I'm so much better in the morning. If I could start work at 5:00 AM every day, I would be the most productive person. But if my workday doesn't start until 8:00 or 9:00 PM, 8:00 or 9:00 AM, I may be working then until 5:00 PM and then not feeling quite as productive in the later hours. So I can manage my work schedule where I work in the morning since I work obviously for myself. But if flex work is something that can be considered in your workplace, it makes makes a world of difference for people with all kinds of different conditions. Now, I want to hear again from you. We've got just like a couple more of these participation activities here. So what is it that you would add to employee onboarding and making it more accessible? We've got a couple in the Zoom chat here. Let me bring it over. Offering larger monitors or keyboards, even for your remote workers, of course. So again, if this is something that we can request with the IT team pretty easily, everyone gets a, you know, $200 technology stipend, very easy to submit a request for some of that assistive technology. Maybe a mouse with a trackball is easier to use, maybe a larger monitor, screen magnification devices. There are lots of assistive technology out there that costs very little for an employer to provide. I've heard the majority of accommodations in the workplace cost $300 or less to provide. So things like this that can make your employee's life so much easier are really at very minimal cost to employers. What else do we have on the Menti here? Making sure your onboarding includes continuous welcome and reassurance. I like that quite a bit. Making sure that there's maybe a buddy system to act as an ongoing resource, a mentor, a partner. Someone to guide the new hire through everything that is available to them at the company, or a welcome committee. I love that as well. So a buddy or a welcome wagon, members of employee resource groups, um, meet and greets with ERG members, letting employees know that these groups are there to support them in their workplace journey. I love these ideas. Thank you so much for sharing with others some of these neat things that you might be doing in your workplaces for accessibility. I love the meet and greets ERG members. Sometimes ERGs are kind of ephemeral to new employees. They're like, "That's a thing. We have that. I should maybe join that." But there's usually a time delay for a new employee to join an employee resource group. It's usually when they're seeking a resource for something, and it's going about employee resource groups in a more proactive way and bringing members in from their first day on the job really sets a welcoming tone for the ERG and for the business itself, that it has such resources that supports its employees. I've got a few more on my list here. Um, again, training the managers to understand things like the ADA and the laws that apply around accommodations, that your hiring managers, your managers of each team, are aware of what their responsibilities are, um, and that employees know what their rights are when it comes to, uh, accommodations in the workplace. So we can provide guidance in a lot of ways when it comes to these things. We can also do better at, I think, in employee handbooks, onboarding documentation, providing things in multiple formats. So some people may find information better consumed in the employee handbook text, and that's great. There's usually a lot of text. Are there things that you could possibly summarize while still keeping the final text text there for all the documentation, but can you summarize things, pull things out in smaller sections of text, pull it out in a video, have one of your executives talking about the policy, make all of the employee onboarding materials a little bit more accessible to engage with by providing alternate formats. So provide some videos, provide some audio, get a podcast started. Get the information out to your employees in different ways and they will understand it better. And one more up on the Menti, onboarding materials are a standard company-wide offering. Share expectations from hiring managers ahead of time and on day one. So that is another great way that we can smooth through the onboarding process, make it as easy for everyone, providing any expectations for day one in an email in advance. So we know when we get there, maybe what the dress code is, maybe where to park. All of these other first day on the job things, let's make sure they're provided well in advance. Showing new hires relevant accommodations you've already made and enforcing ease of requesting additional ones. That's really great. Showing some of the other modifications around the office that have been made. So, hey, you know, maybe you might not need an accommodation now, but if you ever do, check out, uh, Billy's desk over there has a standing desk. So if you need a different workspace height, that's something we can get in place for you. If you need noise-canceling headphones because Jimmy's always on a meeting over there, we can arrange that too. Just check with IT. So a lot of these things where we can point out things that have already been done, make it easier for that employee to understand what's available and what they could request. And then yes, if things were not brought up in the interview process, offering it during onboarding. Letting employees know how easy it is to request an accommodation if they ever might need one, even if that's not today, if something comes up down the line that would make their work easier, then they can feel free to request those accommodations. I love it. All right. We had a lot on this one, so let's do the voting. I wanna see what we think is the best out of the responses there. We got 1 vote. Let's do 1 more vote. I don't wanna spend too long here cuz I do wanna get time for the Q&A at the end. I know we are approaching our time and I love it because we are participating so much and getting so many great ideas. All right. Buddy system, welcoming committee, and sharing in advance were the winners on this one. Thank you so much for your votes. Let's get on to learning and development. You said that this was probably the most accessible in a lot of your companies, and I am so glad to hear this, that your, your training materials for your employees are done in accessible formats. Your instructional designers are considering things in their e-learning design, like color contrasts and headings and fonts that can be read by screen readers. I love it. I wrote a whole book on learning and development accessibility, and we could talk for hours just on this, but it doesn't sound like we need to because this is where that we're doing very well. I will add just another couple of things top of mind here for me. In addition to creating accessible training materials themselves, whether that's your e-learning, your slide decks, your handouts, whatever you're creating is accessible, providing training on disability etiquette as well, providing that inclusion training, providing things like ableism training or things like making the workplace more respectable. Those things, those types of training that our training teams can provide can go a long way towards helping employees with disabilities and neurodivergence feel welcome in the workplace. So what is it that you would add to learning and development? If you're already doing this really well, I wanna hear what it is that makes your learning team successful in accessible learning design. I know there are a lot of tools out there. If you use the Articulate products in your instructional design, so that's Articulate Storyline, Articulate Rise, They are wonderful on accessibility for not only the output of what comes out when you design a course, but the accessibility of the software itself. So can you, as a user that uses assistive technology, create accessible training for then your users? So their whole ecosystem, they focus very heavily on accessibility and instructional design. Another good one that I know about is Venngage. For accessible PDFs. So if you're doing infographics and charts and a lot of those types of artifacts in your learning design, uh, and you might use tools like, um, like Canva, or you might use InDesign to, to block something out, try Venngage if you haven't. And it's a really good one for accessible output. That's their real goal as well. They want their PDFs, their slides, their things that you're creating in Venngage to be very accessible. So that's another great one for learning and development. Let's check the Zoom chat here. Opportunity in L&D, leadership development, creating equitable pathways to learning so that all of our high potentials have access. I do love that one. Making sure that all of those opportunities for leadership, for growth, for management, other kinds of promotions in the company are available to all and in a way that's accessible to all. Let's see what's coming up here on the Mentee. Accessibility of the learning and development portal itself. That's a big one. There are some, again, providers that are better than others. How that works with your HRIS, your LMS, we can talk about that one. So I know several people that use Workday as their LMS, as well as their H.R.I.S. And we're using too many acronyms and getting lost in the weeds, but there are systems that are better than others for accessible navigation through a course catalog or signing up for a course, registering for a course. Facilitators must be ready to, ready to adapt in the moment. Okay. Got that one. Sometimes abilities are not learned until the middle of a season. Very much so. So facilitators that are able to change how they're presenting their material based on the abilities in their audience. So if they recognize that a certain employee is struggling in a certain area, being able to adapt their facilitation style, adapt their training to accommodate that employee in the moment. It's a skill not all facilitators have. You may need to, uh, train your trainers. On being more accessible trainers and things they can do to maybe make more accessible slides, uh, things that people can see and interact with in a course. If we're doing a live demonstration, ways that we can adapt around certain technology or needs. So there are a lot of ways that we can train our trainers to be more accessible in the classroom. And then options for employees to request their own job-related training. That fits the need their company pays for. So this is a way, if your company doesn't have a whole lot of internal learning and development, you don't have ways for your employees to learn management skills or things like that internally, getting training from an external provider and then, you know, expensing that to the company, making that a reimbursable training and educational expense. You may do a professional development stipend every year. Something that allows the employee to choose what is most accessible to them in the most accessible way to learn new skills and then bring that back to your workplace. I love that. All right, quick vote. We've got one more area and we'll get to some questions. I do promise. We've got 10 minutes left. Let's check out the votes. Let's do a quick run through retaining our employees with disabilities. And let's talk finally here I said we weren't going to talk about separating employees with disabilities today. That's no fun. So the end of our cycle today is retention. How are we going to make employee retention more accessible? And so ways that I advise companies to do this is providing clear performance expectations at every role. So making sure that the performance appraisal, performance evaluation that comes every 6 months or every year isn't a surprise. That there are very clear expectations, that they're reviewed in one-on-ones and the other types of team meetings, strategy meetings that we have. We're all working towards goals and we all know what those performance expectations are. Again, training our managers, our leaders on the challenges that disabled employees may face in the workplace. So we may have started with some great accommodations and accessibility while we were recruiting, and maybe things didn't turn out as well once the employee came on the job. So really training leaders to identify when an employee might be struggling, when they might need to step in with an accommodation instead of a performance plan. So making sure that we are really looking at leadership and the ways that they are interacting with their disabled staff. And then the things we can do throughout the workplace that make it a more accessible place in general, all of it Ties into the employee experience and how we keep and retain those disabled employees. So this is things like accessible facilities. Are all of our meeting rooms accessible? Can we navigate a wheelchair around that cramped little table? Are all of the screens large enough for everyone to see, even if you're in the back of the room? So all of these things that we can think about the physical space that we're in, and if we're making it the most accessible, do employees feel welcomed on their day-to-day experiences in the job, or do they hate that one meeting room that they can't get around or they can't see or hear? All right, just a couple more for you to add here. Always saying yes to accommodation, I say, is the big one for employee retention. If you can say yes to an accommodation, you should. Like I said, most of them $300 or less, and that's research that's been done. Obviously, there are some cases where it might be difficult. It might be expensive, and the business is going to have to, to make some difficult choices. But if you can say yes to an accommodation, always do. It's going to make it so much easier for your employee to have a better experience on the job, and they're gonna get their work done. Up on the Menti here, continuing to work on awareness, your internal culture. Again, that continuous training of your managers, your leadership, on those issues that disabled employees might face, how we can better advocate for our disabled employees, how we can implement some of these accommodations without being asked for, and ensuring our ERGs, of course, are fully accommodating and accessible. Um, one in the chat there, yes, a follow-up session on separation. We can do that for sure. There are a lot of professionals being laid off. Companies not really focused much on the separation process and making that more accessible. We can have some innovation in that area. I will absolutely get something on the calendar for a separation in accessibility session. It may be a quick 30-minute instead of an hour, but we'll make something happen because it is an important topic. It isn't our focus today. It was really on keeping those disabled employees, but I thank you for speaking up that we do need to focus on separation as well. So we, we will get something on the calendar, we'll make that happen. One more up on the Menti, reminding employees that you're always open to suggestions based on individual needs. I love that. So proactive accommodations. Hey, if there's something that would help make this workplace better for you, just let us know. Maybe it's a survey, maybe it's a question box, however you wanna collect that information from your employees. Get a pulse check and remind them that you're always open to those suggestions. I love that. All right. All right, let's get, let's skip the voting on that one. I do wanna make sure we get to the Q&A. No questions in the Mentee. That's okay. Drop your Q&A in the chat. And if you are in the Mentee, we're gonna move on to the final activity here. So any questions for me, please just drop them in the, the Zoom chat. We'll answer those. But there's a final activity up on the Mentee for you. What change are you going to implement in your workplace as a result of our session today? So in a word or two, word or two. This isn't a long response. Just give me a, you know, if it's training, if it's recruitment, give me a word or two where you're going to make a change for accessibility in your workplace. If you do have any questions, again, please drop them in the Zoom. We can also follow up over email, over LinkedIn. I know a lot of you signed up for the webinar on LinkedIn, so feel free to connect with me and ask me any questions that you have after the If you know me, talking about accessibility is my thing, so I will talk to you for an hour about making your workplace more accessible just about any time, so please let me know. Again, thank you for being here today and for joining us on this National Disability Employment Awareness Month kickoff. I'm so thrilled to see so many of you here. I'm leaving the Menti up for just a minute here before I move to the final slide. Um, if there's anything that you are having challenges implementing in the workplace, place. So I've given you all of these great ideas and you're not sure how to implement them, please get in touch. Um, get in touch is here on the next screen. This QR code takes you out of the Menti to a landing page that has all of my contact information, and it has that checklist that I had told you I would provide a list of everything that I said. So that's there in conference handouts. Um, I have given this as a conference session before, so we kept that same handout from last year. Um, Again, instructions for following up with me, following on social media, getting in touch about anything accessibility in the workplace. We do have an exciting month here at Inclusive Pixelation. We're launching some online courses about accessibility at work, so we'd be thrilled if you'd be a part of that. But in any case, we are just thrilled that you've joined our webinar today. This is our celebration of accessibility at work for National Disability Employment Awareness Month. So I hope you all have a wonderful endim and a wonderful rest of October as we celebrate the month of disability employment. All right. So if you're still hanging out and in the Menti, I'm gonna advance it forward. One final thought for you there. The one argument that for accessibility that doesn't get made nearly often enough is how extraordinarily better it makes some people's lives. We don't think about that often enough. This is a quote from a Steve Krug usability book. And yeah, I always, I always come back and land on this quote. It always resonates with me. No matter what we do in accessibility, the argument does not get made how much better it makes people's lives. So last slide on the Menti here. You should have now, if you're in Menti, you have a button to download the slides. I will send all of the slides along with the recording to everyone who registered. So thank you for being here live and participating in the Menti. If you watch the recording afterwards, thank you as well. Uh, feel free to connect with me, um, Britne Jenke, Inclusive Pixelation, and we are so thrilled that you were here today. Thank you so much.