Treat Exclusion Like Pollution: The Benefits of Embedding Accessibility Into the Digital Workplace and How to Go About It

The following is a guest article by Neil Milliken, Global Head of Accessibility at Atos.

Like decarbonization, inclusion is essential to a truly sustainable society. For millions of people, accessibility is the key to inclusion; and just like the environment, it requires our action and attention.

A child born in Japan in 2007 will have more than a 50% chance of living past the age of 107; children born in that year in most advanced economies have similar odds of living past their 100th birthday. Given that most disabilities are acquired as people age and that people are working for longer, it’s clear that even now, the average person is likely to spend at least a decade working with some kind of disability.

So it’s imperative for the sustainability of economies that people can be independent and economically active for as long as possible. But much more importantly, accessibility is essential to an inclusive and fair society.

Yet the reality is that there are still huge barriers for access to work for disabled people; and there’s a persistent disability employment gap that’s growing globally. Simply put, the current levels of accessibility are unsustainable.

Let’s define accessibility

Accessibility is about equality of access for everyone to jobs, products, services and information. In today’s digital workplace, accessibility helps to promote greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks by enhancing or changing the way they interact with the technology they need.

This is a legal obligation around the world; and it’s an essential component of corporate social responsibility (embedded within my own organization’s raison d’etre). Indices such as The Global Reporting Initiative include sections on disability based on the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities; and disability inclusion is embedded in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Accessibility accelerates innovation

Assistive Technology has been around for a long time; over the years, the medical and disability communities have found utility and persevered with technologies such as speech recognition when others had let it fall by the wayside. While I may have been shouting at my computer for years, speech recognition within devices is now everywhere: I routinely use speech recognition because it’s much easier for me, being dyslexic, to talk than it is to type.

Emerging technologies are further pushing the boundaries. For instance, natural language processing enables real-time automatic translation and captions that empower deaf people and those who are hard of hearing. Biometrics – face, gait, fingerprint and emotion recognition – are helpful for people who are blind or have autism. Haptics provide the illusion of touch, enabling remote communication for people who are deafblind. Beacons, wearables and geofencing, as well as AI-powered image, scene and object recognition, improve navigation and safety. What’s more, automation is helping to reinvent the way people control digital tools: neural interfaces that using nerves and brain impulses to control interfaces; soft robotics to aid mobility and independence; and the convergence of AI assistant (Alexa, Siri, Cortana et al) with device automation.

Covid-19 and the shift to working in different ways has also led to many disability and accessibility issues coming to the fore. Technology has the power to include or exclude depending on how we design and deploy it.

Embedding accessibility

In healthcare organizations, digital transformation of the workplace has tremendous power to drive access and inclusion more than ever before. Yet there’s a long way to go. Most of the time, it’s not that employers don’t want to invest; rather, it’s that they don’t know how best to ensure smart investment – especially if software and hardware becomes out of date.

While Accessibility-as-a-Service can be provided as part of a modern, evergreen Digital Workplace, to embed accessibility into an organization’s DNA, there needs to be a top-down and bottom-up approach. Just as with the urgent need for decarbonization, accessibility is about changing organizational culture. Our experience at Atos is that companies need to listen and design in partnership with the accessibility community and with employees.

Holistic accessibility strategy

An effective accessibility strategy has a number of strands. Firstly, you need to take stock; accessibility maturity assessments are a great way to understand your organizational strengths and weaknesses. Aligning organizational strategy to your maturity goals leads to better service design; and advisory services can help to evaluate requirements, set priorities and create a roadmap.

Technical services, such as accessibility testing, user needs analysis and user experience design, ensure digital workplace tools themselves are accessible; these include screen readers, magnifiers, speech recognition and literacy & proofing tools.

Yet an effective accessibility strategy is about more than which technology to implement. It’s about ensuring people can be effective using it and ensuring that it is always available through continuously working on interoperability across the business ecosystem. Monitoring and compliance are key components – because interoperability must be measured if it is to be effectively managed.

Another core component of a successful accessibility program is trust: because people may feel not initially confident about sharing about their disability and because data privacy is important, particularly because AI underpins much of the power of accessibility tools; people need to trust in where data generated by assisted technologies (such as cloud-based speech recognition) will be held.

Accessibility is a journey and we’re on it together

Accessibility is a core component of sustainability for organizations, communities and economies. If we go back to the start of this post, think of it as designing for your future self. It’s companies’ key responsibility to weave inclusion and accessibility, into their culture and into their governance and working practices.

In the workplace, ensuring accessibility is not only the right thing to do: it aids overall productivity and efficiency. Many people who don’t consider themselves disabled benefit from the ‘curb cut’ effects when organizations deliver on accessibility. As technology continues to evolve, so do the opportunities to use it for inclusion.

About Neil Milliken

Neil Milliken is Global Head of Accessibility at Atos, an invited expert for the W3C Cognitive Accessibility Taskforce, member of the Atos Scientific Community and an Atos Distinguished Expert. He is co-founder of AXSChat, Europe’s largest twitter chat with a focus on Accessibility & Inclusion. Neil is a member of the Board of Directors for World Institute on Disability, Non Exec Chair of the Board at Genius Within  Chair and Chair of the Diversity Board for the Institute of Coding. Neil was named in the top ten of the Shaw Trust Disability Power 100 List in 2018 and was named Diversity & Inclusion Practitioner of the Year in the 2019 Disability Smart Awards. Neil is dyslexic and has ADHD; he advocates for people with neurodivergent conditions as well as other disabilities and additional needs.

About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 110,000 employees and annual revenue of € 12 billion. European number one in cybersecuritycloud and high performance computing, the group provides tailored end-to-end solutions for all industries in 73 countries. A pioneer in decarbonization services and products, Atos is committed to a secure and decarbonized digital for its clients.

The purpose of Atos is to help design the future of the information space. Its expertise and services support the development of knowledge, education and research in a multicultural approach and contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence. Across the world, the group enables its customers and employees, and members of societies at large to live, work and develop sustainably, in a safe and secure information space.

   

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