While many companies have made strides in developing and implementing thoughtful diversity, equity and inclusion strategies, a vital component often goes overlooked — accessibility.
About 8 percent of working-age Americans have a disability, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and as of May 2023, a record 7.5 million people with disabilities were employed in the United States. And yet many workplaces don’t have systems and accommodations in place to meet their needs and help them succeed.
That may mean investing in technology that supports assistive devices, installing ramps for wheelchair users or incorporating disability etiquette and sensitivity training into employee onboarding. Especially with the proliferation of hybrid work, accessibility isn’t limited to one sphere, but rather encompasses physical spaces, digital platforms, communication methods and company culture.
Those organizations who do eliminate barriers for these millions of workers, meanwhile, are at an advantage, as everyone on their teams have the chance to thrive.
At Broomfield-based LogRhythm, the DEI committee has taken a holistic approach to accessibility initiatives, as explained by committee member Brooklyn Billmaier. The company has integrated changes like closed captioning for video presentations, education around neurodiversity and communication accommodations for employees working from home and from the office.
If more employers took steps to create more inclusive environments, the impact could be huge: An Accenture analysis found that if an additional 1 percent of the population of people with disabilities in the U.S. joined the labor force, it could boost GDP by as much as $25 billion.
Read on to find out more about LogRhythm’s strategies for giving every team member equal opportunities to engage and contribute.
LogRhythm is a security intelligence company that helps businesses detect, respond to and neutralize cyber threats.
How do you make accessibility part of your DEI strategy?
One of the benefits of working in a hybrid environment is that disabled and neurodiverse people can work either from home or from the office depending on what is most comfortable for them and helps them focus on the work. To support this, we ensure that our events include and reach as many people as possible, whether they are attending virtually or in person.
We also offer programming to support various identities to teach our colleagues how to be more inclusive of disabled and neurodivergent people. Last year we brought in an expert on disability and accessibility from the University of Michigan to give a presentation on accessibility in the workplace and invited the entire organization to attend. We also promoted an effort to add pronouns to email signatures, not just to recognize diverse gender identities but also to provide insight into how to address colleagues in a way that may be more comfortable for people with social anxiety or language differences. This year, we joined the Colorado Neurodiversity Chamber of Commerce to support and provide team members with opportunities to join educational events around neurodiversity.
With just a couple of hours of training, we learned so much about how to better include disabled and neurodiverse people in the workplace.”
How do you ensure that you promote accessibility in a remote and hybrid world when all team members might not be in a physical office?
We always use captions for movie events for people with hearing or sensory processing issues and turn on transcripts when we give educational presentations. We also record those educational events so people can watch them at their convenience and speed them up or slow them down to a speed that suits them.
Within our committee, we have regular discussions about the modes of communication that feel the most accessible and efficient for team members — should we use Teams chat? A Teams channel? Email? We approach our DEI committee’s method of working together as a consensus-driven experience so that everyone is represented regardless of their location in the world or any barriers they may experience.
For companies that have not yet incorporated accessibility into their DEI strategy, where would you recommend they start, and what are some core considerations to keep in mind?
Bringing in an expert was incredibly helpful for us. Not only did we learn about disability advocacy and the disability rights movement, but we uncovered things we had never considered before because no one had ever asked — things like providing text descriptions for visual material that screen readers could capture. With just a couple of hours of training, we learned so much about how to better include disabled and neurodiverse people in the workplace.
