When approached by an advocacy organization, employee, client or customer, or even a business delivery like nAblement over accessibility challenges to your web site, it’s natural to be defensive, confused or even overwhelmed by the charge. Accessibility concepts, standards and approaches can leave anyone scratching his or her head – and we’re nearly ALL guilty of providing less than optimal access to our site for every prospective visitor. Candidly, we are concerned about some of the access challenges posed on our own site related to things like embedded media players, alt-text consistency and clarity, and captioning or transcription offerings. The key to strengthening your accessibility overall is in making the commitment to the process.
A trusted collaborator recently shared with me that “there is no perfection” when it comes to establishing and maintaining a perfectly accessible web site. She then noted several highly transactional, public-facing sites that had major challenges. In fact, I would argue that there’s a natural tug-of-war between the desire to incorporate sexy new applications, functionality, appearances, and media on your site (depending on your audience and industry) and supporting the highest possible level of accessibility for any visitor to your site. Add to this dilemma the dizzying array of auditing tools, validators, approaches to architecting and development, etc. and the prospect of developing and/or maintaining a respectably accessible web site can be daunting.
A Strong Business Case for Web Accessibility
Daunting or not, however, there are strong business principles for making our web sites more accessible that should far outweigh any fears related to the ADA or its principles.
As background, electronic – or E – accessibility requirements are rooted in the Rehab Act of 1973 as amended by Congress in 1998 to compel all federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology (including Web sites) accessible to all – but particularly to employees or the public with conditions or disabilities that might challenge their ability to access such material. While the law clearly applies to federal agencies, the past five years have witnessed application of its tenets to state and local government as well as private industry – if only to pressure them to recognize at least an acceptable level of accessibility as a best practice for which to strive. For at least one major retailer, Target, it cost a good deal of public face along with a $6M class action settlement to ignore its accessibility standards.
The real question, as crystallized by Matt May of the Web Standards Project in the above link, is what your tolerance will be as a township or village, county, state or private company or offering for the prospective criticism, and often lost revenue or customers, by failing to embrace all of the members of your target community.
It’s hard to know the extent to which the cases were actually requested or used by guests or patients, but just as hotels must carry an ample supply of modestly priced shower benches for guests who cannot stand while showering, they must at least invest in enough of this equipment to comply with the ADA.
If requested, we would also provide a sign for the property featuring the iconic ear - universally understood as an access symbol related to hearing loss.
It served as the property’s symbolic neon welcome sign. Managers took pride in posting their accessibility sign at the registration desk so that all guests, with or without hearing loss, knew that this property respected people with disabilities – and wanted their business!
Companies that make an investment improving their overall accessibility through their website are “posting their welcome sign” to all visitors, whether challenged or not. This is becoming a best practice, for business reasons – millions of them actually- and it just happens to be the right thing to do.
I recently watched an episode, for the 2nd time I confess, of the hit high school coming of age TV show Glee from its last season. For the uninitiated, Glee’s storylines revolve around the trials and tribulations of a small group of very diverse, often quirky, and always troubled teens who comprise the glee club along with a few of their teachers and administrators. For my money the writing and acting honor some valid soul-searching around complex challenges for kids of this age like sexual identity and acceptance, respect for who you are and not what you look like or what clique you’re in, self-esteem, and related.
Glee, Disability & Title I
One of the characters is a young guy portrayed as having a spinal cord injury who uses a chair for his mobility. He’s got a certain Elvis Costello look on the outside, lean to skinny, black glasses, pale skin tone, reserved at first sight. But this episode dove into his life, delving into dialogue that provided a glimpse of his self-regard, relationship to his girlfriend – also in glee - not to mention some of his own prejudicial baggage, and raw talent as he provided a driving solo featuring him (or a sit-in perhaps?) singing and dancing- again with a little bit of a gritty Costelloesque quality – though this guy’s a better dancer than Costello - and he was GOOD!
His chair choreography and skills were exceptional and athletic, his voice was strong and had a character that I wouldn’t have expected, and the number didn’t patronize or placate the presence of his disability, but actually celebrated the fact that he’d made the chair work as an extension of his being. Any of us who’ve competed in adapted sports knows how critical that is to success and competitiveness – and, perhaps more fitting to this – any dancer or entertainer who uses a chair understands this.
Fast forward and I hear through the grapevine that the actor who plays this guy doesn’t have a spinal cord injury.
I was deeply disappointed and frustrated with this initially. I have met and been so impressed with Robert David Hall, the medical examiner on the original CSI among other credits, who is a bilateral amputee and staunch advocate for actors with disabilities playing roles of persons with disabilities in the arts. I am obviously a professional advocate for employment opportunities for qualified candidates with disabilities as well, so this was really frustrating for me to learn. It wasn’t the first time I’d been impressed with an actor who didn’t have a disability playing a man with SCI – Jon Voight in Coming Home, Tom Cruise in Born on the 4th of July, Robert Conrad in….well let’s just stick with those two. I note that I was initially disappointed because a more subtle and gray point of discussion occurred to me related to their decision – and one clearly linked to Title I of the ADA and its precepts.
Title I Do’s and Dont’s
Title I, clearly supports a level playing field where candidates for positions, irrespective of the presence of a disability as defined by the ADA, are embraced to apply to and be considered for a role. It explicitly dismisses any burden on a prospective employer to “assure” that role to a candidate. In other words, Title I has no quota attached to the screening, interviewing, or hiring process. It’s not an affirmative action legislation, but rather a clear extension of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or equality applied to those of us with disabilities.
So I began considering this and, giving the producers of the show the benefit of the doubt that they at least made a good-faith effort to reach out to the community of actors with mobility disabilities to screen for this role, will assume that the actor who landed the role was the best actor for that opportunity. I’m as adamant as any advocate or career developer that employers should give far more than lip service to engaging the base of qualified candidates with disabilities for opportunities – and making every effort to know how to engage us – before defaulting to a like candidate without a disability, at least if they presume to suggest that they support being part of the solution of helping our nation to overcome the overall employment disparity between the two. However, at the end of the day an employer has not only the right, but the responsibility, to make the best hire for the organization.
Exhibit your inner “IT”
The moral of the story from my perspective is this: don’t assume that because you weren’t interviewed, or were interviewed and not offered the job, the employer was guilty of discriminatory behavior. With the widespread adoption of behavioral interviewing tools and techniques, identifying the “right” candidate is often a complex and multi-faceted process or formula. You might just have to accept that you weren’t the best candidate for that role. Take it as a lesson, an experience, an opportunity to critique how you approached, prepared for, and executed during the process – and take those lessons to your next opportunity. We’re ALL on stage during the interview and hiring process, and we don’t always have “IT” as they say in Hollywood, disability or not.
It’s become a well-known, and well-worn, fact that your 1st or next career opportunity will be driven by… you! How to take the initiative and create the career in technology, or any field, that you aspire to is under your control. I would think that would be comforting. The work you’re doing – whether for [...]
Admittedly, I’m feeling a bit sheepish tackling the very delicate and complex challenge of whether or not, and when, to disclose a disability to an employer or prospective employer. The reason? I sustained my spinal cord injury while still in college, so my disability is evident and I’ve only known managing my career within the [...]
Thanks for visiting nablement.com! We hope you’ll find the experience stimulating and that you’ll add your own comments and creativity to ours! Our posts will try to effectively explore the challenges and opportunities surrounding the presence of a disability and the professional IT workforce – with special features like video resumes of our candidates, training links, [...]
Pat Maher recipient of the 2009 Henry Betts Award at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago from SPR Companies on Vimeo.
People should be judged by what they contribute. People with disabilities don’t expect anything more than that and they don’t deserve anything less. Through our nAblement program, The SPR Companies provide career opportunities [...]
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Admittedly, I’m feeling a bit sheepish tackling the very delicate and complex challenge of whether or not, and when, to disclose a disability to an employer or prospective employer. The reason? I sustained my spinal cord injury while still in college, so my disability is evident and I’ve only known managing my career within the parameters of also managing my […]
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