For Low Vision Awareness Month, we invite you to listen to the Partnership for Inclusive Apprenticeship podcast interview with Sassy Outwater-Wright, executive director of the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Join us here on February 9th to discuss how adult educators are working to help expand access for persons with vision impairments in work-based learning and apprenticeship opportunities.
Access the podcast transcript here.
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Today we're joined by Sassy Outwater-Wright to talk more about the podcast she recorded on the Partnership for Inclusive Apprenticeship. Welcome, Sassy!
To begin, I want to ask you about a comment you make in the podcast on how employers frequently procure software products and then find out after the fact that they're not accessible. Part of the solution you mention is having people with disabilities at the table when making these decisions. What ways have you seen employers get that input from employees to help make better purchasing decisions?
Ideally, user testing is something the creator of an API does, but they are not always able to formally test how a tool will work in a company's environment. Having disabled employees test, give feedback, and feel like they have company support in expressing their honest evaluation of a tool is a critical piece of not just being an accessible company, but being an inclusive employer of choice for disabled talent. Having a formal company accessibility statement, sticking to it before procurement, and having the disabled work force be a valued lead resource on the determination team helps to ensure the company does all it can to procure usability, accessibility and fostered honest healthy tech feedback in its digital environment and company culture. It also helps the disabled employees know that providing feedback to an employer when something becomes inaccessible during an update will be met with support, further exploration and assistance rather than disbelief, or passivity. Disabled employees value when there is a process or policy that protects them thus the employer hears about something becoming inaccessible during updates before it becomes a performance issue.
Thanks for the response, Sassy. I wonder if you'd tell us more about who is an API, and what is their role?
You also mention speaking with Human Resource (HR) leaders openly and honestly about both disability and age, and framing the business case for companies to support inclusion and accessibility. Some of us have disabilities, but all of us age. Could you talk more about how you connect these two topics in conversations with HR professionals? I also wonder what distinctions you think may be important to highlight between the two, and why they matter.
We need to welcome diversity into our workforce, and removing stigma around aging and age-onset disability is essential. Having an employer, especially an HR team,, that moves with employees through the disability onset process and supports employees as people age and bodies and minds change is essential in several ways. It supports performance, improves morale, and aims to recruit the best talent for each role. Normalizing widespread company positive disability representation conversation around access technology and assistive equipment use in employment settings, for example, creates a space where an employee might feel more positive that their statement of needing accommodations as they age will be welcomed and supported. Openly discussing HR policies and processes around how to start reasonable accommodation conversations, accessibility, inclusion, belonging, and what happens when disability--mental, emotional or physical--does affect someone's performance takes the stigma and fear or shame away from the experience of a changing body or mind in the workplace. That starts with an HR team that talks about it openly, often and positively. Removing punitive from disability conversation or disclosure of age-related disability onset is an essential part of inclusion. Employees who enter a workforce with a disability often have training or outside support to know how to deal with the accommodations process. Someone who experiences age-related disability onset often has no idea how to broach the subject of needing reasonable accommodations. How do HR policies, team members and attitudes impact someone's comfort in disclosing a disability if they're already in a job or applying for a new position with an age-related disability?
And sorry, tech-speak, API stands for application program interface, I loosely interchange use of that term and the term tool or platform to denote the programs, tools and digital products a company buys to conduct business, and employees use interfaces to interact with these digital products. Are those interfaces and environments accessible to all employees who need to use them for every aspect of work, from payroll to product management to anything else we do in business? A a procurement statement that only acquires fully accessible products accomplishes this.
Great points about diversity in the workplace! Jessica Miller-Merrell (podcast interviewer) also mentions the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report on adults with disabilities when it comes to topics of ethnicity and race. You say that 'ableism runs through racism'. Can you share with us more about how you see these intersecting and what that connection means for building more inclusive apprenticeship and employment opportunities?
Disability cuts across every other community. Disabled and black, disabled and indigenous, brown, LGBTQ, immigrant/refugee, or a collection of any, all or more of these things. Disability and age go through all of these. And how a person who is black, trans and disabled is equipped to handle disability in the workplace by our systems is going to be very different than how a dominant identity person handles disability in the workplace. Systemic barriers are different--thus why intersectionality exists, and disability factors into that.
You hit the nail on the head with Intersectionality. It is key to getting more diversity in our workforce, building systems that recognize the unique experiences of people from historically marginalized groups, and celebrating our collective strengths.
You talk about the fact that some companies may not be willing to take a chance on a person with a disability for an entry-level job. This is problematic on a couple fronts, but you highlight that it prevents many people with disabilities from earning industry credentials. How do you see inclusive apprenticeships being part of the solution to this problem and what else might still be missing to promote access to these jobs for more people with disabilities?