Empowering Confidence and Inclusion: How Disability:IN is Shaping Accessible Workplaces

For International Day of Persons with Disabilities, #IAmRemarkable has partnered with leading organizations to share their insights and critical work to support individuals with disabilities in the workplace and beyond.

Jeff Wissel is the Chief Accessibility Officer at Disability:IN, a global nonprofit empowering businesses to achieve disability inclusion. Disability:IN collaborates with over 550 corporations to expand opportunities for individuals with disabilities across enterprises. Jeff has a passion for driving accessibility, innovation, and systemic change in the workplace and beyond, helping organizations unlock the potential of people of all abilities.

Can you tell us a little bit more about Disability:IN?

‘Disability:IN is a business to business enterprise and a non profit, but we’re unusual in the sense that we partner with corporations. We’re really known for a couple of things: one big thing is the Disability Equality Index: a benchmarking survey that over 542 companies took this year. It helps them raise the level of conversation about all things disability inclusion related to the senior most levels. 

Companies are assessed on ten categories, and we do a full blown analysis of all that data to identify areas where continued growth is needed, so it enables companies to do a deep dive into how they stack rank against their peers in their industry, as well as cross industry comparisons. It’s the 10 year anniversary of the Index, and we are continuously working to improve and expand the tool. Currently, we are working towards internationalizing the Disability Equality Index to better support companies navigating the global business landscape.

(Their work doesn’t stop there: they also host a global annual conference with chief diversity officers and CEOs, are the certifying organisation for disability owned organisations, and are supporting over 900 students this year alone in their Next Gen Leaders programme- amongst many other things. Read more about the extraordinary scope of work Disability:IN is undertaking)

Why are diverse workforces important?

‘When we spend part of our day trying to cover who we are, we’re not being our authentic self at work and we’re not able to spend 100% on our job. And not only performing the task of our job but performing at our peak. 

When a company has a culture that embraces diversity of all types: when you have your employees who are bringing their authentic selves to work, and 100% focus they actually bring a creativity.

We actually believe that people with disabilities have to find alternative ways of doing traditional things. Navigating HR systems, navigating a website, getting in and out of a physical space. We have to solve problems 24/7. And when you have that innovation, that creativity, plus just the diversity of thought. When you throw in different ways of looking at things and different global lived experiences, you’ve just increased your creativity, you’ve increased your use case to a larger audience. And that larger audience has market share. So all types of good things.’

Read more in the Disability Inclusion Imperative 

What are common misconceptions that you’ve encountered around making workplaces more accessible?

One of the biggest things is just plain awareness. Not knowing how to do it, how to get started. It seems overwhelming. One of the ways that we try to help our corporate partners is to break it down and to look at the key components to ensuring their products and services and corporate culture are inclusive and everyone can fully participate.

Accessibility is truly a journey. But essentially when you can break down the components and understand the ‘why’ behind it- that this is individual people, and it helps them to become gainfully employed, to stay employed, to bring their creativity. When we understand the ‘why’ it moves mountains.

What have been some of the most rewarding moments in your time as Chief Accessibility Officer at Disability:IN?

On average less than 5% of employees self disclose their disability to their employer. Statistically we know it’s probably triple that- 15% of employees have a significant disability in the workforce 

It wasn’t until I was 48 that I embraced my vision loss, my disability. For me it was a weakness and a vulnerability. I didn’t have information that I needed, I didn’t have my inner voice.

When I found a mentor who was blind they helped me recognise that it’s a strength.

When we work with our corporate partners and have the opportunity to talk with their ERGs or senior leadership, we help people at all different levels of their leadership careers to start finding their inner voice, and start leading with their disability. That’s like a virtual snickers bar every day.

What progress have you seen over the years in accessibility and how do you feel about the future?

I have over 2 decades of being an end user of assistive technology. Just seeing the advances in magnification, screen reading software, apps that help with indoor navigation: to me the future’s never been brighter as far as disability accessibility inclusion is concerned. 

I don't know that corporations get enough positive press around their efforts, and in my role, having the opportunity to work with accessibility teams and leadership in major corporations, (70 of the Fortune 100s are corporate partners of Disability:IN) and to understand where they are in their accessibility and disability inclusion journeys. Seeing the time, money and resources that they're putting into their website accessibility, mobile app accessibility- and knowing that companies are realising the benefits of a diverse workforce. 

When companies are embedding the various communities from the very beginning in the whole design process, that's really where we see the momentum kicking in. When you build something from ideation, to design, to implementation, to iteration phase and you have the disability community in there along the way- its that whole phrase: ‘Nothing about us without us.’ 

In what ways do you think programs like #IAmRemarkable can support people with disabilities in building confidence and advocating for themselves?

Anything that can help an individual realise that they’re not alone, gather information and start finding their inner voice to use their disability as their strength and not the vulnerability they might think it is is a very positive and life enhancing thing.