Transforming Accessibility at Intuit, One Lunch at a Time

Date & Time

Tuesday, March 14, 2023 - 11:20 AM PST  

Location

Grand GH  

Description

Try to remember March 2020. The COVID epidemic was raging and businesses sent everyone home to work remotely. Ted Drake and Sagar Barbhaya were at the 2020 CSUN ATC conference. Returning to our homes, we wondered if we could continue the energy and curiosity found at a conference, only transforming it for a virtual work environment. The following week, we launched Intuit’s Zoom-based Accessibility Lunch and Learn series. It was an experiment planned to last only a few weeks. We reached out to our Accessibility Champion network and quickly arranged daily lectures, mostly based on presentations already given at onboarding and other training events. As the epidemic grew, we turned inward and focused less on accessibility and more on our mental health, living with a disability, and celebrating our diversity. The key transformation came with a talk about sobriety in the workplace. The speaker’s courage to discuss her journey led to heartfelt conversations about mental health, the loss of community, and the struggle where colleagues were trying to encourage hope with “happy hours” and alcohol-related team building activities. This presentation led to immediate improvements in our workplace language and pandemic policies. It also showed a lunch and learn was more than a lecture. It could be the community we were aching for. With more than 100 presentations and thousands of participants, we continue to learn something new every week.  

Audience

• Information & Communications Technology
• Disability Specific
• Research & Development
• Employment & Human Resources
• Administration & Business Support

Audience Level

Beginning  

Session Summary (Abstract)

Intuit‘s Lunch and Learns started when COVID forced us to work remotely. With 100+ sessions and thousands of participants, it has transformed conversations about accessibility, inclusive design, living with a disability, and neurodiversity.  

Primary Topic

Digital Accessibility  

Secondary Topics

• Captions & Transcription
• Education
• Employment & Workplace
• Video & Live Streaming

 

Session Type

General Track  

Presenter

• Ted Drake
  Intuit

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