Big Picture: All Roads Lead Back to Workplace Accessibility

Date & Time

Friday, March 17, 2023 - 2:20 PM PST  

Location

Platinum 7-8  

Description

If you’re here, you probably already believe in moving past compliance culture and improving accessibility through commitment culture. But what does that look like in a small business? And if Step One was “declare your commitment,” then… what’s Step Two? And how do you keep up the momentum? I can’t answer that for you, but I can tell you what I tried and where I failed in Year 2 of Olark’s accessibility journey. I’ll share which tactics made it easy to stay on track with our goals, which made it harder, and what I learned in the process. I’ll also answer the ultimate question: how can small businesses improve accessibility and grow at the same time? Specifically, I’ll discuss how becoming a B-Corp cemented our commitment to accessibility and how engineering a11y values into our organizational structure provided sustained focus. I’ll explain how working on accessibility features in the absence of motivated feedback from paying customers was counterproductive, how economic realities gave us a wake-up call, and why at the end of the day, all roads lead back to the importance of improving workplace access. Above all, I’ll talk about my most important advice to small business leaders who care about digital accessibility: 1) align your business incentives with accessibility goals, and 2) focus on making your like-minded customers successful.  

Audience

• Higher Education
• Information & Communications Technology
• Marketing
• Employment & Human Resources
• Sales

Audience Level

Intermediate  

Session Summary (Abstract)

Trying to improve accessibility in a small business? Learn from the mistakes of a CEO who re-engineered his company to build more accessible software but figured out that the real opportunity lies in building accessible workplaces.  

Primary Topic

 

Secondary Topics

• Blind/Low Vision
• Digital Accessibility
• Employment & Workplace
• Information & Communications Technology (ICT)

 

Session Type

Exhibitor Track  

Presenter

• Ben Congleton
  Olark Accessible Live Chat

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