Disability confidence: What does it really mean?

Disability confident corporations:

understand how disability impacts every part of their business.

• New products and services are developed following universal design principles. These principles are fully integrated through R&D and the commercial organisation to prevent expensive retrofitting and modifications to ensure legal compliance.
• Acknowledge that a commitment to accessible IT cannot be delivered without cross-functional collaboration with Procurement on how IT solutions are specified and purchased.

identify and remove barriers for groups of people.

• Ensure that skilled disabled graduates are not screened out by auto-filters set by recruitment agencies.
• Ensure assessments centres are routinely accessible to candidates with mobility impairments.
• Ensure sufficient time is allotted for candidates using assistive technology to fill in the online application.

are willing and able to make adjustments for individuals.

• Provide the blind senior lawyer with the braille keyboard she requires on the day she joins.
• Rapidly bypass the procurement exceptions policy to access software which will enables a dyslexic colleague to be more productive.
• Allow the Global Director to work flexibly from home when rendered paraplegic by a skiing accident.
• Agree to a new graduate employee arriving 30mins early and leaving 30mins early to help him manage his mental health and anxiety triggered by crowds in rush hour.

do not make assumptions about human potential on the basis of a label.

• Do not operate blanket exclusions – ‘No one with a mental health history could cope in this ruthless environment’.
• Do not automatically reject someone disadvantaged by a speech impairment. Instead the recruiters ask “how could we enable this candidate to demonstrate his potential to do the job without forcing him to undergo a standard, and in this case, unhelpful interview?”
• We couldn’t hire someone like him – we might have to make redundancies next year.

bdi asks…

“What does Global ‘HQ’ need to do, encourage, or mandate if national leaders are to deliver consistent best practice in every country in which they operate? How can Global ‘HQ’ be a role model through their actions and communications?”

bdi enables:

• pioneer a fresh conversation between business, people with disabilities, civil society and public policy makers and to liberate the economic and societal contribution of hundreds of millions of people worldwide
• deliver more consistent, fair and effective treatment of people with disabilities as customers, colleagues and their worldwide audiences
• minimise the legal, reputational and financial risks created by the increasing proliferation of inconsistent and often outdated legal and technical regulatory systems worldwide