What adding people with disabilities to your team brings to the mix

One of the biggest barriers to accessibility is awareness. We often hear how diversifying our workforce is good for business. I would like to examine why disabilities should be a part of that formula. When developers are tasked with making something accessible, chances are none of them has ever encountered someone with a disability, so they don’t even know where to begin. By having a diverse workforce that includes people with disabilities, you improve the quality of the product and get accessibility into the product life cycle much sooner.

What is diversity?

Before going further, let’s explore a definition of workplace diversity. A workplace is diverse when all the people working there come from a variety of backgrounds. The culture of the workplace is shaped by what everyone brings to the table. This means that when two or more people work together, they are able to bring their own perspective to the project. When a workplace culture accepts and encourages varying perspectives, we’ve seen better outcomes because of it. I would imagine most people can think of an example of a product that had many engineers working on it that lacked a variety of different perspectives.

Real world examples

I work on a diverse team that is very open to thinking about what each of us brings to the table. Each of us has a different perspective and I happen to be the person on my team with a disability. I am blind and I find that my blindness helps in our accessibility work. Every day someone tells me that seeing me use tool X or Y gives them a better understanding of what it means to have a good user interface. For example, I often have to copy a link someone sends me in a chat. The steps are:

1. I hit Tab to go to the section of the chat that contains the link
2. Then arrow to the link
3. Then I have to click my context menu key
4. Then down arrow to copy it
5. If I move too fast, I miss a step and have to go back.

The steps I need to take to get to the link are so much more complex than just pointing with a mouse. I often hear one of my coworkers say, “Wow! That gives me a very different perspective on how things should work with a keyboard.”

Just thinking about someone you know can improve the product

As another example, one of our projects included a team member who is deaf. His team was embarking on a project to create job aids on how to use their product. Unlike another team that had just finished a similar project, this team noticed early on that their teammate would not be able to use the job aids if they did not caption the videos. Everyone on the team supported the work to add captions to all the videos in order to make their product more inclusive. Later on they found out that almost everyone used the transcripts and captions more frequently than just the videos. It turned out that making an accessibility fix made the product better in general. Improving the accessibility and inclusiveness of a project more often than not improves the experience for everyone. People were calling in less frequently to get support for this very complex tool, as opposed to the other tool without captioned job aids.

Access always makes a better tool

In the previous example, the team that included a person with a disability benefited by having someone at the table who helped them be more accessible. By creating a more accessible product, they also created a more effective product for everyone.

The impact can be less specific

Recently, I was speaking to a friend who works on a very large development team. I asked,  “As a blind developer, what behavior do you think your team has picked up from just having you on the team?” his answer was quick: “Nothing.” But after a moment of reflection, he realized that his team had changed over time, and he noted that actually, everyone learned to describe the pictures and/or diagrams they share; today, it’s a natural part of their processes. Only when he was examining the situation did he realize that his team had learned a new skill from him. Now, for example, when sharing a screenshot or other images, people on his team always describe the images, though this was not a common practice before he joined the team. This practice had been happening so naturally for so long that my friend had initially forgotten that this wasn’t always the case! So the people on my friend’s team have more naturally learned the benefits of alt text and beyond. He then said, “I guess they also think more about tab order than they did before.” My friend is not a blind tester on this team, he’s a developer who contributes equally to the code; he just happens to be blind. This is the ideal story: bring on people with disabilities to, as my team likes to say, put a face on accessibility.

How to build a diverse team

So where do you find these people with disabilities? They are everywhere; sometimes you don’t even know if they are already on your team! Perhaps the first place to start is there: take a closer look at your existing team. By starting to think about the amount of diversity that is already in place, you can get closer to the goal of a more diverse workforce. Then you can see who you can add to your team that will change the perspective even more.

What disabilities are already represented?

Does someone on your team need or prefer to use a keyboard to a mouse? If so, have them test your product for the team to see how well it stands up to a keyboard-only test. Chances are that if you have a large group working on your team, one of them might be color blind. Ask if anyone would be willing to talk about how a color palette works for them. Just like we say it’s important to listen to everyone on the team and seek out individual perspectives, use the diversity of your team to help produce more accessible and inclusive outcomes. Be sure that when you’re asking for feedback, remember that everyone is different, so you should indicate that what you’re looking for is their personal feedback, and not looking for them to represent everyone with that specific disability.

Now expand your team

So what now? Am I telling you to hire a bunch of people with disabilities to test? You should always test with users who have disabilities, but I am not saying hire disabled people just to have disabled people around. When you’re recruiting, be open to hiring people with disabilities. People with disabilities are smart, and you should hire them as part of your team, but they need to be doing something for your team other than being the “disabled tester.” Tokenism is almost worse than not having anyone who is disabled at all. Just like everyone else, a person with a disability needs to know that what they do makes a difference, and just having them there as a token disabled person robs them of this. That’s not to say people with disabilities shouldn’t be testing, or don’t want to be testers. That may be exactly what some people want to do.

We don’t want to assume that because a person is blind, they are therefore great at using a screen reader. I know many blind people who are terrible at testing with a screen reader. I like testing; it’s something I do well and is something I find rewarding. But I put myself in that role. I offer a lot more to my team than just testing; my skills are used to the utmost. I write policy, teach, and evaluate a lot of different ideas. Using a screen reader is just one of many things I do.

Be open and welcoming

It’s important to make sure your team is a safe place for people to share about themselves and their needs. Be open if there are any barriers you face, so that others on your team can feel comfortable sharing as well.  Be willing to listen to people’s problems and help find ways to overcome everyone’s barriers. Provide a safe environment for others to share any problems they might have.

Maybe someone is color blind and just quietly deals with it, because they don’t think the workplace would understand. Maybe someone on the team has a learning disability and they have developed such great coping mechanisms that you never noticed. Be sure to have inclusive language in your job postings; be sure to add text about accommodations in the job descriptions. And make sure people that have been around for a long time also hear that you are open to knowing about their concerns or that you will support them if they need an accommodation.

Let’s improve the world

There are many people with disabilities who are well-educated yet underemployed out there, just looking for the right job. If your organization welcomes them, then you are moving in the right direction.

Many companies that hire people with disabilities reaping the benefits of doing so, daily. Their products tend to work better for everyone, and are easier to learn and use. Studies are showing that people working on teams that offer accommodations and include people with disabilities tend to be happier at work. The employees at these companies find their work to be more rewarding and not just a job. Creating accessible products should be a goal any business has, as it means your product will have better sales and much better outcomes for all your customers. So why not try a little harder to add people with disabilities to your work force and start the journey to making accessibility a part of your company’s culture?