What Does the Disability Community Really Want from Organizations to be Accessible?

What does the disability community want from businesses—as their customers, job applicants, employees and in emergency planning and disaster resilience. In 2016, when this project began, it seemed that businesses did not know what they should be doing to be accessible and inclusive and that the consultants they hired were not engaging with the community to find out the answers to that question.

Dan Goldstein, who had represented the National Federation of the Blind from 1988 until he retired in 2016, undertook to pose that question directly to disability rights organizations .

This effort has resulted in nearly 200 specific actionable measurable statements covering engagement with the community, leadership and accountability, human resources, product design, development and testing, procurement, human resources, employee and customer accommodations, training, facilities equiment and transportation, events, emergency preparedness and disaster resilience, artificial intelligence and capacity building and sustainability.

The International Association of Accessibility Professionals houses it on its platform however, the content of these statements, which we refer to as criteria is exclusively controlled by a Steering Committee of disability rights organization. The IAAP has recruited technical experts who have provided technical information for the Steering Committee’s consideration, and identified resources that support the criteria. The Navigator Criteria Tool allows a company to zero in on those topics on which it wishes to focus, identify related criteria from other topics and resources that support it.

In discussing this exciting new tool, we would focus our presentation on those criteria that relate to digital accessibility, such as app development, procurement, human resources and accommodations. What we would hope is that participants might find these criteria useful when urging institutions in their own country to become more inclusive and accessible.