AbilityLinks is excited to announce this month’s blog series on user accessibility and company compliance! Stay tuned for a 4-part blog series diving into minimizing legal risk, issues with the lack of accessibility, how to improve accessibility, and more!

What is Accessibility?

Simply put, accessibility is the action of making a website functional for all users. One’s ability plays a major role in their capability to use a website to its full extent. All users deserve an equal opportunity regardless of their condition. As an employer, when you make an extra effort towards...

This week’s blog post is on ways to improve website accessibility. This article is full of tips on features to add and ways to make your website 100% user-friendly. This is our third post for this month’s blog series on user accessibility and company compliance!

Perceivable

When a website’s information and components are designed to fit all users it is perceivable. This can be done in many ways text alternatives, time-based media, adaptability, and distinguishability.

Text alternative:

One of the most important components of being an inclusive employer is the concept of "reasonable accommodations." While the Americans with Disabilities Act (the ADA) provides a more detailed explanation you can review, for purposes here, we'll stick with a simple definition:

Modifications or adjustments that enable a covered and qualified employee with a disability to perform the duties of their work, and enjoy the same benefits as similar employees without disabilities.

What can constitute a reasonable accommodation can be very broad. It could be altering the floorplan of the office or allowing an employee with a...

If you're a manager, recruiter, human resources (HR) specialist, or key company decision maker — chances are you'll be conducting interviews at some point! Prospective employees may come from all over the world and will have different values, beliefs, and backgrounds. Modern companies know how important it is to have a diverse, inclusive workforce: it's not only the right thing to do, but it holds some unique (and measurable!) business benefits, too.

Part of this diversity should be inclusive to persons with disabilities, of course! But we should acknowledge a reality, one that shouldn't cause shame but rather draw attention to an...

According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report from August, 2014, 31.8% of non disabled persons do not participate in the labor force vs. an 80.2% non participation rate for persons with disabilities. The unemployment rate for disabled job seekers is also more than twice as high. The BLS reports a September 2014 unemployment rate of 12.3% for disabled job seekers vs. 5.5% for non-disabled job seekers. Two studies offer some insight into why so many persons with disabilities are not working and what businesses are doing to employ and accommodate workers with disabilities:

Why Adults With Disabilities Have...