The Value of Diversity and Inclusion

Published in the October 2013 issue of Public Relations Tactics 

Diversity. Disabilities. Inclusion.

You often hear and see these terms used in discussions, in articles and on corporate websites, but what do they really mean and why are they important? Communications professionals thrive on words and digging into the deeper meaning and relevance.

To get to the definition of inclusion, you have to start with diversity.

Merriam-Webster defines diversity as: “the condition of having or being composed of differing elements: variety; especially: the inclusion of different types of people (as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization.”

Sound reasonable? Yes, of course, but it hasn’t always been that way.

Changing the Law

Less than 60 years ago in the United States, it was legal to discriminate against an employee or job applicant because of race, color, gender, religion, country of origin, age, pregnancy or disabilities. Recruiting, hiring, job assignments and promotions didn’t have to include or go to the most qualified applicants or employees.

Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson and enacted on July 2, 1964, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin or sex.

Title VII was landmark legislation, but it didn’t go far enough, so several laws were amended to protect the rights of additional groups of people being discriminated against. These included:

• The Pregnancy Discrimination Act
• The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA)
• The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA)
• Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)

Eliminating Barriers

Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits private employers, state and local governments, employment agencies and labor unions from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation and job training, as well as other terms, conditions and privileges of employment.

By eliminating barriers to their participation in many aspects of living and working, the passage of the ADA in 1990 was a huge step forward in enabling PwDs (People with Disabilities) to join the workforce with reasonable accommodations and to share their valuable talents and skills.

According to the U.S. Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), accommodations in this context are intended to ensure that qualified individuals with disabilities have employment rights that are equal to — not superior to — those of individuals without disabilities. A reasonable accommodation is a modification to a job, a work environment or the way someone works that allows an individual with a disability to apply for a job, perform essential job functions and enjoy equal access to benefits available to other individuals in the workplace.

Being Aware and Open

When people think about diversity in the workplace, they often focus on creating work environments with ethnic, racial and gender balance that reflects the society we live in today. However, they often overlook PwDs. Considering that about 56.7 million people — 19 percent of the population — have disabilities, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, that is a large group of employees and clients to overlook.

In the Diversity Dimensions article I wrote for the June issue of PR Tactics, “Ability Beyond Disability: Understanding Accessibility,” I discussed disability and accessibility, and mentioned inclusive communications. But inclusion goes deeper into the DNA of our society and of an organization.

There isn’t a legal definition of inclusion, and while it’s a fairly common term in our education system, defining it with a general lens is difficult. Inclusion Network does a good job explaining with this list:

• Inclusion is about all of us.
• Inclusion is about learning to live together.
• Inclusion treasures diversity and builds community.
• Inclusion is about our abilities and gifts, and how to share them.
• Inclusion is not just a disability issue.

“People with disabilities represent a critical talent pool that is underserved and underutilized,” said Shirley Davis, director of global diversity and inclusion at the Society for Human Resource Management.

As a communications professional, you can practice and promote inclusion by your awareness of the issues surrounding diversity and by making your communications accessible to PwDs.

In today’s global, social and hyper-connected world, organizations routinely interact with clients, employees and vendors who speak different languages, come from different cultures, have different levels of technological literacy and have widely varying physical and cognitive processing abilities. So, excluding any individual means missing out on important ideas, insight and opportunities.

Quick and Accessible Communication Tips

This is not a comprehensive list, but incorporating all of these actions into your communications can help your messages reach a broader audience:

• Use plain language.
• Use respectful language.
• Include images of people with disabilities in everyday situations.
• Create accessible PDFs.
• Caption videos.

La Strada Verso Olympia — A Crowdfunding Project That's Come to Life

In 2012 I wrote a three-part series on crowdsourcing for the IBM Social Business Insights blog:

Crowdfunding: Harnessing the power of social networking to raise money.  (Part 1 of 3)  (Part 2 of 3)  (Part 3 of 3)

I enjoyed researching and writing it, and have been following various crowdfunding projects (and even funding a few).

In Part 1, I reviewed Kickstarter, a US-centric platform. In Part 2, I took a look at ulule, used mostly in Europe, and brought to my attention by an IBM Italy colleague, Nicola Palmarini (@nipalm).

While working on an IBM project in Nettuna, Italy, Nicola met and was inspired by a woman named Eleonora, and decided to crowdfund a personal project on ulule to help Eleonora travel from Nettuno to Paris to attend the concert of The Pooh, her favorite band, at the Olympia.

The way to Olympia: A documentary on barriers between dreams and reality is a wonderful documentary about dreams, disabilities, and accessible travel. The project received 109% of funding, and the documentary is complete and will premiere on Wednesday, April 24, as you can see by the screening invitation below (click on the image to enlarge it).

Translated, the invitation reads:
The road to Olympia
A film (fully funded from the web) by Claudia Di Lascia, Michele Bizzi, Federico Monti
Wednesday, April 24, 2013-12:00
At La Casa del Cinema a Villa Borghese/ Deluxe Room
Largo Marcello Mastroianni 1-Rome
Presented By: Professor Gioa Di Cristofaro Longo, Cultural Anthropology, University "La Sapienza", Rome
Authors and protagonists will be present on stage
The film will be followed by refreshments.

Congratulations to all involved with this labor of love, and maybe I'll have some photos of the screening to share next week. :-)

Follow @olympiafilm on Twitter.

Is Accessibility Finally Becoming Mainstream?

I've been working in the accessibility field for 10 years now. It's amazing and gratifying to get to do something every day that you still feel passionate about after that length of time.

It's been at least five years since I heard someone say, "Blind people can use computers?". You won't catch me arguing that we've resolved most of the accessibility gaps that keep people with disabilities from fully participating in the workplace and society, but I do feel like we've reached the tipping point in the last couple of years.

And here's why. One of my many roles in my accessibility/social networking/web management job is as a content curator. (See this great article from EContent Magazine for more information.) For every piece of content I share on one of my IBM or personal social channels, I probably see 60 or 70. And I've just plucked a few examples as proof points:

•  The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act was signed by President Barack Obama on October 8, 2010. It requires that unedited, full-length programs shown on TV with captions must also be captioned when they are made available online.
•  Netflix recently settled a lawsuit and agreed that within two years all movies and television shows it streams will be closed captioned. 
• YouTube is now asking its viewers to report when a video is not captioned.
• The 2012 Paralympics in London sold 2.7 million tickets — a new record. 
• Oscar Pistorius became a household name last year, and I suspect most people saw at least one of the photos of him racing along on his high tech blades, like this great one from Fast Company Design:

Oscar Pistorius is amazing.

Here are two mainstream trends I've seen in the last week that I think are tipping point sign posts, especially since they are targeted at children.

American Girl doll with a hearing aid

• If you have little girls or know any little girls, then you probably are familiar with the American Girl dolls. They are diverse and inclusive — there are a multitude of skin, hair and eye color combinations available so that a girl can get a doll that looks just like her. In this article from ABC News, American Girl Dolls Embrace Differences and Disabilities, we learn that dolls can now have a miniature service dog in harness, a hearing aid or an allergy-free lunch kit, in addition to glasses, braces, crutches, a wheel chair, or no hair to represent those who have lost hair to cancer. As the author of this article states, "... it’s hard not to cheer for a doll company that goes out of its way to represent girls from all walks of life and every circumstance." Exactly.

Hercules and Brandeis

•  Canine Companions for Independence, a wonderful organization that provides highly trained assistance dogs to people with disabilities, published an article about Hercules, a Canine Companions dog, who makes an appearance in Episode 43 of Sesame Street. Hercules helps new Muppet character Brandeis find his calling as an assistance dog. I haven't seen the episode, but the video clip is very cute.

So there you have it. When a mainstream toy manufacturer and a children's educational television program encourage children to see and accept people with disabilities as people like them, who have stories and feelings and needs, we are on the right path. Finally.

Repost from IBM Social Business Insights Blog: Video captioning (Part 2 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO)

  Earlier this year I started blogging for the IBM Social Business Insights blog as part of a team of IBM Redbook Thought Leaders. I'll be reposting those blog posts here on my personal blog. Video captioning (Part 2 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO) was originally published on August 8, 2012, and is owned by IBM. I recommend checking out the IBM Social Business Insights blog for some compelling and though-provoking content.

Video captioning (Part 2 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO)

 

By Holly Nielsen, Social Media Manager and Webmaster, Human Ability and Accessibility 

In part 1 of this two-part series, we reviewed some of the statistics supporting the skyrocketing usage of video, for both personal and business use. Now let’s get to the heart of why you’re missing out if you’re not captioning your videos. 

Captioning videos for accessibility  

Have you ever tried to watch a video without speakers, or with your sound off? Annoying, isn’t it? You might be able to catch a little of what’s going on, but you know that you’re missing most of the action. People who are deaf, hard of hearing, non-native language speakers, using mobile devices, or in a noisy area run into this problem constantly. It’s estimated that the majority of videos on the Internet are not captioned, and therefore inaccessible to these audiences.

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) defines captioning at its most basic level:

Captioning is the process of converting the audio content of a television broadcast, webcast, film, video, CD-ROM, DVD, live event, or other productions into text and displaying the text on a screen, monitor, or other visual display system. 

There are two elements to making videos accessible.

• The first element is the captions themselves. For a full explanation of the requirements for creating captions, see the IBM web accessibility checklist Checkpoint 1.2a: Captions, or the WGBH, NCAM Guideline H: Multimedia.
  Captions can be open or closed: Open captions are burned into the image, similar to subtitles, which the user cannot turn off. Closed captions are a separate data stream that is synchronized with the multimedia. The user can turn these captions on or off. (IBM has developed an enterprise-level research technology, IBM AbilityLab Media Captioner and Editor, which automatically creates open captions and transcripts.)
• The second element is a text version (often called a transcript) of the video content. The IBM web checklist, Checkpoint 1.2b: Audio and Video (Prerecorded), describes the requirements for creating a text version of the content that can be accessed by anyone. It was created as a way for blind or visually impaired users to access the visual information, and for hearing impaired or deaf users to access the audio information in the content.
  A full text alternative describes everything that is happening in the video. In addition to the visual information, the text alternative also includes a transcript of all dialogue, and also textual representations of all of the video, audio, and interaction from the video.

Videos that include both captions and a text alternative can reduce or eliminate barriers to rich media access for many potential users.

The sweet spot: Where videos, accessibility, and SEO meet

Where does SEO fit into this picture? Right here. After all, if your customers can’t find your videos; they can’t view them. And if search engines can’t find your videos; they can’t rank them. But after you’ve captioned a video and included a transcript, you’ve now created exactly what the search engines require for indexing – making that video searchable – impossible to do with an uncaptioned file. Both users and search engines can search for and find keywords from your video; enabling video SEO.

SEO has been around as long as there have been search engines, web sites for the engines to search, and site owners wanting to increase traffic to those sites. It’s constantly changing as search engines evolve and become more sophisticated. Video SEO is a relatively new, but growing field, and will continue to gain in use and importance as Internet users continue to watch videos and new video captioning legislation is signed into law and enforced, such as the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 in the United States.
As a competitive advantage, captioning your videos is a winning strategy – both for promoting your messages, products, and services to a much broader audience by enabling more of your customers to find your content, and by making the content accessible to all of your customers, regardless of disability, device, or native language.

Recent Innovations for People with Disabilities

There are amazing technologies being developed daily by incredibly talented people. Some of them are created to enable people with disabilities to participate fully in social networking. The development of these technologies often aren't covered by the mainstream press because they're considered of interest only to a small audience — a definite misconception.  When you consider that more than 1 billion of the 7 billion people in the world today have a disability*, and the world population is aging at the fastest rate in history** — these are not niche technologies by any stretch of the imagination.

Here are two technology innovations I found today, surfaced by Smart Planet:

• Dyslexie font designed to help dyslexics read, write: Not your typical technology innovation, but for those with dyslexia, a cognitive disability that makes reading and comprehension difficult, this font could help them read for a longer time and with better comprehension, compared to other fonts. Dislexie was created by Dutch graphic designer, Christian Boer, who is dyslexic. The letters in Dyslexie are more widely spaced and distinct from each other, and "tied down"  — making dyslexics less likely to flip them, mentally.

• New smartphone app lets users text ‘eyes-free’: Designed by the researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, this new iPhone application enables visually impaired users who are proficient at typing in Braille to type up to 32 words per minute at a 92% accuracy rate. Based on the same model as the Braille keyboard, the software, called BrailleTouch, employs gesture-based texting and uses only six keys, which are displayed as dots.

The researchers at Georgia Tech have been busy. I also found this article in Disabled World today:

• Tongue Drive Wireless Device Operates Computers and Wheelchairs: This innovative device enables people with high-level spinal cord injuries to operate a computer and maneuver an electrically powered wheelchair by moving their tongue. The newest prototype of the system allows users to wear an inconspicuous dental retainer embedded with sensors to control the system. It was demonstrated at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco on February 20, 2012.

Many technologies created originally for people with disabilities have worked their way into the mainstream, making applications more usable for all. According to The Center for an Accessible Society, experts in the telecom access engineering field call it the "Electronic Curb-cut Effect", and have an extensive list on their website of IT (information technology) innovations, originally developed by, or in support of, people with disabilities that wound up benefiting everyone.

*10 Facts on Disability from the World Health Organization
**More than 600 million people are over the age of 60. By 2050, that number is expected to rise to 2 billion; more than 20 percent of the world’s population. World Health Organization

Image: Damian Brandon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net