Software opens up workforce to people with disabilities

With one in five New Zealanders living with a long-term impairment or disability, employers with workplaces accessible to disabled employees and customers will benefit through increased staff retention and custom, say workplace analysts - and information technology can help.

Carol Ratnam, an analyst with the Government Office for Disability Issues (part of the Ministry for Social Development), says IT vendors have been developing affordable technologies to support the disabled at work for some time; unfortunately, it's a development many employers haven't caught up with.

"Technology can level the playing field for the disabled and remove the workplace barriers they face. Technology helps people to be no longer [seen as] disabled; just as people," says Ratnam.

She says workplace IT tools that assist the disabled include larger monitors for people with vision impairment; speakerphones and headsets for those with limited upper body movement; and PC software "accessibility options" such as keyboard settings that eliminate inadvertently repetitive strokes made by a shaky hand. There are also settings that let people who can't use a computer mouse, control the cursor with the numeric keyboard instead.

Website access is also important for both employees and customers, says Ratnam, and the Government, in accordance with its own New Zealand Disability Strategy is attempting to lead the way. The websites of government agencies are monitored for disabled accessibility and the relevant agencies and departments informed of any shortcomings.

IBM employee Mark Bagshaw, a quadriplegic who has had mainstream technical marketing and management roles within IBM for 27 years, says using IT to make an organisation accessible for disabled employees also positively impacts disabled customers.

"Businesses are beginning to realise that it makes no sense to exclude [for example] 20 per cent of the population: you ignore this group of people at your peril," says Bagshaw.

He says employer prejudice and caution towards the disabled is not driven by "awful thinking" but by traditional perceptions about what people with disabilities are not capable of doing. Yet the technologies to help are there and are not expensive, says Bagshaw.

"People think [adapted] IT is difficult and only relevant for large organisations - that's not the case," says Bagshaw.

Ratnam says the MSD is also conducting a study into New Zealand employer attitudes towards the disabled, and while the findings are not yet available, international studies indicate employers still retain outdated perceptions about what is required to make a workplace accessible for the disabled - one is that supportive IT tools are expensive; another is that health and safety and other insurance costs are raised. However, five independent international studies have revealed no special insurance problems, and many IT vendors develop standard software and hardware products with accessibility for the disabled in mind; common technologies have accessibility options and switching those options on costs customers no extra.

"In 2004, IBM had a corporate instruction from our CEO that all IBM hardware, software and services will be usable and accessible to people with disabilities," says John Evans of IBM's Worldwide Human Ability and Accessibility Centre in Boston.

Evans says as a worldwide organisation employing thousands, IBM encourages people with disabilities to serve on committees committed to developing IT accessibility guidelines, and lobbies on behalf of people with disabilities. He says while IBM isn't unique in its focus on developing IT tools to support people with disabilities, it's less common for an IT vendor to offer accessibility consulting services - IBM helps people decide whether to focus on specific employees or create a strategy and implementation plan supplemented by policy and government services.

The benefits of investing is functionality that helps a wider group of people is that more skilled people are needed in the workforce and IT vendors that cost-effectively equip employers with the tools and services to employ and support an aging or disabled workforce will be patronised. Software that can read hand tremors is good for people with cerebral palsy, but also good for older people with shaky hands.

Ratnam says while private sector development of IT accessibility tools is heartening, all the gadgets in the world won't help an organisation that undervalues the disabled or the aging.

"[Investing in] the technologies will only be successful if the work environment is inclusive," says Ratnam.