Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Alison Walden Of Publicis Sapient On How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Have A Disability
An Interview With Eric Pines
Doing the job is not the only job. Be organized. Think things through. Be able to articulate what you’re working on and why it’s important. Sometimes organizing our thoughts this way requires a conscious decision and setting time aside to reflect on what we’ve accomplished and what we want to accomplish.
As we all know, over the past several years there has been a great deal of discussion about inclusion and diversity in the workplace. One aspect of inclusion that is not discussed enough, is how businesses can be inclusive of people with disabilities. We know that the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. What exactly does this look like in practice? What exactly are reasonable accommodations? Aside from what is legally required, what are some best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experience about the “How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Are Disabled”.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Alison Walden, Sr. Director of Technology and Accessibility Lead at digital consultancy Publicis Sapient.
Alison Walden is a technology leader passionate about creating inclusive digital spaces. An international speaker on accessibility and inclusive design, she works with organizations to help them embed accessibility standards into their ways of working. At Publicis Sapient she leads the Accessibility Centre of Excellence, establishing standards for accessible processes, capabilities, and the creation of digital experiences across this global organization.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you ended up where you are?
I definitely took a circuitous route to get to where I am today. My current role as accessibility lead for a global digital consulting company didn’t exist when I was choosing a career. I started out as an exploration geologist. The joke I often tell is that I was tired of working in such a male-dominated field, so I decided to switch to web development. Of course, web development is also a gender-imbalanced field.
Early on, I was a fan of the web blog ‘A list apart’ and I read a couple of articles by Trenton Moss on web accessibility. I was surprised to learn that I had not been taught the correct ways to create web content at school and had developed my own bad habits. Even more surprising was that pretty much everyone was making the same mistakes. We were all designing and developing to make interfaces that worked well with a mouse pointing device, but hardly anyone was checking to make sure the interface would also work for a person using the keyboard alone or a screen reader. I immediately learned as much as I could about web accessibility standards and changed my ways. This ultimately inspired me to focus my role on accessibility and to teach others what I’ve learned.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Intuitive: When a big part of your job involves convincing people to change the way they work, you need to be able to read the room. After running several training sessions on how to create accessible experiences with multiple groups, I noticed that the groups’ empathy would always be triggered by the session where I taught them how to use a screen reader. I used to do this session last, but after noticing this I moved the session to the beginning. People do not create inaccessible digital experiences on purpose. They do it accidentally because nobody taught them how to create experiences that work for everyone. Realizing this, I decided to focus on teaching them how to check their work first. Today, screen reader demos of digital experiences are one of the most effective methods I have to get engagement and empathy from teams.
Determined & Persistent: When you are trying to change processes embedded in a company’s culture, you will not succeed overnight. You need to be ready to keep providing your recommendations and rationale repeatedly, in different scenarios, to different stakeholders. I used every single forum I had as an opportunity to talk about the importance of web accessibility. And even though I really started to feel like a broken record I kept at it. Then as some awareness started to build, I started to get opportunities with larger groups or in client-facing or even conference settings, and I simply took every opportunity I got to broaden my platform.
Courage: To get to where I am today, I had to constantly be in opportunity-gathering mode. I had to decide to be open to trying new things and getting a bit uncomfortable. I wanted to grow my area of influence, so when I was offered my first opportunity to speak at a major conference (SXSW in 2016), I took the opportunity even though I had never spoken at a conference before, and the idea terrified me. Through practice, it became easier for me to speak publicly and even enjoyable.
Can you share a story about one of your greatest work-related struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?
One of the most significant struggles I’ve experienced as a leader has been gaining a large enough platform to build awareness around the accessibility work I’ve been doing. I needed people to know about my accessibility work because I needed collaboration from everyone to scale it properly. I have that platform now — I’m leading our Accessibility Centre of Excellence that we launched in January — but it took years to build that platform. I overcame the barrier of not having a platform by being relentless.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
The most exciting project I’m working on now is setting up the newly launched Accessibility Centre of Excellence at Publicis Sapient. This team of accessibility specialists establishes standards for accessible digital processes, experiences, and capabilities at Publicis Sapient, and enables our people to achieve accessible digital business transformation for clients.
I’ve also had the experience of helping our clients institutionalize accessible processes across their organizations. It has been exciting and rewarding to have the opportunity to enable teams to make accessible digital experiences.
Fantastic. Let’s now shift to our discussion about inclusion. Can you tell our readers a bit about your experience working with initiatives to promote Diversity and Inclusion? Can you share a story with us?
I’m fortunate to be the co-executive sponsor of Publicis Sapient’s business resource group for people with disabilities and allies called “Enable.” One of my favorite diversity and inclusion initiatives that we do as part of Enable is our annual Accessibility Hackathon, where we challenge employees at Publicis Sapient to put their range of skills together to discover creative ways of using technology to empower persons with disabilities. One year, teams came up with a medicine app for persons with memory loss, an app to support shopping for people who are blind, a third app to diagnose mental health challenges, and an indoor navigation system for visually impaired persons. We learned from our participants, and it helped to move forward the conversation about assistive technology. We encourage participants to partner with and gain insights from people with lived experience of disability.
This may be obvious to you, but it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you articulate to our readers a few reasons why it is so important for a business or organization to have an inclusive work culture?
Studies show that diversity makes for more creative solutions and can solve problems better. In 2016, Harvard Business Review described increasing workplace diversity as a “good business decision.” Diverse teams have been shown to have better ideas, better conversations, and more innovative outcomes. According to Gartner, inclusive work culture increases team performance by 30%. The benefits come both from having diverse teams and designing for a diverse audience.
If we want our businesses to reap the benefits that a diverse workforce brings, then we need to make sure that our company culture, digital tools, and physical spaces are inclusive for a diverse audience. We won’t be able to attract the full spectrum of diverse applicants without making sure our recruitment tools are accessible to people with disabilities.
For example, having people with lived experience of disability to contribute insights and ideas in my field of creating accessible digital experiences is crucial. So our recruitment processes need to be accessible for people with disabilities to ensure that they can apply. Our mandatory internal tools like tools to log expenses or timecards need to be accessible so that everyone can do their job duties. Physical spaces need to be accessible. Everything needs to be accessible to everyone.
The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what this looks like in practice? What exactly are reasonable accommodations? Can you please share a few examples?
A reasonable accommodation is an alteration to a job or process to make it accessible for someone who needs to perform that job or process a different way. For example, a person may need or prefer a different interview format than what is considered standard. Or a person may need a different kind of desk or chair than what is provided as standard equipment in an office. Additionally, they may need a change to the layout of a workspace to perform their job duties.
Aside from what is legally required, what are some best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities? If you can, please share a few examples.
Some best practices include:
- Everyone sharing their pronouns on their email signatures.
- People introducing themselves with a brief description of their appearance on video calls (to benefit people who cannot see them for whatever reason).
- Education on how to create accessible email communications and driving this in the workplace.
- Using accessible meeting software that has captioning available.
- Providing best practices on how to post content in an accessible way on company intranets.
Can you share a few examples of ideas that were implemented at your workplace to help promote disability inclusion? Can you share with us how the work culture was impacted as a result?
At Publicis Sapient we’ve been talking about ways to maintain peoples’ quality of life as they return to the office after the pandemic. The ability to work in more comfortable clothing, to work more flexible hours, or to be able to have remote calls without being stigmatized have all contributed to a more inclusive-feeling workplace for some and an ability to shine at work. So how do we maintain that flexibility of environment that is so beneficial as people return to work?
One idea we’ve discussed is to create different spaces at the office. There could be a quiet space, where people choose to work who do not want to be interrupted with side conversations and the rule is not to make noise. There could be areas with lower lighting, or more social areas where people choose to go to work in collaboration with others. A variety of desk and table formats would also be ideal to allow people to choose the way they are most comfortable working.
This is our signature question that we ask in many of our interviews. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started My Career”?
Boundaries are good. Early in my career I’d agree to whatever I was told to do, including joining meetings late at night, even though it was disruptive to my life. As I gained confidence in my career, instead of always agreeing, I’d find an alternative thing to do instead of the thing that was requested. For example, instead of joining an 11pm meeting I’d send my updates to attendees and let them know I’d catch up with them first thing the next day. It seemed miraculous to me but in most cases my colleagues accepted my alternate solution with no complaint.
There are more possibilities than what you see. When things are a bit broken you can jump in and improve them. People don’t have everything figured out, and without the kind of people who see ways to make things better and try, nothing would ever change. You might be the most junior person on the team, but you could also be the person who ends up creating impactful change at your organization.
It’s ok to say “I don’t know”. A culture of knowing pervades the tech industry. As a front-end developer, we have to constantly learn new technologies. It’s easy to get into a trap of thinking you have to know everything, and it feels shameful to admit you don’t know. I learned that this was unnecessary as I worked with some leaders who weren’t afraid to say “I don’t know.” I discovered that if I raised my hand and said I didn’t understand in a meeting, half the people in the meeting would be relieved and chime in that they didn’t understand either. Admitting you don’t know saves time, energy, and stress. Refuse to be part of the culture of knowing. True confidence lies in not having to know the answer.
Doing the job is not the only job. Be organized. Think things through. Be able to articulate what you’re working on and why it’s important. Sometimes organizing our thoughts this way requires a conscious decision and setting time aside to reflect on what we’ve accomplished and what we want to accomplish.
To be a leader is to not be afraid to make a mistake. People can be afraid of making decisions because they don’t want to make the wrong one. But making a decision at all will make you more of a leader than people who don’t. Look for a work environment where it is safe for people to fail. Part of being a leader is making decisions, even if they turn out to be the wrong ones.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
I love this quote from one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption:
“Get busy living or get busy dying. You have 86,400 seconds each day, and it’s your choice what you do with them. It’s your choice to just keep living the life that just gets you by. Or, it’s your choice to finally break out and take those chances that you’ve always dreamed about. Remember, you can never get more time. Use this time you have right now to take control of your life. It won’t be easy, but nothing good ever comes easy.”
To me this is about being intentional with your life and if you choose to get busy living that’s about having hope. I’ve found this to be a useful kind of binary framework to help me move on from something or get started with something new. Any time I feel stuck I might ask myself, what do I need to do to get busy living? That could be making time for my mental health, solving a problem with my current project, or asking for help. It helps me to not sit and stew about things in an unproductive way.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Did you know that about 15% of people in the world have a permanent disability, but that less than 1% of digital experiences are accessible for people with disabilities? Imagine if you wanted to order something online and none of the websites worked for the way you needed to navigate. Or imagine if they sort of worked, but they were hard to use, impossible to trust with confidence, and took you about 10 times as long to use? Would you think that was fair?
If I could inspire a movement, I’d get every business that creates digital experiences online to take their entire team through screen reader training. I’d mandate them to ensure that every experience they create is accessible for people with disabilities. In addition, I’d have every school that has web development and web design courses teach accessibility best practices as part of their program.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!
About the Interviewer: Eric L. Pines is a nationally recognized federal employment lawyer, mediator, and attorney business coach. He represents federal employees and acts as in-house counsel for over fifty thousand federal employees through his work as a federal employee labor union representative. A formal federal employee himself, Mr. Pines began his federal employment law career as in-house counsel for AFGE Local 1923 which is in Social Security Administration’s headquarters and is the largest federal union local in the world. He presently serves as AFGE 1923’s Chief Counsel as well as in-house counsel for all FEMA bargaining unit employees and numerous Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs unions.
While he and his firm specialize in representing federal employees from all federal agencies and in reference to virtually all federal employee matters, his firm has placed special attention on representing Veteran Affairs doctors and nurses hired under the authority of Title. He and his firm have a particular passion in representing disabled federal employees with their requests for medical and religious reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are warranted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (ADA). He also represents them with their requests for Federal Employee Disability Retirement (OPM) when an accommodation would not be possible.
Mr. Pines has also served as a mediator for numerous federal agencies including serving a year as the Library of Congress’ in-house EEO Mediator. He has also served as an expert witness in federal court for federal employee matters. He has also worked as an EEO technical writer drafting hundreds of Final Agency Decisions for the federal sector.
Mr. Pines’ firm is headquartered in Houston, Texas and has offices in Baltimore, Maryland and Atlanta, Georgia. His first passion is his wife and five children. He plays classical and rock guitar and enjoys playing ice hockey, running, and biking. Please visit his websites at www.pinesfederal.com and www.toughinjurylawyers.com. He can also be reached at eric@pinesfederal.com.
Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Alison Walden Of Publicis Sapient On How Businesses Make… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.