Hiring for Inclusion: Building an Accessibility-Centric Workforce: Catherine Sherry and Kate O’Connor

>> AMBER HINDS: Welcome to WordPress Accessibility Meetup, Hiring for Inclusion: Building an Accessibility-Centric Workforce with Catherine Sherry and Kate O’Connor from Onward Accessibility. A few announcements before we get started. If you are not familiar, we do have a Facebook group that you can use to connect between meetups. You can find our Facebook group if you go to facebook.com/groups/wordpress.accessibility. Or if you just search WordPress Accessibility on Facebook, this is a great way to connect with people and continue learning, ask questions, get help, share your expertise in between our meetups. Everyone always asks, is this being recorded? The answer is yes, it is being recorded. We will make the recording available in about two weeks once we get corrected captions and a full transcript. We can write up a little summary to go with it. You can find both upcoming events and all of the past recordings in one place if you go to equalizedigital.com/meetup. The other way to get notified about upcoming events and when the recordings are available is if you join our e-mail list. You can do that if you go to equalizedigital.com/focus-state.

We send out e-mails once a week with a roundup of accessibility news, and then we also send event announcements and reminders. Please join that. If you prefer to listen to meetups, you can find them on our podcast if you go to accessibilitycraft.com. This meetup is part of the official WordPress community meetups program. However, it does not have any budget to help us make it accessible. The community team has told us to go out and find sponsors.

I always give a little note here at the beginning of every meetup that we are seeking additional sponsors to help us with making meetup accessible. We rely on them to help us cover the cost of live captioning and post-event transcription. Occasionally, if we’re able to get sponsors for it, we have also had sign language interpretation, and that’s something that we would love to be able to do again in the future. If you are interested in sponsoring, or if you want to contact us for anything else related to the meetup, if you have suggestions, if there’s topics you want to hear, if you need any additional accommodations to make meetup work for you, then you can e-mail myself and my co-organizer, Paula, if you e-mail meetup@equalizedigital.com.

Who am I? I’ve been talking. I haven’t really introduced myself yet, but I am Amber Hinds. I’m the CEO of Equalize Digital. We are a mission-driven organization and a corporate member of the IAAP, the International Association of Accessibility Professionals that is focused on WordPress accessibility. We have a WordPress plugin called Accessibility Checker that helps you find and fix accessibility problems on your websites. We offer online courses in how to use NVDA and VoiceOver screen readers, and we do accessibility audits, remediation, and consulting.

Of course, we run this meetup. You can learn more about us on our website, which is equalizedigital.com. We do have a sponsor that I would like to thank today, and that is Kinsta. Kinsta provides managed hosting services for WordPress. It is powering 120,000 businesses worldwide. Based on the user reviews that it has gotten, it is the highest-rated managed WordPress host on G2. It has everything that you need, including an unbeatable combination of speed, security, and expert support. Kinsta is powered by Google Cloud and has the fastest C3D and C2 servers combined with CDN and edge caching.

Your sites are secured with Cloudflare Enterprise, protecting you from DDoS attacks. All plans include free migrations, and the first month of the starter plans is completely free, so you can try Kinsta risk-free. You can learn more about Kinsta if you go to kinsta.com, which is K-I-N-S-T-A.com. Kinsta, of course, is covering the cost of our live captioning today, which we very much appreciate.

One of the things that I always ask attendees is, if you are willing to go on whatever social media platform you like, whether that’s Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever, and sending them a message or tagging them and saying, “Thank you for sponsoring captions for WordPress Accessibility Meetup,” that helps them to know that their sponsorship makes a difference and that people appreciate it, and also that I’m doing what I said I would do, which is shouting them out. If you are willing to do that, we would very much appreciate that. It helps to encourage our sponsors to want to continue supporting the meetup.

Two upcoming events that I want to shout out before we get started with today’s presentation. Our next meetup for August will be on Monday, August 18th at 7:00 PM US Central Time. I am so excited about this meetup. Myself and our accessibility specialist, Maria, have been doing manual testing, very detailed accessibility auditing of about 20 different WordPress page builders. If you saw the report from last year, we had 10. We have doubled the number of builders that we are testing and comparing.

In this meetup, I will be presenting the findings for 2025 of which page builder provides the best starting point for an accessible website and which ones you want to avoid unless you want to have lots and lots of work to do. Please tune in for that. We should hopefully have a registration link that we can pop in the chat for you. Then at this same time slot, next month on Thursday, September 4th at 10:00 AM Central Time, Piccia Neri will be speaking about captions. Her presentation is, We Need to Talk About Captions.

She was supposed to give this for us earlier in the year, and, unfortunately, got very sick. We had a last minute replacement talk. I’m very excited to have her coming back in September to give that talk, which a lot of people were excited about. I am going to pull up and introduce our speakers here. Today’s speakers are Cathy Sherry, who’s the Director of Staffing at Onward Accessibility and Kate O’Connor, VP and Practice Leader at Onward Accessibility. We are very excited to have both of them here today to talk about their staffing efforts and ways that you can make sure that you are inclusive in your hiring practices. Welcome, Kate and Cathy.

>> CATHERINE SHERRY: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having us today. This is Cathy Sherry. For those of you who would like a visual description, I am a Caucasian woman with, I guess, golden brown gold– I try to go for gold, but it comes out more brown. I am here from the Jersey Shore. Passing it off to Kate for a very, very quick intro.

>> KATE O’CONNOR: Hi, everyone. Kate O’Connor here. Thank you so much, Amber, for the introduction and for having us today. For those of you who would like a visual description of myself, I’m a Caucasian woman with long blonde hair. I always wear long earrings. I’m wearing long black earrings today. I’m 5’11”. For those of you who have seen me in person, I’m very tall. Thank you again for having us. We’re thrilled to be here.

I, as Amber mentioned, head up our accessibility, Onward Accessibility. We actually have two pillars within that. We’ll get into that later, but we focus on staffing, and then also, we do deliver end-to-end solutions as well. I actually have a 20-year background in digital. I started my career in UX/UI design and front-end development. Actually, I used to– many, many years ago, I did develop custom HTML5 sites, and then moved into some WordPress development. Real excited to be here. Thank you so much. Over to you, Cathy.

>> CATHERINE: All righty.

>> AMBER: Thank you. I was just going to give a quick reminder while you’re getting your screen up and running, so they’re going to share. Please do, as I mentioned at the beginning, look for that Q&A panel, post any questions there, and I’ll come back at the end of the presentation and pass those along.

>> CATHERINE: Wonderful. Thank you so much. This is Cathy Sherry. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here today. Just as a quick disclosure, I have the slide deck up. We are going to have a remediated PDF version of the slide deck sent out to the WordPress Meetup team a bit later. We don’t have that immediately, but we will have it. Today, we’re just really excited to talk about something we’re super passionate about and is honestly really essential to the future of work, which is building out a workforce that’s rooted in accessibility and inclusion.

As all of us here know, I’m sure, this isn’t just about compliance or checking a box. It’s about making room for incredible talent, driving better outcomes, building a culture where everyone belongs. With that, let’s just go ahead and dive right in. Kate already gave most of her background. I’m sure she’s going to go in a little bit further. For me, I am Cathy Sherry. I’m CPACC certified myself, Director of Staffing here at Onward Accessibility, Division of Onward Search. I got started in digital accessibility when I joined Onward in 2020.

I was just laid off during maternity leave and was very confused on where I was going to go. I joined Onward as a recruiter, saw that we had a ton of openings for accessibility engineers. I honestly had never heard of it before. I’m like, let me do some research. Let me see, what is this? I honestly was so floored that it was 2020 and things were not just automatically made accessible to everyone.

Because of that, I became really passionate about it. Along with Kate and the rest of our amazing team at Onward, we really worked together to build out digital accessibility teams from there at the enterprise-level teams that scale. That’s where we figured out our passion. That’s where we really thrive. With that, again, I’m based on the Jersey Shore. I have two absolutely perfect children and one absolutely super old English bulldog that we love very dearly. I will pass it off to Kate in case there’s anything else she’d like to mention before we move on.

>> KATE: Thank you, Cathy. Again, Kate O’Connor here. I did already talk a lot about my background, but similar to Cathy, although a little bit different, as I mentioned, I started my career out in the digital space as a hands-on designer developer. I really didn’t learn about digital accessibility until about seven years ago or so. I had shifted from a hands-on designer into the staffing and consulting space. Here at Onward, I’ve been here for 14 years.

I spent most of my time helping our clients build digital teams, help with digital transformation, building better experiences by helping my clients build out their teams on the staffing side of things. Then I started learning about digital accessibility, as I mentioned, seven or so years ago, and started seeing, as Cathy mentioned, the gap, the massive gap and the need. Really, helping our clients. We started by learning accessibility. We upskilled our internal team.

We’re all CPACC certified. Learned that it’s not just a checkbox, right? As you all mostly know here, it’s a process. It’s an evolution. We’re really passionate about helping our clients with digital accessibility, either from hiring and from building in-house teams, which is really important. Then also through, obviously, most teams cannot support, especially Fortune 500, Fortune 100. A lot of our clients are in the Fortune 500, 100 space. It’s impossible to support all digital properties.

There’s thousands of engineers, typically hundreds or thousands of digital websites and properties. We also built out our solutions capability so that we can help fill those gaps for our clients and work towards being more accessible and building a better experience for everyone in the world. Quickly about Onward Search and Onward Accessibility. As I mentioned, Onward Accessibility is a division of Onward Search. We have been around actually for almost 20 years at this point.

I, as I mentioned, have been here for 14 years. A little bit about us, and then we’ll get into the real exciting points that we’re here to discuss today. We’re really proud to be part of a veteran-led company that’s delivered solutions and talent to top brands for over, again, over 15 years, but really closer to 20. We have a vast and growing network of 5,000 accessibility and experience design professionals, including individuals with disabilities.

From our talent to advisors to our recruiters, many of us, as I mentioned and Cathy mentioned, are IAAP certified. Our team has hands-on experience supporting clients through every stage of their accessibility journey. We’ve helped more than 3,000 clients, including Fortune 100 companies, advance inclusion and compliance. We don’t just build accessibility teams, but as I mentioned, we’re passionate about helping our clients fill the gaps wherever they have them.

That includes providing accessibility solutions. Our solutions include audits, remediation support, maintenance, and more. Then just to back up, that slide just had a picture of people around a round table, and then some of those points that I just mentioned. Cathy, over to you.

>> CATHERINE: Amazing. We have here the discussion agenda, those things that we’re going to cover today. To begin, we’re going to start with, of course, the importance of inclusion in the workplace. Why disability inclusion matters, not just ethically, but both practically and economically. We’re going to walk through laws, regulations, key legal frameworks. We’ll move on to some common barriers that some job seekers might come across during the job application and interviewing and onboarding process.

Some accommodation requests, some common ones, some things maybe you haven’t thought about that do help support folks during the hiring process. Disability inclusion in the hiring process as a whole, just touching upon more of those key points there that we want to keep in mind. We’ll also share some best practices for inclusive hiring, offer helpful resources. Then, of course, finally, we’re going to open up the floor. We want to hear your questions.

We want to have that back and forth. We want to hear about maybe there’s a specific instance that you’ve had, whether it be yourself as a job seeker or maybe hiring for your own team, any experiences that you’ve had that you’ve come up with excellent solutions for or any success stories. We’d love to hear about that too and keep this as conversational as possible towards the end. Let’s dive in. Here we are, the importance of inclusion in the workplace.

People with disabilities. I’m sure all of us know the statistics, but if not, there’s over 1.3 billion people worldwide with disabilities. That makes people with disabilities the largest minority group in the world. It’s also the only minority group that anyone can join at any time. That includes us, our families, our future selves. Disabilities, they can be visible. They can be non-apparent. Physical, cognitive, sensory, psychological, it runs the gamut.

Inclusion, it’s not just the right thing to do. It’s actually a strategic advantage too. Having those diverse teams, especially those people who think and experience the world differently, that’s something that drives innovation. Adding to your team, folks from different backgrounds, folks with different perspectives, from a different way of life, that’s just going to make your team more well-rounded and more apt to come up with more innovative ideas. Inclusive cultures, they retain talent better.

With retention, people who are proud to be part of an inclusive culture, people just want to work where they feel represented, respected, valued. Disability inclusion helps your teams perform better. It unlocks access to highly skilled professionals you might have otherwise overlooked for whatever reason. You want your teams to reflect your users. Many of your customers and candidates live with disabilities themselves, whether you realize it or not.

Because again, not all disabilities are apparent. Because of that, that’s also something that can boost performance by tapping into those specific talents and skills. The disability community represents over $13 trillion in global disposable income. I mean, think about that. In the US, working-aged people with disabilities have seven times more disposable income than other minority groups. Doing this is the right thing to do, but financially, it just makes sense. Excluding that community, it’s not just unfair. It’s literally a missed opportunity.

Those are some things to think about when you’re thinking about the importance of inclusion in the workplace. I know a lot of us here were really passionate about accessibility to begin with, so we might already know, but it’s always good to start that off. Passing it on to Kate.

>> KATE: Thank you, Cathy. On this slide, we’ve got a title, Laws and Regulations. I’m going to speak to that. There’s an image of a woman holding a, looks like a checklist clipboard. Anyways, we’re not legal experts and can’t give legal advice. Disability inclusion is about far more– it’s the right thing to do, but it’s also, it addresses compliance issues. It is the law. There’s many laws around the world which prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities. Personally, we’re more familiar with those in the US.

However, we do work with quite a few clients in Europe. I want to mention, though, first and foremost, the US ones. The Americans with Disabilities Act, many of you I’m sure are familiar. It’s among the most widely known and commonly enforced. It applies to employment practices and mandates that employees provide reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities. Interestingly, it can also apply to the digital space. Employers need to make sure their websites, web applications, mobile apps, and documents are accessible to people with disabilities.

As I mentioned, of course, there’s the ADA in the US, but in Europe, there’s the European Accessibility Act. I’m sure many of you are familiar with that as well. That includes even stronger and more explicit language around digital accessibility. The ADA applies to employee-facing properties and the companies with the best cultures value their employees as much as their customers. There is also ADA Title II in the US, which is very relevant to anyone, particularly in the healthcare space or higher ed, anyone that might receive government funding.

Again, we’re not legal experts, not a lawyer, but a lot of these laws are important to be familiar with because they can help drive and help– Often we have to help educate our executive leaders to get funding. It’s important because these can be used to help drive accessibility. Again, it is the law as well. There’s also the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. There are, of course, state and local laws in the US as well. There’s many others around the world, in Canada and Japan, across the world, that prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities in the workplace.

Then if you’re looking for more specific guidance, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is the federal commission charged with enforcing hiring discrimination laws, offers online resources and includes a list of federal regulations and guidelines, and will share that as part of our accessible PDF afterwards. That will be posted on the site. Over to you, Cathy.

>> CATHERINE: Well, so here we are at Common Barriers. On the screen, we have just a few common barriers that we like to think about during the hiring process. Think about it. We’re all digital now. It’s not as easy as just walking into an office space, an organization with your printed-out resume in hand with a box of donuts and asking for a job. I mean, if somebody did that to me, they would be hired on the spot. However, that is not always the case now. Everything is digital.

We have to think about all of the digital touch points that we touch during the hiring process. Websites, this includes places where you post your job, specific job boards, anything that you’re using, whether it be LinkedIn, your own website, maybe your own website has a third-party tool that you’re required to use to put out your certain jobs that you’re hiring for. There’s job applications in general. It’s not just looking at the job itself, but it’s also the act of applying, whether you have to attach a resume, but then you also have to log in somewhere, but then you also have to sign up, and then you have to create a password, and then eight days later, you’re finally able to submit.

It’s like different things for different organizations. Complex language/process, that’s going to be a barrier too and just general awareness. Let’s dive in a little bit on all of these topics. As we all know, accessibility barriers, they exist both physically and digitally, but it’s really the digital ones that are often overlooked. Being in the tech field, I’m sure all of us are aware that about 95% of websites are not fully accessible to all people with disabilities. That just includes career pages and job portals.

Some things people might encounter are forms without labels, buttons with no instructions, poor color contrast, inaccessible PDFs, applications that physically cannot be navigated by a screen board or screen reader. Even if you have good intentions, and you post your job, and you do the best you can with yourself and making that job description read non-complex and in plain language, if you have a job application process that someone with a screen reader literally cannot submit their resume, that’s a problem.

That’s just a barrier where people who you want to hire, people who are qualified, people who are skilled are not physically able to even get their name, their contact information out there. Something to keep in mind, like I alluded to before, is job descriptions with jargon, unclear instructions. That can also be a barrier. Think about it. If you yourself are hiring for your team, yes, someone that you’re hiring for, if they are qualified, they might know the technical jargon, the lingo that you’re using, whether it be in the technical aspect or in your industry.

However, it’s also good to think about the person that’s helping you look for these individuals. You’re likely passing off a job description to an HR professional, somebody that doesn’t know that jargon. They might be looking for keywords. We might be using AI to weed through resumes. A lot of things nowadays are keyword-centric. How do you decide which keywords are the most important? How do you decide who’s going to be getting through to you when you’re passing it off to either an AI person or an HR person that does their best, but doesn’t know the technical intricacies of the roles? That’s something to think about.

Making sure that there’s plain language when necessary is going to be really important. Complex language can be an obstacle. For those with cognitive learning disabilities, again, making sure that plain language is top of mind is going to be super important. When it comes to the awareness piece, I mean, many hiring teams just simply are not aware of how their tools or processes exclude candidates. Maybe you join an organization and these are just the tools that are given to you. These are the tools that were chosen from the organization, and you’re just using them because that’s it. This is what you’re told to do.

You’re not really taking a step back and thinking about what does the process look like? What do I have to go through in order to even get my resume in front of anyone who has any hiring decisions in this? It’s really, really important to reevaluate your tools, take a look at those processes. If there’s no way around changing a tool, there’s always a different way to add options, whether it’s providing an email address that people can send their resume to if they’re not able to navigate through an online application system or a tricky website.

There’s so many easy ways that we can provide options for folks that need other options. Then, again, just when it comes down to it, awareness, it’s just the first step towards change. Once you know what to look for, you can start addressing it. Really putting yourself in job seekers’ shoes is going to be the most important thing. I mean, if you yourself don’t identify with a disability, and you’re getting frustrated with a specific digital touch point, it’s highly likely that other folks are going to be extremely frustrated too, and, if not, just excluded. These are just some things to think about in terms of some common barriers that folks might come across. Next, we’re going to move it on with accommodation requests with Kate.

>> KATE: Thank you, Cathy. Again, Kate O’Connor here. This slide has a picture of a woman in front of a computer and in front of a laptop and on a cell phone in a wheelchair. There’s a few points that I’m going to be speaking about around accommodation requests, things to think about. Again, as Cathy mentioned, awareness and education and making progress in this space is so important. It’s a process. A reasonable accommodation is any change that enables equal opportunity.

Some common accommodations include flexibility with hours, deadlines or interview formats, extended time on assessments, physical space modifications like height adjustable desks or wheelchair accessible layouts, remote or text-based interviews, captions or sign language interpreters, assistive technology like screen readers, magnification tools or communication devices. Remember, even people with the same disability may need different accommodations.

Some needs might surprise you, and that’s okay, but it’s important to respond with empathy and openness. Candidates shouldn’t fear judgment, right? We want to have a safe space. You want people to feel comfortable coming forward. Managers should welcome transparency and work collaboratively to meet needs. The goal isn’t special treatment. It’s all about equal opportunity. I know this comes up a lot with clients. It can be clients and candidates, in our experience.

It can be some people aren’t comfortable coming forth discussing an accommodation, or anything different. it’s important to have things documented and for, again, to create that culture of safe space and people being comfortable coming forth. It’s really important to have things documented to be asking the right questions. I wanted to move on to the next slide, which is disability inclusion in the hiring process. Cathy.

>> CATHERINE: Yep. This slide includes just the full gamut of the hiring process. We have a little image up here that shows recruit, interview, offer, onboard, and thrive. We’re going to really just start getting into some things that we can do, some best practices during the hiring process, just from our general experience, working with a lot of different clients and a lot of different industries and a lot of different job seekers from a lot of different backgrounds. Let’s start with recruitment. Prioritize recruitment processes in accessibility.

Disability inclusion starts with accessible recruitment. You’ve got your job description ready. You’re like, “Okay. I’m ready to go. I got my budget. I’m going to hire someone. I’m looking for the best fit. Let’s do it.” Whether you use an agency, whether you use an in-house recruiter, whether you’re just looking for yourself, what’s important is you need to recruit accessibly. Make sure you make it a priority to look not only in the normal places, LinkedIn, but also make it a point to reach out to organizations that are known for nonprofits that have folks with disabilities.

Maybe they have career centers or maybe they have training programs. Just make sure that you include different organizations. Maybe there are some folks from the disability community that don’t have a LinkedIn. It’s really important to reach out to a lot of different places to make sure that you’re just getting the most well-rounded pool of candidates. Make sure that you train your recruitment or HR teams on accessibility awareness. It’s very easy for folks to just not know what they don’t know.

If somebody applies to somebody that’s a recruiter or on the HR team, and they don’t know how to handle it, they might just move on, just not answer it altogether, and move on to something that they already know. It’s important to bring that awareness and say, “Listen, there are folks that use screen readers. There are such things as requesting a sign language interpreter, and that’s okay.” If you get that request and if you don’t know how to handle it, it’s okay to ask that specific candidate.

Listen, it’s okay to be honest and transparent, and just say, “Listen, I’ve honestly never dealt with this situation before. I’d love to work with you to come up with a solution where I can help support you. It’s okay to do that. It just goes back to the disability is not a bad word. It’s just working together to come up with a solution and way to support people that works for them. Everyone is going to work differently. We are all different individual human beings. Whether we have a disability or not, everyone works differently. Everyone thinks differently.

It’s really important to just be open to providing support, whether it’s not something that you’ve done before, and opening to hearing about new ways to support people. Ensuring your job postings, applications, interview formats are accessible. That’s going to be really important, but sometimes it’s really hard too. I mean, again, going back to the fact that if you’re using a tool or technology that your organization mandates that you’re supposed to use, you might be forced into using something like that. Always have a backup plan and be open to having that backup plan and use it.

If you’re supposed to be using Microsoft Teams, but the person requests that Google Meets works better, Zoom works better, have that free version available to use when needed. If there’s a job application, and there’s a job application website that you’re supposed to use, have a specific email that shows like, “Listen, you can send all this information to this email if this process doesn’t work for you.” Making sure your job postings are actually readable, like physically readable with keyboard or screen readers. That’s going to be really important too.

Maybe having a backup Word document or a mediated PDF that has the job posting in there instead of just relying on a physical website. That could be really helpful too so that you can send these things out directly to folks and organizations. Just some things to think about there. Communicating your commitment to inclusion. I mean, you want to hire folks with disabilities and folks from different backgrounds to your team because you want those different perspectives to drive innovation. We’ve already covered that.

How do you attract those folks? I mean, this is what goes to interviewing. Interviewing is a two-way street. A lot of folks forget that sometimes. It’s not about you being the perfect fit for the organization. It’s about both of you being a perfect fit for each other. The job seeker is looking for a client to work for and an organization to work for that will accept them. They want to be working in a place and thriving in a place where they are accepted, valued, supported.

An organization that communicates their commitment to inclusion, truthfully, is going to be really important there. Using plain language and communications, all communications. That also goes back to just letting people know where they stand in the job process is going to be really important too. Career pages, conversations, job descriptions, all of that, using plain language, and being totally transparent about timeline of the process is going to be really key to making sure that you create that excellent candidate experience.

Sourcing candidates from inclusive job sites, that goes back to just making sure we’re covering our ground and having a more well-rounded pool of candidates to choose from. Not just using LinkedIn, not just looking at folks that are applying to your job, not just those resumes, just doing active reach-outs, whether it be a Slack group, or a meetup group like this one, or any other different areas, avenues, non-profits that you might be looking at that employ people with disabilities.

Those are some places that you can really look at to make sure that you broaden that pool of candidates. Training teams to recruit without bias, that goes back to our earlier point, making sure that awareness is there, and making sure that people are comfortable providing support when needed. Representing inclusive clients and diverse talent, that’s something that everyone should be doing to really broaden their accessibility initiatives there.

Inquiring about accommodation needs throughout the process. The job-seeking process is stressful for anyone to begin with. Think about you finally get an interview after applying to tons and tons of different roles. Now it’s an added stress of, oh my gosh, in order for me to be successful in this interview, I have to request that we use a totally different platform, or I have to request that I bring my sign language interpreter with me. That’s an added stress.

Making sure that you’re, and this goes hand-in-hand with communicating commitment to inclusion, making sure that you’re being open about providing support and open to hearing about different options and different ways we can support throughout the hiring process is going to be really important. It creates that beautiful space where people feel trusted and people feel safe to ask for what they need. That’s just support in general. It doesn’t need to be “an accommodation request.” I mean, folks can request to use Zoom instead or request–

It’s totally fine to request if there’s any specific questions that they should be prepared for in an interview. Those are things that are okay to ask. Giving that open space and asking folks throughout the process if there’s anything that you can do to support is going to be the main thing there. Adjusting that hiring process as requested is going to be important. Maybe there’s something that isn’t a reasonable support item for whatever reason.

Being open about that and going back and trying to work with the person to come up with a mutual agreement is going to be really important too. Actually following through on that is going to be important too. Going dark after somebody says, “Hey, can this be adjusted?” That would be great is like, “Yes, that’s great that you asked, and you offered support,” but going through with that and actually making things happen is going to be really important too.

That goes back to offering multiple interviewing options. Then, of course, just building accessible experiences with people with disabilities is the most important part. If you don’t know something, it’s okay. It’s okay to not know what you don’t know, but being transparent and asking folks from that community to help educate you to become better and provide a better experience is really going to be key there. With that, I’m going to pass it off to Kate to provide a couple other best practices.

>> KATE: Thank you, Cathy. I wanted to add real quick on accommodations. You mentioned this, Cathy, even sometimes using the word accommodation, if you’re asking someone, do you need an accommodation, there are potentially better ways of asking. Just as you said, Cathy, asking, is there anything that you need to support you in the hiring process? Is there anything that could help you be more successful in the hiring or onboarding?

Because the term accommodation itself could scare people away from wanting to disclose anything, but if you’re asking in that different way of anything to be successful or any tool, anything we can do to support you in the process, it helps create that safe space that we’re talking about. I just wanted to mention that. Best practices. Now, this is a recap of what we talked about. Inclusion is intentional. It requires structure, as we mentioned, and training.

Again, it’s okay to not know everything. Each person has their own job requirements and things they’re focused on. You don’t have to be an expert in everything, but just asking questions, seeking to know, again, when you do know, training others in the organization around accommodations and disability inclusion and digital accessibility. When you don’t know, you don’t know. Training is super important and providing structure and process.

Check your own assumptions. Are you unconsciously favoring a certain communication style, background, or ability? Again, we want to create– you want to have a safe space. You want employees to feel supported. Also, when they have the support and the tools they need to be successful, they’re also more efficient. Formalize your accommodation process. If you don’t have it written anywhere or you don’t have a process disclosed, it makes it very challenging for people.

It could make candidates not feel safe in disclosing or even applying for your role if there isn’t a clear accommodations process. Making it easy for candidates to request what they need and know who to ask is really important. On the flip side, it’s also important, again, that your entire enterprise, your organization, also is aware of the accommodations process. At any moment, anyone in your current team might need an accommodation or assistive technology.

Also, educating IT and whoever sets up technology in your organization is really important. Offer training to hiring managers. Offer training to IT and help desk recruiters. Leadership, help them understand disability inclusion and avoid ableism. It’s also great to establish ERGs so employees with disabilities can share, support each other, they can share insights, and collaborate across the entire enterprise. Then evaluate your hiring and onboarding experiences regularly.

Things are always changing, right? Again, as we mentioned before, it’s a process. It’s always a process. You always need to look at how are we doing things? How can we improve things? Look for gaps, survey your team, and iterate or make adjustments. There’s always room for improvement in everything. Looking at your onboarding, hiring processes is really important. Inclusion is everyone’s responsibility. It’s not just HR’s or legal’s. It is everyone.

Again, back to the training, awareness, having those ERGs can help drive that awareness throughout an organization. With that, we have some resources that we wanted to share. Also, again, we will be sharing this afterwards. We’ll include an accessible PDF documen, but we’re also happy to share, have a conversation. We have other resources outside of this. Cathy, did you want to go through some of the resources we have listed here?

>> CATHERINE: Yep, I sure do. On the screen, we have some links that will take you places, but again, unremediated. We will send, so everyone has these links, but verbally. Up here, we have some really great organizations and free tools to help you build a more inclusive hiring process. DisabilityIN, their offering is business-focused toolkits, support, they’re a nonprofit dedicated to business disability inclusion. Make sure to check them out. We actually used a few of their images of people with disabilities in our presentation today. Fun fact, those are available there. EEOC resources outline your legal obligations, and they provide examples of compliant practices. The ADA National Network, they’re a go-to for technical assistance related to the ADA.

The Center for Disability Rights, they advocate for access and inclusion. They offer services like ASL interpreters. JAN, the Job Accommodation Network, they are an excellent resource for learning about accommodations and how to implement them. Then, of course, I would be remiss to not add Onward Accessibility. We are an excellent resource for accessibility solutions, digital accessibility talent, and hiring people with disabilities. When you do receive these links, bookmark them, use them often. Please remember, you do not have to do this alone.

>> KATE: With that, we’d love to open up the floor to questions, comments, anything at all. Thank you, Amber. Thank you, everyone, for having us today.

>> AMBER: Thank you. That was a phenomenal presentation. We really appreciate you coming and sharing your expertise and all of that. I have a question. I saw that Emmy posted one. Anyone else, if you have any, and you want to put them in the Q&A panel, that would be great. We will talk through them. Emmy’s question was, given the legal requirements for equal opportunity and the push for diversity and inclusion, how can HR and recruiting professionals ensure that the digital accessibility of their applicant tracking systems and the design of their hiring workflows do not unintentionally or automatically filter out qualified candidates who self-identify as having a disability?

>> CATHERINE: An excellent question and one that we deal with daily. Putting yourself throughout the entire hiring process is going to be crucial. Applying to roles as that person, having a resume, applying to it, putting yourself in those shoes of going through that actual process, and then documenting your experience with that is going to be key. We actually, ourselves, have had experience with many ATS systems, applicant tracking systems. When we do have accessibility feedback, we provide it to them directly.

We do our best to advocate for the folks that are applying to our roles. We do our best to give that particular feedback to those applicant tracking system tools. We try to make sure that we give as much feedback as possible and annoy them with that feedback as much as possible, professionally, of course, so that we can really help implement that change. Kate, I don’t know if you wanted to add anything else.

>> KATE: No. I think you did a good job. I’m trying to think if there was anything else or if we didn’t answer the question. I also was looking at other questions in the chat, so I didn’t 100% listen to your response, Cathy. Full transparency.

>> CATHERINE: It’s okay. I like to talk. It’s fine. Actually, just getting feedback in general from folks and being open to getting feedback from folks, documenting that, and making sure that it actually is sent somewhere is going to be really important too. Just, again, that goes back to being open, honest, and communicating your commitment to inclusion.

Something as easy as, listen, we know this applicant tracking system is inaccessible. We’re working on it. We appreciate and value feedback. Please document anything and everything so that we can give this feedback and try to make that impact and try to make that change. In the meantime, here is an accessible process that we’ve already implemented that could be a backup option. We’ll make sure to review your resume and give you feedback as appropriate.

Going through that ATS process, maybe you can’t physically fix that change, but you can find someone who’s responsible for it there, provide that feedback, and also offer another option in the meantime. Then just communicating that you are aware that it is a problem, and that you are open to providing that feedback is going to be really important.

>> AMBER: I’m curious, along the same line, how do you see testing of your hiring process? Where does this fit in? When should organizations be doing that? Do you just set up in a way that you’re open to feedback and provide a lot of ways for people to support, or does it make sense to be like, let’s do a fake application and bring in people with disabilities and have them attempt to apply and give us feedback? How do you recommend doing that, and when?

>> KATE: That is how we handle it for our own process. There’s tools we use that are not where they should be from accessibility standpoint, so third-party tools that we have. We have a workaround process, as Cathy mentioned, where we have a process laid out so that applicants can just email us, and then we can provide an alternate process for them. Then, as far as testing goes, yes, we do have persons with disabilities go through an application process and evaluate and provide us feedback. That works really well.

That’s what I would recommend any organization. We can help provide that testing as well because we have a lot of experience doing it. That is something that we work with some of our clients on is providing manual testing of their applicant process.

>> CATHERINE: Something else also to keep in mind though is that not all disabilities are apparent, like we already know. It might be a little bit more difficult to just pick and choose folks from the disability community to help because folks that are in the disability community, they might have the same disability, but their perspectives can be vastly different. Just having a disclosure in every area, every touch point of your job description, of your hiring process, where you say like, “Listen, we are open to providing extra support. If there’s ever anything that you have feedback on, we are open to hearing it. We are open to making a shift.”

That’s going to be really important too because you can do testing with a screen reader user, someone who’s an AAC user, someone who is hard of hearing, but not all of these folks that use these assistive technologies and tools are going to be using them in the same way or have the same perspectives. It’s really important to be open and have a disclosure and create that safe space from the beginning.

>> AMBER: Do you have a template language that you recommend for this, that sort of disclosure?

>> CATHERINE: We actually feel like we’ve just implemented something like that. I can absolutely have my marketing team provide that specific language along with the remediated PDF. I’ll make a note right now.

>> AMBER: That would be wonderful. Thank you so much. I also noted in the chat, Jeremy suggested you could also ask people with disabilities that already work for your company to test.

>> KATE: Absolutely. I was curious, going back to that first question, did we answer, because I feel like there might’ve been a– Coming from the perspective of a candidate with disabilities, there was concern about being left out of the process.

>> AMBER: I wonder–

>> KATE: Amber, go ahead.

>> AMBER: Well, I was just going to say, looking back at this question, I mean, one of the things that it highlighted was automatically filtering out candidates. I know that we’ve used some platforms when we’ve hired in the past where it will do some automatic disqualification because we’re getting thousands of applicants. Are there keywords or phrases that you want to really be careful about not using or not–

I mean, obviously we all know, well, we wouldn’t filter out the word disability, but maybe are there other things that people that you’ve seen, it’s like a mistake. They don’t realize that this could be a marker of someone with a disability, and they’re accidentally excluding them before they even get a human review. Or we’ve seen things, or I’ve seen stories, this isn’t related to disabilities, but things where sometimes the exact same resume with a male name gets a call, but with a female name, it doesn’t.

Are there things that you’re aware of in these automated systems that need to be watched for to make sure we’re not accidentally filtering out people with disabilities?

>> KATE: That’s a really good question. Cathy, do you have an answer to that? I know I think you’re more like day to day on the applicant tracking system. Those keywords, to your point, Amber, we’ve definitely– For us, it’s a little bit different because we’re a staffing company, and our whole thing is having people being part of the search is really important because tools that often HR or internal talent acquisition use are automatically scanning people out.

Having that workaround process or at least having some human element where there can be a human review, but it can be challenging if there’s thousands of applications. How do you get around that? yeah, Cathy, do you have a solution?

>> CATHERINE: Yes-ish. It’s less about the keywords you don’t want on there and more about the keywords that you do want on there, if that makes sense. I’ll go into that. If you’re applying to a job, a best practice, I think a lot of folks do this already, but a best practice is to create multiple versions of your resume. If there is something that you’re applying to that is more individual contributor, hands-on coding specific, you’re going to want to have something like that. Whereas if you’re applying to something that’s more project management, you’re able to do both of those roles, but your chances are you’re going to be applying to roles that lean heavier towards one over the other.

With that, both AI tools and recruiters in general use keywords to weed through resumes. With that, we’re never using exclusive keywords. We’re always using, “What’s important on this job description? What is the candidate going to have to have?” For instance, a nice best practice that I like to put is certifications. We all know they’re not absolutely necessary for positions, but they could really be a big key differentiator.

If I’m a recruiter and I receive a job description and I’m looking for the absolute, ideal, perfect fit, I’m going to look at the preferred skills. I’m going to say, “Oh, okay, CPACC certification is absolutely preferred, but not mandatory.” I’m going to start my search by looking for that ideal candidate because, of course, we want the client to feel excited about who they’re getting. That’s why if folks do, by any chance, have certifications like DHS Trusted Tester or the CPACC or the WAS or the CPWA. I’m just using accessibility for now, just because that’s our topic.

If we have those, I absolutely advise put that certification acronym at the top next to your name. Also, put it at the bottom in your certification section, and maybe even shift it into your summary somehow because any AI tools or recruiters that are using that specific certification as a search method to weed through resumes, your resume is going to show up as having that keyword hit three times instead of maybe just one in your certification section. Using your best skills is going to be most important.

The AI tools that usual recruitment agencies or just job boards in general use are keyword-specific. They’re asking humans to fill out what is important about this position. It’s less excluding people. It’s more, tell me what I need to look for in this resume for that person to be successful. Taking a look at your resume, reviewing it for those specific keywords is going to be key, even if you feel like you’re overstating everything that you’ve worked with. “Oh, I’m a WordPress developer, but I’ve also worked within PHP and Laravel. Okay, great.”

I feel like I’m saying this over and over again, but that’s going to help with the keywords for when you’re applying to jobs and trying to get through. It’s totally okay if you’re able to get through the job application process to apply online and also use that little email and email them directly. Again, I know looking for a job is a full-time job in of itself, but these are just some tips that could really, really be helpful.

>> KATE: Sorry. We almost always recommend tailoring your resume to every– I know that, as Cathy said, it’s a full-time job, it’s a lot of work, but tailoring your resume to address those must-haves within a job description, even if it seems, like Cathy said, redundant. Including those words as frequently as possible within the top of your resume, in your about, in your experience, as often as you can, but making sure it aligns with the job description is really important.

Even if you need to adjust titles, not saying that you would say anything that’s not true, but we all know that titles don’t always line up. It’s okay to adjust your title or put in parentheses. Maybe you’re an accessibility consultant, but your role is focused more on accessibility engineering, you can include in your applying for an accessibility engineering role. You can include in the title that you were focused on accessibility engineering, even if it was accessibility consultant as your title, for example. Making those minor tweaks are super important.

>> CATHERINE: One caveat I will have with this, though, which I see often, which I do believe as we did through, avoid copy and pasting the same job duties over and over under every single role that you have. You may have done the same exact thing at your penultimate role, your role before that, your current role, but copy and pasting the same thing is going to flag you as perhaps a fake candidate. Make sure that when you are mentioning the skill set that you have, that’s where you can use ChatGPT or a similar tool to your advantage and say, how do you reword this so that it doesn’t seem like it’s just copy and pasted under every single job description? That is one caveat that I would say.

>> AMBER: From the employer perspective, do we need to worry about filtering by keywords and accidentally filtering out people with disabilities, or do you think that it’s okay as long as we’re filtering with reasonable keywords, like the certifications or a specific job duty?

>> CATHERINE: Kate, do you want to handle that?

>> KATE: Yes. As long as you’re focused on the skills and the roles, I don’t think you’re going to be filtering out. Then again, having that workaround process and not just relying on online applications. If your applicant tracking system is not accessible, making sure that you have a workaround process or an email. You should always include an email so people can apply directly via the email as well. That’s not something I’d worry about as long as you’re focused on the skills of the role and not including–

You’re not going to have any language about accommodations, of course. No, I don’t think that’s a concern. We’re always educating companies that we’re working with and clients around, obviously, the things that we talked about today, having an alternate method of applying, having that process clearly documented so that you aren’t missing anyone.

>> CATHERINE: I also want to mention, if you’re worried about applying to a company and you’re worried that their specific bias is not going to be inclusive to you, probably don’t want to work for that company to begin with because you don’t really share the same values there. We want to remember that people are usually in the hiring process, not aware that they’re excluding people. It’s less about worrying about your resume, having specific keywords that would be specific to disability. It’s more about making sure that you’re even able to apply in the first place.

Educating these organizations to say, “Hey, can’t submit my resume, bit of an issue. Anything that we can do there to help me in this process?” That’s going to be the main thing. It’s less about worrying about specific keywords in your resume that would be excluding. It’s more about the process itself and even getting your resume in there because, honestly, it is like folks are just looking for people who have the skill sets that they need. If you’re somebody with a disability, you’re somebody that doesn’t identify as having a disability, if you have those skill sets, you’re going to be interviewed. It’s more about making sure that you’re able to even make it through the process itself.

>> AMBER: I think that actually is a good tie into Emmett’s question. They asked, “What do I need to do to upgrade my accessibility skills when creating a website as a developer or in order to help set up the recruitment, like you said?” What is your advice to web developers about what they need to do as they’re building hiring websites or websites that have a hiring or career section on them?

>> CATHERINE: I think it’s really important to include people with disabilities in that process. You can take a specific online course that’s specific to accessibility. There are many LinkedIn courses out there that offer that. There’s many Udemy courses out there that offer that. That’s great from an academic and knowledge standpoint, but from a usability standpoint and a true feedback standpoint, you have to interface and ask people with disabilities and different perspectives from that aspect.

I think as a developer, it’s really important to become involved in other groups, pose your question, whether it be a Slack group or a meetup or any sort of just non-profit. If you want to be like, “Listen, I’m a developer. I honestly, I’m working on this, and I really just want some feedback on if this is accessible or if I can get to a point where it’s as accessible as it can be.” It’s okay to reach out to a non-profit or a Slack group and be like, “Hey, listen, I just would really love some feedback and would really love to get some direct feedback from people with disabilities. Can anyone just give me that?”

Then just being open and taking that extra step and working with the people from the disability community is going to be really crucial. Listen, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be taking courses and online trainings on disability awareness. That is great, but nothing beats actual experience and feedback from people with disabilities.

>> AMBER: Joseph asked a question that I think is an interesting tie-in to this, which is, “What would you say to simulating a disability in order to gain perspective?” Have you seen any of those web simulators where you go in and it’s like, “Oh, there’s nothing on this.” The whole website is black or anything like that? Do you have any thoughts about that?

>> CATHERINE: I have my own thoughts about that, and it always reverts back to it’s always best to check in with folks who have disabilities themselves. It’s an interesting perspective, but it’s not the full perspective. Those simulations don’t come with the person’s upbringing, the person using this from their actual perspective when they’re out on the street and using their mobile phone, when they’re at their friend’s house and using it from a different web browser.

Nothing that’s a simulation is going to take the place of somebody that actually has a disability that’s experiencing it themselves. If it’s something that’s just a really quick stopgap for a really quick question you have, but you also pose the question to folks with disabilities, that could be something, but truly nothing beats the perspective of people with disabilities using it wherever they are.

>> AMBER: A follow-up question on that is, how do you suggest including people with disabilities in testing in a way that isn’t requesting free labor from them?

>> CATHERINE: Kate, do you want to take that one?

>> KATE: Sure. I’m sure you’ll want to add. I’m like, “I wish Pete was in this with us.” By the way, we have a development team, Cathy and I. As I started in the world of development, I have not been developing for a while. We’re always happy to answer some of these questions, especially the development-specific ones. We have accessibility developers on our team that probably can give even more suggestions. We’re happy to take some of these questions back and give additional answers. Sorry, what was the [chuckles] question? I was thinking about the development.

>> AMBER: How can you suggest including people with disabilities in testing in a way that isn’t requesting free labor?

>> KATE: We always encourage to pay for testing or provide a gift card if you can’t pay for some reason. That is definitely a topic that we discuss often. We pay for testing, so we pay testers all the time, annual testers with disabilities. We actually help a lot of our clients with testing and often just provide them with an hour if that’s all they can afford, or we work within budgets, but it is important to not be asking for someone to do something for free. If you can’t pay, offering gift cards instead is often what– That’s not what we do because we always pay, but we do see other organizations giving gift cards instead, which is nice. Cathy, I know you had–

>> CATHERINE: I think it’s also important to be transparent about what your needs are. If you’re just fooling around with something and you just want a quick, “Can you just give me a preliminary thought on this?” Great. Just be transparent and be like, “Listen, please don’t spend an hour on this. I just want your preliminary first glance just to help me perfect this a little bit better.” Being transparent about that from the beginning is going to be really important. If it’s something where your expectations are that you want a full detailed report, you want a step-by-step, you want a screen recording of it, you have to expect to pay for that. That’s different. That’s usability testing.

If it’s just something as quick as, “Listen, my expectations are low. I just want to make sure that this physically works. Can you just give me a super quick, spend five minutes of it?” Also, saying, “Listen, this is unpaid. To be transparent, I’m just looking for just a quick advice here.” I think that’s where just being transparent about it and setting those expectations are going to be really important. Again, if you’re expecting a full lowdown of step-by-step, tying it to WCAG, no, you got to pay for that.

>> AMBER: Pete-

>> KATE: From my team.

>> AMBER: -put an interesting comment, yes, from your team, in the chat that I think is interesting. Going back, sometimes we just think, “Oh, if I have this person that already works for my company, I’ll just ask them to test it.” Pete said, “Testing should always be done in a paid manner. Relying on your existing employees to do testing, especially if it’s not part of their job description, can feel like exploitation.”

>> KATE: In the scenario of if you are asking employees that are within your company, so other employees, that’s not part of their job description, one way is, again, being transparent, but you ask for help if you’re not able to pay for that. It’s an internal employee. You could say, “Hey, is anyone interested in participating in the study? We’re offering gift cards for your time.” That’s a way that you could address it instead. Obviously, they would agree and volunteer for it, but giving something in return, like a gift card, at least if you’re not able to pay, is a good solution.

>> AMBER: Joanna had asked a question a little bit earlier from the perspective of, I think, an applicant. Joanna said, “Disclosure can be a deeply personal decision. From your perspective, when is the right time for a candidate to disclose a disability during the hiring process?”

>> CATHERINE: This is literally the top question I get every single day. To fully disclose, I am not somebody that comes from the disability community. I don’t identify as somebody with a disability, so I’d like you to take my answer as that. I do have a lot of different perspectives from folks that are job seekers that are from the disability community. From things that I’ve seen in that aspect, I feel that it’s always important to go with your gut. Your disability is your own. A lot of folks identify differently with that disability.

If you feel most comfortable and it’s more stress off your shoulders by mentioning it as early as possible, that’s great. If you feel you’re being discriminated against because of that, that’s a problem. That’s also not an organization that you want to work for anyway. Again, folks forget that interviewing and the hiring process, it’s a two-way street. You have the skills necessary for this role. If that company is discriminating you or has bias against you, that’s not an organization that you’re going to thrive at because you’re not going to be supported on a daily basis. From my perspective, handling this is always best to be upfront about it from the beginning. I don’t know if Kate has any other opinion [crosstalk].

>> KATE: No. Jeremy also said, “Disclose when you’re comfortable,” which is 100% true. The other thing, too, is that working with an organization like Onward, we don’t get paid to help. Cathy has these conversations that she just said every day. Getting support from Cathy and our team, we work with candidates on a daily basis to navigate some of these situations. We don’t get paid unless a client hires someone through us. Our goal is to, obviously, make those placements and help candidates get the right match, and also clients get the right match.

We’re always happy to help navigate, but it is important that you’re comfortable. Ideally, the company you’re applying to has something written in their process, or they have a culture where it is safe, where you feel that support, because there are a lot of great companies out there that are set up to help support those that have disabilities or need accommodations. We work with a lot of those companies. We’re always working with new companies and helping educate, but there’s a lot of great companies out there.

There should be something written in the job application process where you do feel comfortable. If you don’t, that could be a sign that maybe it isn’t the right culture for you or isn’t a place where you’re going to get the support that you need, and that’s so important. Again, we’re happy to help you navigate, have conversations, just give you advice, especially in particular situations. Every company is different. Every job is different. Anyways.

>> AMBER: I liked what you had said during the presentation that it’s not just is the candidate the right fit for the company, but also is the company the right fit for the candidate. I think that is a really good thing to keep in mind, too. You can say, “No, actually, this company sucks-

[laughter]

>> AMBER: -and I don’t want to work there.

>> CATHERINE: Absolutely.

>> AMBER: Nike had a question that’s somewhat related in the chat. Let me see if I can read it. It’s a little bit long. It says, “One concern I have as a potential employee/applicant is when I have to complete those assignments in the application process where you have to select what you believe the best answer is, such as to a conflict with an employee, customer, or supervisor. Should I be concerned about them being exclusionary? I am autistic and often need clarification to understand the nuance or context of a situation, and I view things differently than many of my peers. I’m worried that those quizzes are eliminating me.”

>> CATHERINE: That’s a really good point. That’s something where I would advise to reach out directly to another place so that you can request for something else during that process, because that’s a really great point. You might be thinking a different way, and one of those choices might not be on there. That could actually be a good way for you to show that you’re driving innovation. You’re coming up with a whole different way to think about that situation than what they’ve already thought about, than what they’re testing on. That could even work in your advantage, where you’re emailing direct and you’re actually like, “These are the options that I was given, but I’d love to discuss this in further detail because I have different ideas of how to handle this.” That’s what I would say about that.

>> KATE: I think the other thing, too, of course, we also help navigate those situations when you have an assignment. It could help to ask that question to someone else and get their perspective. I’m not sure what you mean by this, or what do you think this means. I also think it’s okay to reach out to HR or whoever posted the job to say, “Some of these questions, I’m unclear. I want to just make sure I have the right context, and I’m answering it in the right way. Would you be open to meeting with me?”

If you’re worried about that excluding you, again, we can help with that. We’d be happy to be a soundboard and answer what we think it means. Every person’s different. In a culture where they are supportive, they should really respect if you reach out and say like, “Hey, I got this assignment. I just have some questions around this.” Most organizations appreciate that transparency, asking for help, or can we have a quick conversation so I am certain I am answering in the way or I understand the context of what you’re asking?

>> AMBER: I’ll say our most recent developer hire, he actually, in the process, reached out to our CTO in a Slack group that they just both happened to be in and DMed him, and he’s like, “Hey, I have these questions.” They had this whole conversation, and the CTO came back and he’s like, “I’ve been looking at all these applicants, but this one just messaged me and had all these ideas about our software.” They had this whole side conversation, and he really liked that. Then this person has joined our team, and he’s been a phenomenal asset to our team. It was a way that he made himself stand out by going out of the box and presenting not just, I’m just responding to exactly what you ask.

>> CATHERINE: Exactly.

>> AMBER: Maybe we’re trying.

>> CATHERINE: It’s coming with donuts on your resume.

>> AMBER: We are almost out of time. I wanted to ask you all a final question, which is that a lot of companies in the WordPress space, and that people who are here, or maybe are going to listen to this or watch it later, are at companies that are maybe 10 to 20, or even fewer, employees, and so very small teams, small hiring budgets. What is your advice for very small teams who probably can’t maybe even afford to post jobs on every platform? Where would you recommend they go if they wanted to make sure that they are getting more diverse applicants for their jobs?

>> CATHERINE: You can always reach out directly to nonprofit organizations if the role has a requirement for onsite. There’s colleges, universities that have career centers that help with that. Reaching out to them, they would always be happy to help. Reaching out to agencies like ourselves that are always happy to help on the back end, and just put the word out there for those organizations. That’s always something that you can find as well. Specific job boards, not all of them require you to pay for posting. Doing some research there and finding some resources could be really helpful.

Then just using word of mouth is usually always the best way. Maybe you have a friend that works at a specific organization and you want them to put the word out. You can easily post it on LinkedIn and ask for folks to share. Tag certain folks from different organizations, and there’s always going to be someone that’s happy to share that. Those are some things that I would do. I see folks on LinkedIn all the time doing that, and it’s always been really fruitful for them.

>> KATE: When Cathy said posting the job, as in posting as a conversation.

>> CATHERINE: As a conversation, yes.

>> KATE: Saying, “Hi, I’m hiring.” Also, putting hiring on your LinkedIn can be helpful, but saying I’m hiring and tagging people, as Cathy said. Also, Cathy, the A11y Jobs.

>> CATHERINE: Yes, a11yjobs.com is great. It’s very geared towards accessibility specific jobs, but if you’re just looking for folks from the disability community or different communities in general, just using those methods could be really helpful.

>> KATE: That link is posted in the chat from Zach, who’s on our team also.

>> AMBER: Great. We’ll make sure that that gets posted up with the recap. Thank you both so much for the presentation and the phenomenal conversation afterwards. Before we sign off, can you let everyone know how they can follow up with you, or if there’s a social media platform you’re on, if they have additional questions? Also, please share Onward Search’s website.

>> CATHERINE: You can always find me. [chuckles] I’m always on LinkedIn all over the place, but you can reach out to me. Send me a LinkedIn request. I’m there as Catherine Sherry. That’s Catherine with a C, C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E. Sherry, like the wine. Yes, it actually is my last name. You can feel free to send me a LinkedIn request, send me a message. I respond to everyone. It might take me a little bit, but I do respond to everyone. You can feel free to send me an email. I will send email as well, but also csherry@onwardsearch.com. Then we’ll also post in here as well. Please never hesitate to reach out. I’m always happy to chat with everyone.

>> KATE: I included my LinkedIn link in the chat. We do have our website in the chat. I also did include my own email, as did Cathy. Thank you so much, everyone. Happy to answer additional questions or dive in deeper, especially those web development questions. We can be a resource for you. Always happy to be a resource for everyone here. Thank you.

>> CATHERINE: Also, if there’s ever anything we didn’t mention that has worked for you, that you’d like to bounce ideas off of us, please do send them. We’re always open to feedback, 110%.

>> KATE: Always iterating, trying to get better. It’s a process. Thank you, everyone.

>> CATHERINE: Thank you, everyone.

>> AMBER: Wonderful. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. We’ll be back with another meetup in two weeks.

>> KATE: Bye. Thank you.

>> [01:28:28] [END OF AUDIO]

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