Normalizing Workplace Accommodations, second episode
In part 2, Article 19 reviews the shared responsibility of employees and employers
Accommodations are a responsibility that an employee and employer share.
Continuing the conversation with our 6 guests from the first part of this series, we further explore the impact of accommodations and inclusive practices for both employees and organizations and the true cost of providing (or not providing) accommodations.
Meet our guests:
- Charlotte McGhee works in client services and lives with two invisible disabilities, ulcerative colitis and POTS
- Daniel Hawkins is QA specialist and a deafblind individual with experience in braille, protactile, and ASL
- Leah Mattern is a digital accessibility engineer, a staunch disability advocate, and lives with a genetic condition called rod monochromatism which renders her legally blind
- Liza Grant is a document accessibility specialist, a team lead, and a strong accessibility advocate
- Marty Molloy is the president of Tamman and an accessibility advocate
- Theresa Tuccillo is the administrative manager at Tamman and an accessibility advocate
Listen to more Article 19 Podcast Episodes
Full Transcript
Kristen:
Hello and welcome to Article 19. I’m Kristen Witucki, content creator and accessibility specialist at Tamman. And I am also the host for our conversation today. We are taking this episode in a new direction. Rather than a conversational interview in which we talk to a guest or a panel, we humbly offer you a story. Or maybe a patchwork quilt of stories. Employees with visible and invisible disabilities who navigate job acceptance and their rights as human beings to working conditions that are not only most comfortable for them, but also lead to their best, most genuine work. And a company that experienced monumental growth as it worked to change its culture by turning empathy and learning into action. Does that intro sound vaguely familiar? Does that intro sound vaguely familiar? If it doesn’t, you might be listening to part two before part one and you’ll miss some key parts of the story if you choose to listen to this one first.
Article 19 is a call for others to join us in a bigger conversation around the ADA, digital accessibility, and access to information. At Tamman. We’re working to build the inclusive web every day to do that. We need all of us working together and learning together. Thank you so much for joining us on this journey.
Narrator (Produced Introduction):
Expression is one of the most powerful tools we have. A voice, a pen, a keyboard. The real change which must give to people throughout the world their human rights must come about in the hearts of people. We must want our fellow human beings to have rights and freedoms which give them dignity. Article 19 is the voice in the room.
Kristen (Narrator):
All right, before we start just a quick refresher on our cast of characters, we have Marty and Teresa who use their empathy and their learning to build accommodation skills. One employee experience at a time, Liza who starts to think about accommodations for herself and her team, and Charlotte, Daniel, and Leah who offer their lived experience to teach a company how to make accommodations culture for all.
Accommodations. Adaptations. The truth is everyone needs them. Certain accommodations literally almost everyone has a use for. For example, chairs and desks to accommodate comfort in working. In recent years, standing desks have become more popular as requested accommodation. But nobody frowns when someone asks for a standing desk. There are many great benefits to having one for someone who is able to use it. Or, as Haben Girma reminds us, the lights in a room. Everyone thinks lights are necessary, but, like everything else, they benefit the people who can use them. The light dependent as I selectively joke to people. In a power outage, I miss technology. I worry about food spoiling, but, I never ever think about the lights.
So why is it so difficult for me to ask my employer when I have specific needs that others don’t? That is what I wanted to explore in this 2 part podcast.
Sometimes the hardest part is the beginning. We are all so worried about coming across as perfect that we can’t figure out how to fumble forward imperfectly. But here we are.
Daniel:
Now, sometimes I may feel apprehensive when trying to meet a new employer. Will the employer accept me with my disability? Will the employer consider me as someone that’s not going to be productive enough to actually be a part of the team? But one thing I have learned with my disability. There are going to be people that accept you for who you are and those who will not. So I often try to find employers that are wiling to accept my disability for what it is, and learning to work with me. So when I come down and talk about my disability, I like to put it on the table right away and I will definitely say open book about this. I’ll be more than happy to talk about this. I’ll be more than happy to work with you. I will try to find a solution and maybe help you. And maybe improve services because of my disability.
Kristen:
Yeah, that makes sense. Just a little bit of a side question because I have the same blindness as you. No light perception either. So we would have what people would term as visible disabilities. You walk into a room and you know that I am blind. Walk into a room and they know that you are blind and have some hearing loss. So, I’m curious if you think part of that has to do with having a visible disability instead of an invisible one.
Daniel:
You know that’s a very interesting question. I have learned since I lost my eyesight that people that you knew or were friends with, their idea of you is gonna change. And then you’ll meet new people that you have never met before their idea of you has changed. So, when people see that you have a visible disability, it’s going to be one or two things are going to happen. One is, “Wow. This sounds interesting. I’d like to get to know the person more. What can I do to help you?
And then, you meet the other side of people that just don’t know what to do with you. They’re just at a loss of words. They don’t know…”This person’s blind. This person has a disability. They can’t do nothing. What am I gonna do here for you.” So, having a visible disability like that, you’re going to meet people that are willing to help you right there on the spot or are curious and would like to learn more. And then, you’re going to meet people that don’t know what to do with you. And, I try to keep an open mind about this. If people don’t know what to do with you, don’t push it. When they are ready to talk to you and then be open about that then we show them how we explain we need things are done.
Kristen (Narrator):
Tamman as a company and Theresa, in particular, decided they could no longer wait for perfection to strike. That wasn’t going to happen. They were going to begin to use an untapped resource. First in internships, and later in a variety of part and full-time employment scenarios. Here’s the story of Tamman’s first intern, Nimit.
Theresa (Tee):
First, I think I believe I met Nimit. The sweetest person you will ever meet. And she was engaging. And I was very, very careful about what I said. I basically didn’t talk.
Kristen:
What were your initial fears or apprehensions about working with employees with disabilities?
Marty:
Oh, yeah. I had them. Let’s just start there [Laughter]. And, I’ve written about that. And I think, Kristen, you’ve referenced that as well in some of our writings on our blogs, which you can find at Tamaninc.com, T-A-M-M-A-N-I-N-C dot com. Because I think being vulnerable around these things is important. Before I met our colleague, Kristen, Nimit Kaur had never worked with anyone who was blind before.
And Nimit, it came to us through a partnership with, Rutgers, Camden Office of of Student Disabilities. And they said, hey, we have this amazing young person who’s brilliant. She’s interested in advocacy and being a part of digital accessibility. She wants to do more. And so we started an internship with Nimit. And I had no idea about so many things. So the apprehensions list is quite long. So what did I do is I just said, “Okay Nimit. I have these questions I don’t know. You know, I want you to be comfortable here and I want you to be a part of us. But there’s some things that I’m not sure of.” A couple of examples. First Nimit uses a service animal.
A dog. And I didn’t know the rules around service animals, so I had to look up how that works. But not just the building rules, but also the rules around, you know, like the etiquette rules of, like what’s the process if the animal needs to use the restroom or I know we’re not supposed to pet, but what are the boundaries? And so I had to learn some of those boundaries. Another example of that was when I first walked Nimit into the office. I had to ask her, like, how would it be best for me to describe the office to you? What would be the easiest way for you to take that information in? And she guided me. You know, she took my elbow, we walked around.
She said, “start here on the left.” And we walked all the way around. And she was able to get a spatial awareness with the office that we had. And it was wonderful. And I never had to do that again. That then, by the way, I think it’s important to note is not the same for every person who is blind.
They may not have a service animal. They might take information n a different way. And so I think the learning around that is you don’t have to have all the answers. Allow yourself to be vulnerable, allow yourself to learn. And I think if you treat it that way, most individuals will work with you and say, oh, great. Yeah. Let me tell you, this is what works best for me. Much like everything else at Tamman. Now, that is not unique to someone who may have a particular visible disability. That’s just our approach now. Hey. What works best for you? And I describe that in the accommodations piece, too, is like this is open to everybody.
Most best practices, whether you’re talking about education settings with young people, with specific learning disabilities, you’re talking about employment with people with disabilities. Most of the best practices are actually beneficial for all. They might be necessary for some, but their beneficial for everybody. So that’s just now the approach that we take. And we own that space of making sure that we are creating an environment that is as welcoming as possible for everyone.
Theresa (Tee):
When I started giving her documents and I was putting them in a company that you sign documents online, that was one part that was a learning and still is a learning curve there that needs to be accomplished. But government documents? I spent hours on trying to fix it. And it was never right for her. She still could not read it. And for a lot of people, for the first three new hires, we had to be the people to fill it out for them. But they had to sign it. But we would help them. Show them where the line was. Put their hand there. And they would do their signature. That’s the way we did the first three new hires that were blind. And it should have been more accessible. It should have been an easier flow. They should have felt like they received a document. They filled it out. It was a flow of paperwork. Nothing different. Got it done, and the story felt complete. I cannot imagine what it felt like to her. It’s like another thing is an issue. I have to do what? I have to now go in and physically sign it, because we can’t do it online? Because I couldn’t get the forms to align and the fields to be properly read through her screen reader? She couldn’t navigate it. And I was like, “Oh, I gotta make this poor woman come in. And she did. And, you know, we were in the office at the time. It was pre-COVID.
Kristen (Narrator):
Maybe that wasn’t the best accommodation experience for anyone, especially Nimit, who is not here to represent herself. As longtime pod listeners will know, I know Nimit personally. She connected me with Tamman. So clearly she didn’t hate the experience. And she was ready to educate people without disabilities about the best ways to help her to succeed. The great part is Tamman took what it had learned from Nimit and her experiences, thought about the ways she could have felt at times, and decided to make it better and better for future employees with disabilities.
Kristen:
When you’re onboarding any new employee regardless of whether you know their disability status or not, how do you approach the accommodations conversation as the hiring onboarding manager?
Theresa (Tee):
What I learned with Nimit and several other people who actually did not have a physical accommodation. What I learned is to have a conversation with them prior to their start date, at least a week or two before I make it two weeks, so I can make sure I get what they need if they need something.
Kristen (Narrator):
In 2024 the phone call might seem obsolete, but Tee’s method shows that automated is not always better. Sometimes it’s the human conversation and connection that helps to get people what they really Need.
Theresa (Tee):
So I reach out to them right after they sign their offer letter and I send them a welcome email. Then I let them them know all the steps. But one of them I added on in the last year was, I’m going to be following up with a phone call after this. After you finish your background checks. So I do, and I introduce myself. It becomes a friendly conversation. I said, “Hey, this is great. I just wanted to take the moment to meet you in person and also make sure I set you up exactly with the tools that you need to start day one and go right into your job. And I don’t want you to feel like,” oh, where’s my monitor? Where’s my my computer?” Let me cultivate this into you just having a conversation with Tee. It’s friendly, have a cup of coffee, and let’s get what you need. Marty mentioned a person needing a left-handed mouse. Not a problem. They need it. Let’s do that. If they needed a particular style monitor, which we have done. We’ve done up to a 44-inch monitor. That person is a team member. We are going through trial and error with everyone from day one. And Marty noted that we don’t have a set list, but what I do is introduce them to Tamman and how we want to support them. So I’ll run down the normal request. Do you need a monitor? If you do need a monitor, what is the size? Do you need it to have something on it? Do you need like a film or do your glasses automatically handle that? Because some of these people are on their laptops and their computers for hours. Some of these people have never had a monitor and only worked off a laptop. And I’m like, you’re a developer. You’re gonna need something larger because of that fine detail that they put into all their work.
Kristen (Narrator):
Theresa’s goal is to eliminate some of the bureaucracy involved in getting workplace accommodations. But she’s also aware that sometimes an expert or a neutral 3rd party can be necessary. She keeps herself out of the way during these times so that people can really feel comfortable. After all, new employees are navigating the complex feelings of asking for what they need while keeping that positive first impression going.
Theresa (Tee):
So I start the conversation there and basically get to know their role. Get to know what their needs are from that role. Then I follow up with do you have any special accommodations that you may need? And they look at me a little hesitant. Some like, oh yeah, no, no, no, I heard it. And I said, do you have any special accommodations that you may need? And if they look hesitant, I immediately go to, well, we have an HR representative. During day one, you will meet your HR representative. She will discuss this with you. And that is our contact person. If she feels in any way and needs to take another step, then you meet Janet Fiore of the Sierra Group. She does an evaluation. She works with her team to do evaluations on anyone to help them figure out the accommodations that they need. What those items would be that would support them and then come back to us. And then we would handle it. So I give them that introduction. Say, if you don’t want to say anything right now, that’s okay. If you would rather talk to Cara, our HR representative, that is totally fine. But please know if we do not set you up right on day one, I don’t want you to miss an opportunity. But the good thing about being here at Tamman, if it comes up down the road, just call us. Just tell us. Reach out to me. Reach out to our HR person, and they will guide you through it. We had to make accommodations on multiple things. We’re going to do it. We’re going to support our team.
Kristen (Narrator):
Accommodation culture is not just a day 1 discussion. It’s ongoing. Situations come up all the time in internal work culture, and addressing them with sensitivity and humor is the key to welcoming everyone. One way we keep the accommodations dialogue is to make sure all internal communications are fully accessible. Here Liza and I reminisce about one of our favorite topics, alt text.
Kristen:
And for a while, I noticed when I was a contractor and then a new employee. And now I’m still a new employee. You were on the alt-text rampage for a while, which was awesome.
Liza:
Yes, that brings it more internal. If I seem like an annoying person to be at a party with or walk down the street with, honor those feelings. Those feelings are valid. But also, I do that internally to people of my own company too. So I like to be a big part of our Slack channel. Our company chat. And there’s a lot of chatting that goes on in there. There’s a lot of sending of delightful photos, memes. But you can see right in Slack if an image has alt text or not, there’ll be a little gray and white square that comes up in the bottom corner and it will say alt. So it’s very easy, for me to tell whether an image has alt or not. And if I see an image hanging out there for a couple minutes and no alt gets added to it, I’ll usually post a cheeky little comment, under it in the thread and usually say something like, “If I if I had a water gun to your head and I told you you had to describe this image to someone who couldn’t see it, what would you do?” Please put your answer in the thread to avoid being shot with a water gun” or something [laughter]. Something like that.
Kristen:
A virtual water gun?
Liza:
Yes. I, like, put a little emoji of a water gun up to this. Or I have certain emojis I added, like one for Altoids or one for the Pokemon Altaria or a salt shaker. There’s not really a lot of alt-text emojis in the world yet. We’ll get there. But until then, I do have like my own little “I’m going to make this funny, but I am going to encourage you to add the necessary accessibility to this element, because there are people in this chat who want to enjoy it, and they won’t be able to without that.” And some of those people are people with visual disabilities, and some of those people are just me who is mid-thirties now. I get like one out of every five memes that I see. So it really helps me culturally to be like, oh, okay, the alt text can help me see why this meme is actually relevant to our group. To our field. To Tamman.
Kristen (Narrator):
Accommodations, necessary for some, beneficial for all. Liza really embraces her some-ness and her all-ness.
Liza:
It just is a very helpful thing. And I’m kind of known as being a little a little energy, in the slack space about alt-text, because it’s a great place to practice that. They actually have made it easy to do so.
Kristen:
Yeah. And, and the reason I said for a while is because I haven’t really noticed many people forgetting lately. Because they know [laughter].
Liza:
It’s been so great, hasn’t it? Yeah. People are just doing great. I know for a while you and I were a little bit of partners in crime in that effort. And now. Yeah. Even with GIFs. Sometimes because GIFs, they don’t make it easy. Yeah. Everyone has really adopted it. And you can’t help but feel like your heart is full when it happens. I think about how hard it would be for me as a person to, like, build an elevator in an office building or put an escalator or a ramp on something. And to think, in contrast, how easy it is to add alternate text to an image you post online. It’s just the power you have is so great.
Kristen (Narrator):
Remember, in episode 1, the way Leah was worrying about the expense of her accommodations? The work Theresa does includes addressing expenses as they come up.
Theresa (Tee):
If it doesn’t work, one of the people that said it to me and I thought this was interesting. She is a team member. She’s just amazing. She has low vision. She’s legally blind, but she does coding. And she does it and she does it well. And she needed a very large screen. She looked hesitant. And I said, “are you concerned about how much or if it’ll work or it’s not what you need at all, and this is the wrong direction and we need to do something else.” I said, ”This is an open space. Feel safe to say it here. We’ll figure it out together. If I can’t, we’ll go to HR. We’ll go to the Sierra Group and we will give an answer for you.” She was so nice to say. She goes, “I just don’t want you guys to waste your money.” I said, “It’s not a waste of money. Number one. I don’t know where you might have heard that.” She goes, “Actually, a lot of past work.” If I have experience or I’ve heard other people go through it. [Sad sigh] Personally, my heart just broke and I knew I was right about it.
Kristen (Narrator):
The perception of the economic burden? It’s a thing.
Theresa (Tee):
And I’m glad we were able to reassure her. And it’s not working for her. But it’s okay. Someone else got that screen[Laughter]. It’s totally being utilized. It’s okay. It’s fine, but we’re going to figure it out. We gave it a fair shot. You know, we didn’t just one or two weeks. We tried multiple things, and it just didn’t work. But we’re working on it with her.
Kristen (Narrator):
Accommodation conversations are always a dialogue. And everyone is in this game to help others. The employee who asks for accommodations helps a company to fulfill its mission. The manager who represents the company in giving accommodations is also a person with their own strengths and needs. In other words, a person who most likely needs some form of accommodation.
Theresa (Tee):
When I looked at it. And myself, I think I brought up earlier, I had severe earaches. I was not pronouncing. I had a reading comprehension problem when I was a child. And I thought I was going to be left behind in school and so worried about it as a kid. Ever since then, I work twice as hard as everybody else, probably even more to make sure I never felt like that again.
Kristen (Narrator):
So Theresa has learned that transcripts of the meetings, as well as meeting summaries, have become more important than ever in this age of vast quantities of digital information.
Theresa (Tee):
So having that little experience has opened my mind to people that say,” Wow, this is way too much information on the screen. The colors or it’s just paragraph after paragraph. Can we just highlight the high points and then they could take their time later to read and digest it? That is how I’m taking the core values and applying it to my role in the company in all areas. Whether it is payroll, whether it is the functionality of all our external companies that we use to help support our team for 401K benefits. Payroll or our HRIS system I have had an issue with.
Kristen (Narrator):
And I received some great advice about asking for accommodations that I’ll carry forward to make any future job changes or acceptances much more joyful.
Liza:
I would say that I am not very practiced in asking for accommodations. I didn’t even know until I worked in this job for a while that some conditions I have were considered disabilities. So it has been an interesting journey of like figuring out what can be helpful. But I would say being vulnerable and honest is the best thing you can do. And being upfront about it as you can. Sometimes with my anxiety, I will feel the need to procrastinate or avoid bringing it up. At other companies, you may have a sense that disclosing your disability to your employer could be kind of a dangerous thing for your employment. It might give them a reason to find a problem with your work or to let you go for some other reason or something like that. So those are natural feelings. But you deserve to have the best working environment you can have, and your company deserves that from you. They hired you to do good work, and you want to do good work the way that you do your best work in a way that doesn’t hurt your wrists or your neck or your back or your eyes. So I would just say as early as you can in the process, let them know. And I think then you’ve done your due diligence. The rest is just being responsive. And, you might need to be a little bit patient if it takes some time to get some things. But yeah, I say if you’re honest and forthcoming that the rest is on them. It’s really your right to be able to work comfortably. And that’s part of them having you on is, is enjoying or agreeing to support that. So try to keep that in mind.
Kristen (Narrator):
Charlotte speaks to the intentions of employers when employees are afraid to speak up, ultimately reminding us that most people want to do the right thing for their employees.
Charlotte:
I think that the way that I tend to do it is almost that I, I, and I think that it’s a sad thing that I’ve been conditioned to do. but I almost acknowledge that they’re going to have that doubt when I tell them, you know, I know that I look fine today, but I’m having a really bad pain day, or I know that I look fine, but I can’t stand up right now because I will pass out. You know, things like that.
I think that I’ve gotten conditioned to go in basically advocating for myself and fighting for myself. But I think that also providing people with an education. Because I think that most people have good intentions, especially when they say things like, you know, oh, well, you don’t look sick. It’s not coming from a place of, you know, oh, I don’t believe you. It’s coming from a place of like, I don’t understand, like I. What do you mean? You get dizzy when you stand up. That sounds. [Laughter] Like. I don’t know what that sounds like. What do you mean, why? Why does that happen? So I think that just, you know, educating them of, you know, this is the condition that I have. You know, unfortunately, these are my symptoms today. You know, if you don’t understand, I’m happy to send you more information about that. My parents and my husband, you know, they’ve done a lot of reading on my conditions just because, you know, that it helps them. It helps them become more educated and know more. And I think that a lot of that well, you look fine. Comes from a place of, you know, most times, well-intentioned. So I think that, you know, just taking that with, you know, giving people the benefit of the doubt that maybe they’re not not believing you. They just don’t know any better. So I think that coming at it from an educational perspective of “okay, well, let me tell you why I feel like this. Even though I look fine.” And then maybe next time they will they won’t question, you know, somebody else when they say, you know, “Oh, I have this invisible disability.” I think that, you know, getting the benefit of the doubt is always the best.
Kristen (Narrator):
As I continued to think about the role of the employee in asking for accommodations, I wondered about that pervasive feeling of accommodation guilt. Daniel was very matter-of-fact about dismissing this feeling as best he could.
Daniel:
Sometimes if you don’t ask for accommodations, you’ll just sit there. You’re not going to be able to do stuff. And then people will wonder why can’t you do things so ask for accommodation and don’t feel sorry about this. Ok? So if you need help with seeing something on the computer. You need help maybe driving to from one job site to the next be opened by this. And one thing that’s help in that regard, I can give you advice, lawyers, you yourself asking for accommodation, turn around and try to help out another employee just like you know, “I do this for you. You do this for me” type thing. But the more open you are to helping out others employees or staff will be more open to helping you out.
Kristen (Narrator):
But accommodations don’t all fall completely on the employee. They are a responsibility the employee and the company share. And even something to enjoy as a way to connect people. As a team lead and an employee, Liza has approached the accommodations conversation from many different angles and has this to say to help companies keep the discussion going.
Liza:
I would say, be willing and be open. And be supportive. If you’re already thinking about doing this, you’re probably already at least halfway there on all of those things. So it’s something to be friendly about. Almost if you’re asking someone if they need, you know, a left-handed mouse or a right-handed mouse. If they need a wider monitor or if they need something to dim the screen if it’s too bright. Treat it like any other kind of basic office need that someone would have. But, do be sensitive that there can be personal and identity stuff wrapped up in there. So just be as respectful as you can. But yeah, just listen and be willing to be flexible. A lot of people will want different things. You may have a certain set of accommodations, or assistive devices for someone and need a totally different set for someone else. And that is normal. So just be prepared to learn. And to listen. I guess. There’s a lot out there and you can really make someone’s job a whole lot easier by making their work comfortable. And since I am kind of a company man, I do have to tow the Tamman line of “well-supported people, support people well.” I can’t. It’s hard to describe the feeling that I have as a member of staff when at the end of a one-on-one meeting, my manager asked me if there’s anything I need to make my work more comfortable or easier for me, physically or mentally. It’s just a very comforting feeling, and it makes me want to do my best because I’m not craning my neck or squinting my eyes, or moving my hands around to three different keyboards.
Kristen (Narrator):
My manager and I do this too. We recently had a conversation about the annoyances of socializing when everyone else can read the name tags at conferences. And Theresa was there for me, ready to jump in if she needed to. Ultimately I realized I just needed to vent, then accommodate myself. Leah agrees. Sometimes her accommodations can start out as help from the manager that she can then use to make her own work better independently.
Leah:
For me, working professionally, I do a lot of work outside of Tamman as well, and when I work with people, there should be an understanding that I cannot drive. And so that will usually require an accommodation of us needing to meet via video chat, Zoom, or Teams, or whatever. And that’s been that’s been really helpful. And since COVID, actually, that hasn’t been so much of a problem. But before COVID it might have been a bit more of an issue where people were more keen to meet, face to face. So that’s one thing I’ve noticed with the, advancement of digital tech. It’s been really great for me and, and my outside of our professional relationships, because I’ve had a lot of people reach out and ask about accessibility and digital accessibility specifically. I’ve had people request that I take a look at their websites and run some tests and offer some suggestions. So that’s been great, because not only am I helping them, but I also get to talk about Tamman and what we do, which is fantastic. And within the company, again, changing the way we work together as a team has been an unintended consequence of working with me as a person who identifies as a disability. It’s not a bad thing. If you don’t have a disability, you may not think of these things personally. So, for instance, you know, using Figma instead of just being handed a PDF with a design on it and copying from that. And, it changed the way we actually communicate with each other on video. When we’re speaking, we identify who is speaking. I will often be comfortable asking my team members to be like, “Excuse me. Hey, where’s your cursor? I actually can’t see where your cursor is on the screen.’ Or “Is it okay if we flip this presentation into dark mode for a little bit?” Or, “Hey, can you zoom in on that code editor a little bit because I can’t really see the function that you’re pointing to.” Just things like that. It’s also been great when working in communicating with my team lead. Because if I am stuck on a particular problem. If I’m trying to create a piece of user interface and the functionality isn’t working correctly, sometimes my lead can hop on with me into a video and I can share my screen, or he can share his screen, or we can pull up the same thing. And we can talk our way through finding the solution. Or sometimes I learn best when he makes a slight change and then pushes that to the repository, where I can then pull it down and see the changes he’s made, like, oh, this is working now, and I can see why. It gives me an extended period of time where I can view the change in the code on my giant screen at my pace, which is fabulous. Because sometimes my eyes just don’t pick up on things as quickly like my brain can. My brain functions fabulously, but my eyes are just a skoach behind [laughter]. So I can find the change and I can see how it fits into the overall code universe. And I know now why that works, and I’m able to take that knowledge with me and add it to my toolbox.
Kristen (Narrator):
That dialogue between Leah and her team lead. That ongoing accommodation adjustment benefits everyone. It benefits Leah, of course, as she processes the code work more thoughtfully and thoroughly. It helps her team lead to approach the code from a perspective he does not inhabit. And finally that extra time spent on that deeper understanding makes a better-designed product for all the customers the company influences. One small accommodation change, rather than holding us back, has the very real potential to benefit society as a whole.
Kristen (Narrator):
We could not have completed this pilot narrative episode grouping without our amazing cast: Liza Grant, Daniel Hawkins, Leah Mattern, Charlotte McGhee, Marty Molloy and Theresa Tuccillo. Sloan Miller and Sydney Bromfield kept us on track and out of a few dangerous rabbit holes. Steven Stufflebeam provided crucial production support during our first venture, and Markus Goldman, our executive producer, laid it all out, listening again and again and again. I am your host and narrator/writer, Kristen Witucki.
If you like what you heard today and want to explore more about digital accessibility, technology, our company culture, or anything else. Just schedule a time to meet with us. You can find the whole Tamman team at tammaninc.com, that’s t-a-m-m-a-n-i-n-c dot com. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter too, so you never miss an event or an insight from us.
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Until next time, thank you so much for listening and being a part of Article 19. Take care.
Show notes:
- Article 19’s episode on Normalizing Workplace Accommodations, first epidsode.
- Haben Girma: The first Deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School, Haben Girma is a human rights lawyer advancing disability justice.
- Sierra-Tamman 360-Degrees of Inclusion: A collaboration aimed at supporting your company in reaching your inclusive employment, professional development, and digital information goals.
- Supporting Employees with Accommodations: The Sierra Group provides insight into inclusive hiring practices.
- I just want to work: Article 19 host, Kristen Witucki shares her real-life experiences and offers perspective for people with disabilities who are looking for jobs.
- Moving Through Guilt about Biases: This blog explores clear steps to take mindful action to foster inclusive hiring practices and create systemic change.
- Creating a More Inclusive Hiring Practice: Offering a guide to employers to support them in creating a more inclusive hiring practice.
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Normalizing Workplace Accommodations, first episode
