From very early at Hable, we made the conscious effort to bake accessibility into everything we do. It has never been a nice to have, or optional added extra.
We wanted to share a bit about our journey so far and why joining the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower felt like the next, natural step for us as an organisation.
The Hidden Disabilities Sunflower is a tool that enables individuals to discreetly indicate they have a non-visible disability and may need additional assistance, understanding or simply more time.
Our accessibility journey
Before a customer training session in the early Hable days, we were approached and told that a blind person would be attending. We knew we needed to get this right and make sure we were providing as inclusive an experience as possible.
Our Founder and CEO, Mark Reynolds, decided to ask around. It was at this point that he was introduced to Microsoft’s Hector Minto. He has been instrumental in helping us realise our accessibility vision ever since.
He helped open our eyes to the world of accessibility, kickstarting our learning curve. We gained a deep understanding of accessibility and inclusion issues. We hired people to lead our accessibility approach internally. And we learned how to be accessible in everything we do.
Now, it is part of every solution we offer, as standard.
Our people, no matter their department, know to consider accessibility in every aspect of their work. And our marketing team prioritise inclusive and accessible marketing in all activities.
Our recent rebrand was done with accessibility at the forefront. Our colour palette was crafted with accessibility as a priority and our website has achieved a 96% accessible rating. Our Marketing team include captions on all social video content and alt text on every social media image post as standard.
We recently won the 2022 Diversity in Tech Award ‘Highly Commended’ prize in the Disability Inclusion category.
All of these efforts have proudly led us to becoming a Disability Confident Leader. Something that we know has had a direct impact on our people, with one employee who lives with epilepsy saying:
“Hable are Disability Confident, which made me disability confident.”
The next step
Accessibility for us is a constant journey, not a destination. We will always continue to educate ourselves. And will always strive to do more.
As such, joining the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower has felt like the next natural step for us as an organisation.
We strongly agree with the mission to raise awareness around non-visible disabilities, and feel the Sunflower is a great way to make both colleagues and customers feel more included in a subtle way. We were drawn to the fantastic resources on offer for member organisations, including the training on invisible disabilities that can be accessed by everyone at Hable.
We are delighted to have taken this next step on our journey and look forward to continuing to learn more, be even more accessible and help raise awareness of hidden disabilities.
Are you looking to embed accessibility into your organisation ?
At Hidden Disabilities Sunflower, we provide training and assistance to help organisations recognise the Sunflower in order to support their drive to become accessible to individuals with non-visible disabilities and be confident in providing them with additional help or assistance.
Join an impressive network of organisations to:
- demonstrate how accessible you are
- provide details useful for Sunflower-friendly visits
- tell your story though articles
- and even reveal your Sunflower-friendly events.
Become a member of the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower network.