Empowering staff improves morale and productivity

John Tip­ping is pro­found­ly dyslex­ic and can read on aver­age one word in ten. “Some days I read bet­ter than oth­ers, but on bad days I can’t read at all,” he explains. Since invest­ing in screen-read­ing and tran­scrip­tion soft­ware eight or nine years ago, how­ev­er, the way he runs his win­dow film and sign instal­la­tion com­pa­ny has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

“Before I had access to the tech­nol­o­gy, my wife had to write all my emails, quotes and invoic­es,” he says. “Now I use a pro­gram called Drag­on Nat­u­rallySpeak­ing which writes all of this up for me. I’ve also got read­ing soft­ware that high­lights what I’m read­ing. I press ‘play’ and it reads every­thing. I remem­ber feel­ing real­ly emo­tion­al when I sent my first email. It was so lib­er­at­ing.”

Because he’s out on-site a lot, he now also uses apps on his iPhone to send and read emails from cus­tomers, enabling him to get back to them much quick­er, which in turn has helped his busi­ness to become more prof­itable. “Before I worked for myself, com­pa­nies didn’t want to invest in me because they thought that, because I couldn’t read or write, I couldn’t do the job,” he recalls. “But it’s just about hav­ing the right tools – it’s like me telling some­one to dig a hole for a sign, but not giv­ing them a shov­el.”

It’s just about hav­ing the right tools – it’s like me telling some­one to dig a hole for a sign, but not giv­ing them a shov­el

As Mr Tipping’s sto­ry demon­strates, invest­ments in assis­tive tech­nol­o­gy (AT) can reap huge ben­e­fits in terms of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and engage­ment. While the range of prod­ucts avail­able can cov­er any­thing from screen-read­ing soft­ware to spe­cial pur­pose com­put­ers with head-track­ing devices, many employ­ees with dis­abil­i­ties may only require small adjust­ments to exist­ing sys­tems. A change can be as sim­ple as being able to alter the colour con­trast on a Word doc­u­ment or a web screen for some­one who has dyslex­ia.

Yet there can be reluc­tance among IT depart­ments to make these changes because they fear they will dis­rupt their exist­ing net­works or com­pro­mise their secu­ri­ty. “In many organ­i­sa­tions, IT depart­ments tend to lock down sys­tems so users can’t change them or intro­duce their own cor­po­rate brand­ing or fonts,” explains Paul Day, chief of staff at Busi­ness Dis­abil­i­ty Forum. “So much infor­ma­tion now on cor­po­rate web­sites is via video, but few have sub­ti­tles for those with hear­ing impair­ments or audio descrip­tion for those with visu­al impair­ments.”

Think­ing about who might be access­ing a doc­u­ment or a web­site, or con­trol­ling a key­board or piece of machin­ery, rather than assum­ing it will be some­one with “eyes, hear­ing and arms”, can make a major dif­fer­ence to a dis­abled person’s abil­i­ty to do their work, not to men­tion their con­fi­dence, he adds.

What’s more, with an age­ing work­force, employ­ers will increas­ing­ly need to invest in tech­nol­o­gy to help their employ­ees be pro­duc­tive. Prob­lems, such as hear­ing and sight impair­ment, as well as mus­cu­lo-skele­tal prob­lems, will become more com­mon­place.

“There will be an increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple who need adjust­ments, who have the clas­sic prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with old age,” says Dr Nass­er Siabi, chief exec­u­tive of Microlink, which works with organ­i­sa­tions to come up with dis­abil­i­ty access solu­tions. “A wise employ­er will start putting pro­vi­sions in place now to stop prob­lems get­ting worse, rather than try­ing to fix the prob­lem lat­er. Pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures are far cheap­er.”

Often, the ben­e­fits of an invest­ment in AT stretch beyond employ­ees with dis­abil­i­ties. Drag­on Nat­u­rallySpeak­ing, for exam­ple, is one of the most wide­ly used pieces of soft­ware among lawyers, as it enables them to speed up the rate their words are tran­scribed; the sim­pler user inter­faces and touch­screen tech­nol­o­gy on tablet com­put­ers make cer­tain tasks eas­i­er for every­one, not just those with cog­ni­tive issues.

“In my dream world, there would be no such thing as AT, because it’s a label,” says Mark McCusker, chair­man of the British Assis­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Asso­ci­a­tion. “I think peo­ple should think about it as an extra tool that helps improve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and helps the work­force enjoy what they do.”

Cen­tral­is­ing the bud­get for AT, as they have at Lloyds Bank­ing Group, can take the bur­den off indi­vid­ual line man­agers hav­ing to autho­rise pur­chas­es from their own depart­men­tal bud­gets and also increase buy­ing pow­er. After all, the legal oblig­a­tion is with the employ­er, not the indi­vid­ual man­ag­er.

There is also fund­ing avail­able from the gov­ern­ment, through the Access to Work scheme, although only a small per­cent­age of the fund­ing that has been giv­en out to date has been allo­cat­ed to tech­nol­o­gy spend­ing. Accord­ing to Mr McCusker, this accounts for only around £5 mil­lion of more than £100 mil­lion award­ed so far, often because employ­ers are either unaware of the sup­port avenues avail­able or because they choose to avoid the paper­work and just buy the tech­nol­o­gy they need.

AT invest­ments can also help to save employ­ers mon­ey in the long term. Devices, such as the UbiD­uo, a portable touch­screen device which helps hard-of-hear­ing and hear­ing peo­ple to com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er face-to-face, can save thou­sands of pounds that might have pre­vi­ous­ly been spent on British sign lan­guage inter­preters, while remote-cap­tion­ing ser­vices enable deaf staff to par­tic­i­pate in meet­ings as every aspect of the con­ver­sa­tion is writ­ten down.

In terms of man­ag­ing the tech­nol­o­gy, increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed soft­ware man­age­ment sys­tems can help IT depart­ments con­trol all their AT cen­tral­ly and push out spe­cial­ist pro­grams or updates to those who need them.

The grow­ing trend towards employ­ees bring­ing in their own devices to work has pos­i­tive impli­ca­tions for those with dis­abil­i­ties too, accord­ing to Peter Johans­son, chief exec­u­tive of C Tech­nolo­gies, which pro­duces portable pen-scan­ners that trans­mit hand­writ­ten text from paper to dig­i­tal media.

Adapt­ing exist­ing sys­tems or invest­ing in spe­cial­ist tech­nol­o­gy for those with dis­abil­i­ties can improve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty across the whole organ­i­sa­tion

“Mobile devices linked to work desk­tops, as well as periph­er­al assis­tive tech­nol­o­gy devices such as hand­held scan­ners or record­ing devices, mean there are few­er bar­ri­ers for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties to over­come,” he says. “Doing so also becomes much eas­i­er when peo­ple can incor­po­rate the devices used in their per­son­al life into their work.”

Look­ing beyond the lim­it­ed scope of the desk­top com­put­er also means dis­abled staff can work remote­ly – help­ful if some­one has an impair­ment that makes com­mut­ing dif­fi­cult, for exam­ple, or needs to work in a soli­tary envi­ron­ment to aid their con­cen­tra­tion. “Remov­ing loca­tion bound­aries is real­ly impor­tant,” says Jeff Willis, busi­ness solu­tions direc­tor at Toshi­ba. “All these things are issues employ­ers should be look­ing at any­way now; it just hap­pens that help­ing peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties is a pos­i­tive by-prod­uct.”

Here lies the ulti­mate sell­ing point of AT – that adapt­ing exist­ing sys­tems or invest­ing in spe­cial­ist tech­nol­o­gy for those with dis­abil­i­ties can improve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty across the organ­i­sa­tion as a whole, which can only be good for busi­ness.

As Mr Day at Busi­ness Dis­abil­i­ty Forum con­cludes: “We’re all ‘sit­u­a­tion­al­ly impaired’ from time to time. So if you install a ramp at work, it doesn’t just help the per­son in the wheel­chair, it helps the guy who broke his leg in a ski­ing acci­dent who’s in plas­ter for two months and the woman with the pushchair. Many adjust­ments don’t just help those with impair­ments; they help every­one.”