Liberty Mutual is dedicated to fostering a workplace where employees of all abilities can thrive. As part of this commitment, the company has been on a multi-year journey to enhance policies, benefits, infrastructure, and programming to create a more accessible and inclusive environment for all employees.
One area the company continues to invest in is digital accessibility, launching the Digital Accessibility Center (DAC) in 2023 to help make their digital assets more accessible to individuals with disabilities. The DAC enables employees to review a list of Liberty’s current assistive technologies to find what they need and request technology assistance on existing tools. To advance this work, this year the company introduced the Global Accessibility Awareness program, a month-long series of virtual and in-person events aimed at enhancing employees’ understanding of what it means to create accessible products. Focused on design and development, through 17 events employees explored inclusive innovation, accessible first engineering, web accessibility and more.
The program, created by the company’s Technology Learning department, was run in partnership with the organization’s employee resource group (ERG), Able@Liberty + Allies, which supports people with disabilities, caregivers, and family members – providing first-person insight into the impact of accessible product design.
Suzanne Meeves, Senior Program Manager in Technology Learning shared, “Recognizing Global Accessibility Awareness Day throughout the month was meant to build more empathy and create ‘muscle memory’ for us to develop our digital products with accessibility and inclusion in mind from the beginning.”
Nearly 400 employees attended the events, which highlighted the importance of accessibility and inclusion in design and development as well as how employees are already integrating these principles into their work. Employees sat in on sessions with their peers around how to become an accessibility ally, attended workshops around how to build accessible code, and heard from external speakers about the business impact of accessible design. Each session focused on showing the work, making it real and understanding the impact. Employee feedback continues to be positive with one employee noting, “I am so excited to begin my journey on accessibility, this month has been eye opening and inspiring, thank you for the experience and education.”
