Open for Accessibility
From frontline workers to hybrid employees, technology is a critical part of how we all work, and having accessible solutions is fundamental to providing an inclusive workplace.
To ensure that employees of all abilities and all backgrounds have equal opportunities to do their best work – both in-person and virtually – Liberty Mutual Insurance developed a multi-year accessibility action plan, evolving policies, benefits, infrastructure, and programing to create a more accessible and inclusive workplace. Liberty Mutual’s employee resource group (ERG), Able@Liberty + Allies, which supports people with disabilities, caregivers and family members, have helped shape the goals and direction of the plan.
A key objective of Liberty Mutual’s plan was to make the company’s digital assets more accessible to individuals with disabilities. To do so, Able@Liberty members partnered with technology employees and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) leaders to ask: what can we do to best support employees as they do their jobs?
The question was about more than building technical solutions to improve accessibility, however. Zari Bazarian, scrum master II, Global Talent Technology explained,
“We wanted to make it easier for folks in the company to get accessibility accommodations without having to disclose their disability if they’re not comfortable.”
One solution: the Digital Accessibility Center (DAC), which helps employees find tools for vision, hearing, speech, neurodiversity, and mobility. 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 accessibility tools.
The partners who helped build the DAC aren’t stopping there. There are teams across technology dedicated to improving accessibility at the company. Examples of these efforts include assessing accessibility of application portfolios, identifying new assistive technology, and highlighting available features and products such as Microsoft’s suite of accessibility-focused technology.
Elena Pomroy, senior scrum master, Global Talent Technology shared, “This work will continue, and we will only get better at providing our employees the support they need.”
