Accessibility: An Opportunity—and a Good Priority—For All

My name is Hale Pulsifer, and I’m in my seventeenth year at Fidelity Investments. It is an honor to share my professional passion in my first contribution to LinkedIn as part of our thought leadership team.

Many of us at Fidelity are working from home at the moment, as people are everywhere. Searching for workarounds and new ways of serving our customers remotely, Fidelity employees have been taking advantage of many innovations that are the results of an accessibility movement that swept through our offices at Fidelity in recent years. It’s been exciting to be part of this transformation in accessibility, and a thrill to watch it unfold from our front row seats in the Office of Customer Accessibility (OCA), as the movement produces profound changes for our colleagues and our customers.

Today, customers who are blind or have low vision can have inclusive and nearly effortless experiences thanks to a little more thoughtfulness behind our web designs. Customers who can’t vocalize for themselves on calls can use a relay service that helps them communicate with a customer service representative. And those who are deaf and fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) might be relieved to know many branch representatives can summon a live ASL interpreter on his or her tablet to facilitate the conversation.

Moments like these are becoming more and more common at Fidelity because we’ve learned to see accessibility as an opportunity to improve customer service and relationships—and it’s critical to view accessibility in this light. Without this perspective, making buildings, websites, and experiences of all kinds more comfortable for more people is seen by some companies as a regrettable “extra,” the kind that adds delays and costs to projects in the form of reworking or retrofitting.

Of course, not everyone with a disability uses assistive technology, but for those who do prioritizing accessibility can mean the difference between being able to do business with a company—or being closed off from it completely.

At Fidelity, we now see accessibility not only as an obligation but as a wonderful opportunity. And there's a bit of a backstory—and an exciting one—to how we figured this out. We have had a small, digital accessibility team for over a decade, but it’s only because of other developments in the last four years that accessibility has emerged as a priority.

It started with a Disability Employee Resource Group called “Enable,” which was created in 2016 and has grown rapidly since then. What started as six people getting together informally to discuss working at Fidelity with a disability has quickly grown to comprise 7.5% of the firm. The creation of that group inspired more awareness within the firm about the issues our team and our customers face. Outside speakers, including Haben Girma, were invited to come to Fidelity and share their personal stories to help inform our thinking. In Haben’s case, she helped us understand that anyone can thrive as long as they are included and given opportunities. So very true! As internal awareness and appreciation grew, we started receiving and listening closely to feedback from an increasing number of customers sharing their thoughts about how we could be doing more for them on the accessibility front. We expect more and better feedback as a growing number of people with disabilities advance in their careers and enlarge all customer groups. Here’s why:

When the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was reinforced by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, it set something important in motion. From that point forward, public schools had to be accessible for people with disabilities. Shortly afterwards there was a surge in young people with disabilities joining early grades who previously didn’t have access to education. More young people with disabilities has been the new normal ever since.

This cohort is often referred to as the “IDEA generation.” With each year that passes, more members of this group are finishing high school. Many are going to college and some of us to graduate school while others are getting jobs and adding to their earning power and savings. Today there are more workforce-ready young people with disabilities than ever before, and five years from now that number will be even greater. With the growth in numbers comes increased advocacy and the formation of organizations like Disability:IN and also Employee Resource Groups like our Enable. Increasing opportunity, accommodation and accessibility is more important now than ever before.

In the months ahead I’ll be sharing more about this important journey, and my personal connection to disability. As we’ve learned, boosting awareness is the first step on the journey to making accessibility an opportunity.

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#FidelityAssociate

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