ADP exec: For employees with disabilities, technology could be making work harder

Technology can make life easier and bring efficiencies and access to the workplace. But for employees with disabilities, are some tech tools more harmful than helpful?  

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 20% of people with a disability were employed in 2021. That's an improvement over 2020, when 17% of those with disabilities were participating in the labor market, but still more than three times less than the average for people without disabilities. 

Not only is it harder for workers with disabilities to get hired, they often face additional challenges once they join companies and realize that existing technology systems are not suited to their needs, according to Giselle Mota, the chief of product inclusion at ADP. 

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"When it comes to creating an inclusive environment,  there's a saying among people who are disabled: 'nothing for us without us,'" she says. "People with disabilities are such an underrepresented group in many technology conversations. Often disability only gets flagged when it's for accessibility — organizations paying attention to it only when it becomes something of a risk area." 

The shift to remote work and the subsequent rise in workplace tech initially benefited folks with disabilities. Suddenly applicants with restricted mobility or neurodivergent tendencies could work safely and comfortable from home. But the adoption of so much new tech also presented fresh challenges. Zoom meetings, for example, can be difficult for employees that are hard of hearing, and for employees who have reading and writing disorders, too much digital screen time can stunt productivity. But these are solvable problems, Mota says. 

"Right now I can actually turn on a closed captions feature [on this video call] to include those who might not be able to hear," she says. "They would see captions coming up on the screen. That same functionality also allows the person that set up the meeting to translate those captions to another language, and there's even an app that you can plug in to have an ASL interpreter come on the call and translate as well." 

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Mota, who herself is dyslexic, recalls her own onboarding at ADP, which required her to read PDF document after PDF document, when a video or auditory aid would have been more helpful for her. It made a standard procedure feel exclusionary, a common pain point.

"People feel that they don't belong," Mota says. "There's a lack of awareness that makes them go 'Wait, why wasn't I wasn't thought of in this experience?'" 

Today, Mota utilizes a number of Chrome plug-ins that check her spelling to reduce the risk of typos, a tech solution companies can normalize that doesn't just benefit their disabled employee base but also benefits their employees without a disability. The same goes for most disability-inclusive tech solutions. It can serve a much larger demographic than just the one it was specifically designed for.

For example, Apple's voice automated guide Siri was first developed for individuals who were either blind or visually impaired, but is now utilized by most if not all of iPhone users — disabled or not.

Read more: What's next? Intersectionality to play a critical role in ongoing DEI efforts

"If we start creating technology with users in mind that have disabilities, then we're going to end up creating a universal type of design that everyone will enjoy," Mota says. "People with disabilities are now starting to speak up a lot more, demanding that if companies are going to create a technology, they shouldn't just create it with accessibility in mind. They should create it with their experience and their representation in mind as well." 

As Mota sees it, this is more than  an accessibility issue — it's a DEI issue. In the same way sexuality, gender and race is inherently part of a person, so is a disability, and in order to make a workplace truly inclusive for those folks, there will need to be workplace cultures and policies that put them on the same playing field as their coworkers. 

"Most tools will have some sort of accessible options that you can turn on," Mota says. "Sometimes the issue is that a lot of these are off by default and people have to go and find these things. So even without a specific tool in mind or a specific platform, always check the accessibility options for whatever tech you're using."