Our offices will be closed Thursday, September 30th
We will use this day to recognize and commemorate the legacy of residential schools, whether it be on quiet reflection or participation in a community event.
If you were interested in also taking the time to learn about what you can do to help work towards reconciliACTion for Indigenous peoples in Canada, you could consider:
Knowledge Keeper sessions are online for you to view at your convenience Check them out on our Youtube channel https://bit.ly/3uiuiBK
Skills for Success Day (formerly Essential Skills Day) is an annual initiative taking place each September to raise awareness about the key skills needed to succeed in learning, work and life. These skills, as identified by the Government of Canada (reading, writing, numeracy, digital, problem solving, communication, collaboration, adaptability, creativity and innovation), are the foundation for learning all other skills and enable people to evolve with their jobs and adapt to change.
Workplace Literacy in Canada
Canadian employers spent, on average, $889 per employee on learning and development in 2016–17, an increase of $89 per employee since 2014-15. The average number of hours of learning per employee per year is also on the rise, increasing from 25 hours in 2010 to 32 hours in 2016–17 Learning Cultures Lead the Way: Learning and Development Outlook—14th Edition, Conference Board of Canada, 2018).
Investment in workplace literacy also leads to cost savings from reduced errors and waste (UPSKILL Health – Technical Report on worker and business outcomes: Social Research and Demonstration Corporation, 2016).
Workers who participated in essential skills training were nearly 25% more likely to report a reduction in their work-related stress levels than those who had not received this type of training (UPSKILL Health – Technical Report on worker and business outcomes: Social Research and Demonstration Corporation, 2016).
To harness even more resources you can go to ABC Life Literacy Canada by clicking here:
Image Description: Bright coloured accessibility icons make up the background. A film strip on the right features 3 employees from PG organizations, top to bottom: HSBC, Gabi & Jules, BC Transit. In the centre is a white box, text reads: “The Eight Workplace Factors that Unlock Inclusivity: Clear Role Models, Employee Resource Groups, Parental Leave, Fair and Transparent Pay, Training, Flexible Working Options, Freedom to Innovate, Mental Well-Being Policies. — Enabling Change: Getting to Equal 2020: Disability Inclusion, Accenture.”
There are some basic best practices you can implement to keep your content accessible to all users that may see your social media content.
Accessible social media best practices in use makes a big impact on the experience that users with vision and/or hearing disabilities have on social media.
Use the below checklist to double-check your content before posting it.
Hashtags
Use hashtags in moderation.
Put multi-word hashtags in Camel Case.
Place hashtags at the end of posts and tweets when possible.
lace hashtag clouds in the first comment of Instagram posts instead of the caption.
Images
Add alt text to all images, including GIFs.
Add alt text for all copy on images that include flattened text.
If an image has excessive flattened copy on it (i.e. an official statement or organizational update), link out from the post or tweet to a webpage where the full statement is available as readable text and add alt text to the image.
Videos
Add closed captioning to all videos that contain dialogue and/or audio.
Provide a written or audio description of a video if it does not contain audio.
Add open captioning to videos where closed captioning is not possible (i.e. Story features, Instagram Reels, TikTok, etc…)
Avoid using flashing lights or strobe effects in videos.
Make live captioning and/or an on-camera interpreter available for live videos.
Emojis
Use emojis in moderation.
Do not use emojis as bullet points.
Avoid putting emojis in the middle of written content.
Stick to default yellow emojis unless a custom skin tone is necessary for context.
Double-check the descriptions of emojis on emojipedia.org before using them.
Characters & Symbols
Do not use special Unicode characters from external websites to make type appear in different styles or fonts.
Do not use ASCII Art in posts or tweets.
Glossary
Alternative Text
Alternative text—more commonly known as alt text—is the meta description of an image that a screen reader uses to accurately describe it aloud to blind and visually impaired users.
ASCII Art is a design technique that uses characters to create illustrative pictures.
However, screen readers cannot decipher ASCII Art and attempt to read the individual characters that make the illustration up instead. Therefore, ASCII Art is not accessible.
Audio Description
Verbalized description of a video that allows blind and visually impaired users to understand its content.
On streaming services like Netflix and Disney+, an audio description is available as a track separate from the closed captions track. The platforms YouTube and Vimeo do not allow for separate audio description tracks, unfortunately.
Camel Case
Camel Case—also known as Pascal Case and Title Case—is the method of capitalizing each word in a multi-word hashtag so that screen readers say it correctly.
Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes of displaying text on a video to provide interpretive info about the dialogue or other audio in the video.
Subtitles are intended for viewers who can’t understand the language being spoken in the video. Closed captions can be toggled on and off.
Emojis
Colorful icons popular on social media.
Every individual icon—including ones with custom skin tones—has its own unique description assigned to it that is read aloud when a screen reader comes across an emoji in content. The appearances and descriptions of emojis can vary based on the device or platform they are being viewed on.
Use the site emojipedia.org to double-check emoji descriptions.
Flattened Text
Text on digital assets such as images and/or PDF files that has been turned into an object and is no longer recognized by a screen reader as readable characters.
Flattened text is easily identified by dragging your mouse over the copy in question and seeing if you can highlight the individual words.
Open Captions
Captions or subtitles that are burned into a video during post-production and always visible.
They cannot be turned off by viewers.
Screen Reader
Assistive software program that allows blind and visually impaired users to consume the text that is displayed on a screen with a speech synthesizer or braille display.
Most smart phones have screen readers built into them. On iPhone, the program is called VoiceOver. On Android devices, it’s called TalkBack.
Special Unicode
Characters copied and pasted from external websites like IGFonts.io and CoolFont.org that are visually different from the social media platform’s native type.
This trend became popular on Instagram and has spread to the other platforms. However, not all screen readers can decipher these special Unicode characters, making them inaccessible.
Written By: Alexa Heinrich ·
This resource was created by Alexa Heinrich and is shared with permission.
If you have questions or want to learn more about how you can improve your digital accessibility skills, feel free to reach out to me at hello@therealalexa.com.
If you’re an employer who is new to the world of disability diversity and inclusion, you may be looking for general guidance and background on the what, why and how of making your organization more welcoming and accessible to applicants and employees with disabilities. Consider this your starting point for understanding how hiring workers with disabilities can benefit your business – and the ways EARN can help.
Why should employers care about creating a disability-inclusive workplace?
EARN is on a mission to help employers weave disability into their diversity and inclusion efforts. Why? Because recruiting, hiring, retaining and advancing workers with disabilities is good for America and good for business. Progressive employers everywhere are learning that businesses inclusive of people with disabilities, including veterans with disabilities, benefit from a wider pool of talent, skills and creative business solutions. They’re also recognizing disability diversity as an important way to tap into a growing market, since people with disabilities represent the third largest market segment in the U.S. So by proactively employing individuals with disabilities, businesses can gain a better understanding of how to meet the needs of this important and expanding customer base.
You may be asking, what skill sets could employees with disabilities bring to my company? The answer is as diverse as the skillsets of any qualified individuals. But, individuals with disabilities may also offer employers a competitive edge, helping diversify and strengthen their workplaces through varied perspectives on how to confront challenges and get the job done. They bring creativity, innovation, problem solving and commitment to the workplace. Studies have shown that employees with disabilities stay at jobs longer, thus reducing the time and cost involved in retraining and replacing personnel. Other benefits reported by businesses include improvement in productivity and morale and more diversity in the workplace. And these benefits can have a real impact on a company’s bottom line. In October 2018, Accenture, in partnership with the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) and Disability:IN, released “Getting to Equal: The Disability Inclusion Advantage,” a report that revealed that companies that embrace best practices for employing and supporting people with disabilities in their workforces consistently outperform their peers, including having, on average, 28 percent higher revenue, double the net income and 30 percent higher economic profit margins.
What does it mean to be disability-inclusive?
There are numerous characteristics associated with disability-friendly companies, and what’s often surprising to employers is that most inclusion practices geared toward employees and job seekers with disabilities have the added bonus of benefiting everyone. Some common characteristics of disability-inclusive companies include, but are not limited to, the following:
Fostering an INCLUSIVE BUSINESS CULTURE, starting with expressions of commitment from the highest levels and carried across an organization wide through practices such as disability-focused employee resource groups and engagement activities.
Ensuring disability-inclusive OUTREACH & RECRUITMENT by developing relationships with a variety of recruitment sources in order to build a pipeline of qualified candidates with disabilities for the future.
Promoting disability-inclusive TALENT ACQUISITION & RETENTION PROCESSES by establishing personnel systems and job descriptions that facilitate not only the hiring but also advancement of qualified individuals with disabilities.
Providing the ACCOMMODATIONS employees with disabilities may need to do their jobs effectively, whether that means assistive technology, a flexible schedule or numerous other reasonable accommodations or productivity enhancements.
Taking steps to ensure EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL COMMUNICATION OF COMPANY POLICIES & PRACTICES around its commitment to disability inclusion and providing training on disability-related workplace issues to staff.
Ensuring a barrier-free workplace by maintaining ACCESSIBLE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY, as well as a workplace that is physically and attitudinally accessible.
Promoting ACCOUNTABILITY & SELF-IDENTIFICATION, if appropriate, by adopting written policies, practices and procedures and measuring their effectiveness in order to identify areas for improvement.
This ‘Business to Business’ guide offers inclusive workforce best practices distilled from decades of experience and expertise. It is a resource for employers on how to adapt recruitment and retention practices to better engage people with disabilities and others with barriers to employment, including success stories and valuable lessons learned by organizations that are already successfully employing inclusively.
The content for this guide was developed throughout 2019. The current situation most organizations find themselves in has since changed dramatically. Certain segments of the guide are likely to change as a result, especially data around workforce shortages. However, information on benefits to business and individuals, and inclusive recruitment and retention practices, remain as valuable as ever. This will become even more important as organizations resume business operations and plan to ramp-up employment again, post-COVID-19.
Bottom line: being a supportive employer and creating a caring,
respectful workplace culture has never been more important!
Click the trusted LINK below to download your guide today!!
Check them out on our Youtube channel 
https://bit.ly/3uiuiBK
Oct 16th
