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Accessibility should not be an afterthought. It needs to be built into your code so that your technology is working for you, not against you.
Jason Ferreira, accessibility engineer at iCIMS

Even after reviewing countless applications and reference letters and wading through all of their talent pools, hiring managers can still come up short in their searches. In those cases they often assume that their ideal candidates simply don’t exist. But sometimes those candidates do exist but just haven’t applied for those jobs because they couldn’t actually do so.

Today, approximately 25 percent of American adults have some type of disability. For some of them, their disability makes it more difficult for them to interact with hiring software, which increasing numbers of organizations are using to manage their recruitment and hiring processes. Unfortunately, most of those software applications aren’t designed to accommodate people with disabilities.

How many candidates miss out because application accessibility considerations come second (or aren’t taken into account at all)? In order to address this shortcoming, companies need to ensure that all candidates have an equal opportunity to apply to work with them. Hiring software must be accessible to everyone.

Case Study: Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in Talent Acquisition Software

Comprising subject-matter experts who focus on accessibility, security, and localization, the Center of Excellence at iCIMS makes sure that the company’s hiring software considers all areas of accessibility (e.g., visual, speech, hearing, cognitive, motor) and puts equal emphasis on helping teams develop empathy for end users and on training them to build accessible software. Launched in 2019 during iCIMS’ eighth annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day, the iCIMS Empathy Lab is filled with simulations of some of the different challenges that people with disabilities face in the workplace. Time in the Empathy Lab is part of each new hire’s onboarding curriculum and helps ensure that engineers, testers, coders, and anyone who touches software gains a better understanding of what using technology is like for someone with a disability.

How to Make Tech Accessible to All

To help ensure that their hiring software is built with accessibility in mind, organizations can take the following steps:

• Ask for volunteers within the company (perhaps members of employee resource groups) to submit applications for open positions, complete the screenings for them, and share their feedback about the accessibility of those processes. Use that feedback to identify gaps or areas that need improvement.
• Ask the vendors who provide the company’s talent acquisition software about accessibility in their products. What features are available? What are they planning to include in future versions? Find out how much they prioritize accessibility beyond just being compliant with laws.
• Determine what accessibility testing is needed and an appropriate cadence to leverage it. Constantly monitor, assess, and modify the testing experience so that efforts to improve accessibility do not fall by the wayside.

When each area of a company’s hiring software is built with accessibility in mind, opportunities will no longer be limited only to those who are able to complete the online application. By increasing the accessibility of its application processes, an organization can open its talent pools to all candidates. Companies that seek to cultivate a culture of growth and belonging should implement technology that supports it.