Accessibility in the Workplace

Hello and welcome to a very special episode of the Job Hunting Podcast. The 3rd of December is the International Day of People with Disability and a great time for reflection, understanding and action. This day, recognized by the United Nations, aims to promote the rights and well being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and development.

It’s a day to celebrate the achievements and contributions of people with disabilities and also to raise awareness for the challenges they face in everyday life. In line with this significant day, we have a remarkable guest joining us, Briar Hart. Briar is a seasoned professional in customer experience transformation and a fervent advocate for inclusivity and accessibility in the corporate world. Over a very short period of time, she has become a recognized authority in this space, leading enterprise wide initiatives in her workplace, as well as becoming a powerful voice, advocating for organizations to be more accessible And inclusive, a testament to her dedication and her expertise.

Today, we will learn about Briar’s story, always a good place to start, and then delve into how professionals like you and me can support accessibility initiatives in their workplaces so that those with disabilities can assert themselves in the corporate environment.

This is an episode that should be listened by absolutely everyone that works. Not just people with disability, but those who want to be great allies, leaders, colleagues, and friends. So without further ado, let’s welcome Briar Hart to the show.

Renata Bernarde: What I really want to start off with today is to ask you to share your With us, your story of, you know, your strengths and what led you to have the career that you have now.

Briar Harte: Thank you for having me, Renata. I really appreciate it. And what an open ended question to start with. So,

Renata Bernarde: you can go for as long as you want.

Briar Harte: like I’ll probably start with where I am today and go back into a little bit how I got here. So, I lead accessibility and disability strategy. and transformation in a corporate and that’s come about from my lived experience as a person acquiring a disability as much as my professional experience in human centered design, research, transformation and business change.

So I’m never really sure how I got here. I’m probably very different to you. I don’t, didn’t plan all of this out. I grew up in, in a small town in New Zealand. My parents were remarried and I had, you know, large extended family of siblings and, I went to uni to study business because it seemed interesting.

And my mum ran an organic health and wellness retreat down a valley, which was visited by burnout executives. And my dad was a commercial industrial real estate agent that owned an agency with his dad. And I went to study business and was like, I don’t even know what a CEO is. I don’t know how any of this stuff works.

It just seemed really fascinating to me.

Renata Bernarde: Yeah.

Briar Harte: Like, we struggled to explain the natural world, but we didn’t create it. Right. We didn’t create trees and birds and weather, but we created financial systems we can’t explain. And I found that so fascinating. And so began this, like a black, I’m going to call it like a black bird.

Like it just went off to shiny things for a really long time. Things that were interesting. I finished uni, the finance and market research and journalism degree. I. I moved to Australia three days after my last exam and the job ad literally said the continent of Australia, Renata. It didn’t even specify a state or a city.

I was just like, that seems like an interesting job. I’m going to go and do it. And again, I just kept following the shiny things. And I was like, I worked in franchise consulting, building out business models and and recruitment strategy and brand strategies. And then I ended up. Well, there’s two ways to make a business more profitable.

You earn more money or you spend less. And I went into a procurement transformation

I found myself I found myself back in Australia and at 27, I acquired a disability and that happened I had a spinal injury, but I had an operation and I lost the use of one of my legs.

And at 27, I had to learn to walk again. And I had no family here in Australia. I had no access to things like Centrelink because I’m not Australian and I had to figure out how to get back to work. And I had a lot of the experiences that people who acquire a disability have. And suddenly my gender, my age became nothing compared to the ableism that I was.

I can now see that I was experiencing, but it was also a moment where I needed to get out of the team I was in and I went and started doing market research and so began. You know, something’s shiny and sparkly market research and moved over to the UK and moved to New Zealand. It was a research director and got into human centered design

And then all of these things, these life experiences came together in this role to be doing that human centered transformation for people with disabilities and access needs.

And again, like kind of just. This is the, this is the sparkly shiny thing. I think it’s called a toolkit career, but I like bird choices.

Renata Bernarde: That’s a lovely way of seeing it. I am very interested in what a human centered design for people with disability mean. To you. And can you explain that to us? Because every time, you know, I told you this before we started recording, every time I go to your LinkedIn and I read a, one of your posts, I learned something new that I didn’t know before.

And I find your LinkedIn posting so, so helpful. That’s the sort of thing that I wish everybody would do, whatever their expertise is, right? So whatever you’re good at, or whatever you are learning or sort of interested in, share with others, you know, in a way that helps other people understand a subject matter that they’re not an expert in. So tell me about the Human Centered Design for People with Disability.

Briar Harte: Thank you, Renata. Look, I think LinkedIn is like free university, like you just learn so much on there. and so human centered designers really like centering the, person and the design that you’re making and their use of it. And that might be the customer or the employee using it.

Like it’s about centering the human experience because humans will break any perfect process. You write up on a PowerPoint slide and get your executive to approve. That’s, that’s the nature of humans. And I think that what we’re seeing with human centered design for people with disabilities and accessibility needs.

It’s. It’s really around universal design. So how do you design something for the masses that works for everyone rather than the middle or the easiest ones? So, You know, I started a newsletter on LinkedIn called mostly unlearning because when I started my job, I am a person with a disability who’d been working in research and design and I had to unlearn.

I felt like everything that I’ve been doing. And so when it came to this part about human centered design, it was okay. Usually we go, what’s the majority need? we’ll design for the majority and then we’ll figure out the edge. We’ll figure out the extras that the more difficult use cases.

And actually what universal design says is start with the edge cases and then that will work for the For the the average person, and that was beheaded by Microsoft when they did a study that said when we design for the average user, the user works well for a few people and with difficulty for many more.

But if when we design for the edge, when we design for the vision impaired person, the person that uses the keyboard rather than the mouse, when we design from that place. Actually scales back into everybody else. So then they found that they had a broader, broader use. And then you find, and I think I mentioned this earlier, that when you design mainstream to be more accessible, your specialist services need to do less of that heavy lifting.

So if we bring edge cases into how we design, then we make sure that it works. Then all the extra stuff that we have to go and remediate later, it’s got, there’s less that you need to do there. So, you know, in summary, if you’re building a physical space without thinking about a person in a wheelchair, you may or may not have a ramp.

But if you build that space, thinking about a person in a wheelchair, you’ll definitely have a ramp. And so that’s, that’s the idea. And that’s what I’ve been unlearning. Like the average person is not the right person to start with.

Renata Bernarde: Yes, I love that. I recently realized that my favorite brand of products that I buy to use in the kitchen is done that way. It’s designed around, you know what you’ve just said. And I had no idea. I just love that brand. I think it’s OXO. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them.

But yes, and I keep seeing on Instagram, someone using this most amazing. brushes to do her makeup and they look really good. And I’m like, Oh my God, I should get them because they, you know, I think it would be easier for me, even though I don’t have a disability, I would love to have those brushes because they, make it look so easy to apply eyeliner, for example, which is hard for everybody to do.

And

does it with, with such ease.

Briar Harte: I’d say like it’s truly surprising when you realize how many of our everyday products actually were designed for those edge cases. So Siri and Alexa, that’s where it started was not everybody’s going to want to. Use this product. It’s like, okay, our mainstream product doesn’t work for people who need to use voice inputs because they might have like arthritis.

They might have a limb impairment. They might have, you know, temporarily like a broken arm. So that that starts with how do we get inputs from a voice and everybody uses that closed captions, right? Netflix came out and said like 80 or 90 percent of people use closed captions on a monthly basis, and 40 percent have them on at all times.

And that’s, that started as people who were hearing impaired wanting to be able to know, see, you know, be able to read what’s going on. But that’s mainstream now. And if you don’t put captions on, you know, you don’t put captions on your social media, the reach is smaller. People. Skip past it, like it’s not for, it’s not for the edge case anymore.

It’s for everyone

and assistive technology is what will, you know, transform people’s lives as we increasingly, as you grow older, you become more disabled. That’s just statistically correct. So it helps you kind of in so many different ways.

Renata Bernarde: Right, what does that mean for a workplace that’s so hybrid now? You know, what does accessibility mean from your perspective in this sort of Landscape that we have now where some employers are asking to go back to the office at least certain days a week, and some of them want to work remotely. Can you, do you see it like, can you give us pros and cons about each of those sort of scenarios of working from home or having to go to an office, especially in a place like Melbourne and so many cities around the world where buildings are so old fashioned. And inaccessible most of the time.

Briar Harte: It’s a really topical question that there’s a lot of information on LinkedIn about that what we saw when everybody went home during COVID was we saw an improvement in the employment rates of people with disability. So in Australia, the stats of somewhere between 30 and 35 percent gap between disabled and able.

People employment. So that’s a huge gap in the employment or unemployment of people with disability. And we found that that gap got smaller when people were able to work from home. And part of that is that you can manage your condition with more dignity. You know, between meetings, I can go and stretch out.

I can go for a walk. I don’t have to wear shoes that make my my leg on my back feel worse. So. There’s, there’s that part. But it’s also, I think, around people being aware both the employer and the employee, the manager and the teams of what you’re actually able to ask for when you come back into the office.

I think it’s not that. Disabled people or people need to be at home. I think it’s actually being accommodating of what people need when they come into the office. And that’s not been done particularly well. And I don’t think we’ve fully understood as an, as an, as employers, what people are entitled to and how simple those workplace adjustments can be.

So for example, I was on a, like a Facebook group and someone was talking about their neurodiversity and their two pieces of their workplace adjustments and the workplace adjustments are I need agendas before meetings. I need, and I need notes to be sent afterwards. And with those two things, you can expect from me the same as my peers.

And without that, I’m going to struggle and they were struggling to get that because culturally that company obviously didn’t.

With neurodiversity or, you know, Physical things like people who had like migraines or endometriosis is two examples that come to mind where actually when you could manage this at home, you suddenly realized how impactful going into the office was so.

I’m an extrovert with a disability, so I’ve like, one part of me is like, I can manage this from home, and the other part of me is like, I’m so dehydrated from human interaction, like, let me back in the office. But I had to go slow, I had to get fit to commute on the trains where I feel unstable, I had to really articulate what I needed, and I had to be able to articulate what I now understood I needed that I didn’t need before.

So. I think we can have both, as long as we’re open to and understand the accommodations that people need in order to be. equal participants in that workplace.

Renata Bernarde: Yes. I picked up on what you said before about people not realizing they have disabilities.

Briar Harte: Yeah.

Renata Bernarde: think that that is so true. I definitely have on and off pain in that situation. And, you know, I don’t know. I think especially with endo, which I had for many years and it went undiagnosed, it is so problematic because nobody tells you that that’s what you have and you don’t then access the, the support that you, that you need.

And, and also when you do say things. People don’t, don’t believe you because you don’t look like you’re disabled. You know, so many times, you know, when I was really, really unwell I was told I shouldn’t take the Lyft at uni because why was I taking the Lyft? It was only for people that needed the Lyft.

And I’m like, you have no idea. I cannot walk. Up the stairs, you know, this is so much pain and you feel bad, you know, by having to constantly be explaining or having people look at you funny and that is so true also with people with neurodiversity who have been in the closet and probably still are.

So how do you deal with that spectrum? I know you’ve been working on in house, you know, at your current workplace in developing support systems and plans and strategies. How do you deal with that spectrum being so varied?

Briar Harte: Look, to start off I myself didn’t use the word disability to explain my disability until eight years after I’d had the operation where I’d lost the use of my leg. And I was pregnant in the bushfires that were occurring before COVID happened. I had my daughter in the first.

And the first lockdown, and I was having a really hard time with my back and, you know, it was, it was, I was having to push really hard and in the medical system. And I exploded one day and said, I’ve got a disability and I just need you to help me. And then I went home. With my boyfriend, and I said, I don’t actually have a disability.

I just needed to use the disability so that they knew that I needed help that was different to other people. My, he’s very quiet and he just looks at me and he says, like I think, okay, okay, right. And he kind of left it and then, you know, like laughs about it later now that I can reflect on it. But for me, I didn’t use that word.

And I didn’t use that word because I genuinely thought if I tried a little bit harder, I wouldn’t be. Disabled. I just needed to try a little bit harder. I just needed to do a bit more rehab. I just needed to do more and I would be back to being like everybody else. And in that, in that moment, in that pregnancy, when someone else’s life was a part of, you know, I needed to think about, I was suddenly able to be far more like advocate for what we needed.

The two of us, my daughter and I, and. I came back to work and made the choice to talk about my disability and to talk about my experience and really actually to help people understand what, what they are entitled to. And that in part was because my workplace was amazing. Like they, I had an amazing manager and, and business HR business partner who found every policy to help me.

Nothing was a problem. Everything could be sorted and I was supported at work so I could go fight. And the medical system for what I needed. And I realized in that moment that when I came back and to answer your question, what I realized in that moment was like, it doesn’t matter if you want to use the word disability or not.

And I really don’t mind if someone is not ready to use that word, but the. Policies and the processes and the laws that give you entitlement that will help you be successful in your life and be the sort of parent, partner, friend, whoever that you want to be outside of work actually falls under those terms.

And so I think that, we need to understand that not everyone’s comfortable with the terminology. We need to understand how people come understand what they’re entitled to, and we need to be really broad in our thinking about it. It’s why you often say accessibility rather than disability. It’s an accessibility and inclusion plan or a disability action plan, but using that broader language and bringing people in to set, to, to understand what they can do and then educating.

Renata Bernarde: =I

Briar Harte: people around them to be like, yes, you are allowed to offer them accommodations and how they come into work and where they sit and how the team meetings are run and like giving people sounds silly, but like giving the people around them permission to be more accommodating. Cause we’re often stuck in our ways of working.

Cause we think that that’s the way it’s always been. So that’s the way it should be. So. Yeah, like it’s a difficult word and the term is internalized ableism, where someone really believes like that, that they if they try harder, they you know, that they don’t, that they sort of don’t want to be a part of that, but actually it’s realizing that there’s so much to be gained from owning that terminology and being able to ask for what you need.

Renata Bernarde: oh, that’s so interesting. Okay. And A couple of things have come to mind as you were saying this, again, thinking about the sort of city we live in, Melbourne. I am embarrassed to say that so many times in a senior role, I was not able to provide better support and care for people with disability or accessibility issues.

I mean, the University of Melbourne, wonderful place to study. As long as you can walk. You know what I mean? Like, if you are in any Ivy League university overseas and you’re listening to this, you know exactly what I mean. They’re hundreds of years old, the buildings are old, cobblestones everywhere. Not only stairs, but terrible stairs, you know, that are not even for people that can’t walk them up and down.

They’re, you know, they’re not even they’re, they’re sort of old. And I remember. I’ve had a job once, I was a PhD coordinator for the Department of Accounting, and every year we would get, um, a half a dozen new PhD students doing their doctorates there, and we had these, there was one year where we had two with accessibility issues and they needed scooters, which the university provides and pays for all good,

Briar Harte: yeah,

Renata Bernarde: but it would take them 40 minutes longer to get to the class because they would have to, I would give them this maps and the maps were like the most complicated route to get to a lecture theater.

Because they had to go through, you know, ramps that were too far away, et cetera, et cetera. And having done, for example, events at the Sydney Opera House, which was something that I, you know, very proud to have organized. And knowing that the Sydney Opera House, in many of its event locations, does not allow for people to, to act.

The rooms, and if you’re working with the older people or people with disability, like my most important consultant at the time could not attend the event that she helped me organize prior.

Briar Harte: Wow.

Renata Bernarde: my heart. So, some things I know are, are, require extremely large budgets to resolve. But they also require the goodwill of senior execs.

To sort of put down others are more cost effective measures that you can just do like, we will not do an event at the Sydney Opera House. I do not care that it’s historic and it’s amazing. But if they can’t offer a room that is accessible, I will not do that. You know, like, I did not do it. I have to admit that I just went with what was the tradition for the organization I was representing at the time, instead of saying, No.

Right. And I feel bad now. I really, really do. It breaks my heart. It did back then, but now it’s just like, I can’t believe it happened.

Briar Harte: Like, I think it’s so it’s, I think it’s really interesting when we think about when we look back and, and think about what we could have done differently, because I think that sometimes when I’m coming in as a, like, I’m a, I’m a pretty high energy change maker. That’s like, it doesn’t take long to realize that I’m.

I wake up caffeinated. It’s how I operate in the world. And I think that sometimes the barrier to change is actually someone like yourself being able to hold two things true. One, you have contributed to someone’s discrimination and their You know, the exclusion within spaces and you’re fully in control of making different choices from here on in.

And sometimes I find that that’s actually a really hard space for people to hold. And again, it’s why I called me my newsletter mostly unlearning because actually like you have to unlearn these things and you have to hold space for it. And you kind of have to go, well, you know what? Tomorrow I can do something.

differently and it’s progress over perfection because actually one of the most common accommodations that people provide right now is exactly what you’re talking about in terms of the MAB. Yes, 40 minutes is a long time but it wasn’t two hours because they had to figure it out themselves. Like organizations provide wayfinding maps and instructions to say The office I work in, like, enter on this one, this, if you’re in a wheelchair, come into this entrance, because you’ll be, have a flatter.

If you need to go in the lifts, go here, so someone can prepare. It’s actually like a perfectly acceptable workplace accommodation, or way to help someone, because you’re, you can’t go and. tear down the Sydney Opera House. But you can go and say, look, this entrance is going to be better. That one’s going to be better.

Or actually, we’ve got a new minimum standard we as an organization want to uphold. And therefore, I’m sorry, but this is not a venue we want to go to. And we don’t have to put pressure on ourselves to do it perfectly, but we just have to do it better.

Renata Bernarde: one step at a time.

Briar Harte: Yeah.

Renata Bernarde: What are the things that we can advise now for, and before we move on to empowering professionals with disabilities, which I want to talk about, I want us, you, not me, definitely not me, terrible examples here, but what are the things that an employer can do tomorrow to start those, taking those first steps into empowering Not only acknowledging that there is an issue and then making things better for the future.

Hey

Briar Harte: look, I think

Renata Bernarde: another video.

Briar Harte: at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start. Is that from

Renata Bernarde: about the the

Briar Harte: You know, I think the first thing that you can do within your organization is understand does your organization have a disability action plan or an accessibility plan? You just go and understand, because it may be that your organization actually does have one.

And for all types of government organizations in Victoria and New South Wales, you have to have one. You also go and find out if you’ve got an accessibility plan. a network of people with disabilities that are actually banding together to, to try and improve things because you’ll find again in a lot of organizations that found each other and they’re helping each other out.

And so you know, formal disability reference groups. I’m a part of a disability reference group for my local council and they consult with us on things that might affect us. And then you can actually. Like, you just go and ask, what’s, what’s the biggest issue that’s facing you and how can I solve it?

Because disability change and all change doesn’t need to be done by those that are impacted. Take the burden off our shoulders and, and you know, ask someone else to, to help. So I think you can go and understand that. You can go and do some really basic benchmarking. Australian Network on Disability does an annual accessibility and inclusion index, and that will give you a sense of like, where are you up to as an organisation?

Where do you need to, where do you need to improve? And that’s like, I think, a really great way to get executives to go, oh shit, this is probably not where we wanted it to be. I think, like, you know, Just really simple stuff like,

you know, add some disabled voices to your social media. I’m always sharing like five to follow. So I send a newsletter out at work fortnightly and I include five people to follow, like add those voices in and like start to, to hear. what it’s like for people. You don’t need to go and read all 222 recommendations of the Royal Commission.

Go and understand, like, what are people talking about? What are they struggling with? And the last one, go and understand your obligations, right? You have legal obligations under things like Disability Discrimination Act and various parts of Secure Job, Better Pay Bill, stuff like this. You want to understand your obligations for people, because actually when you understand what you’re obligated, then it.

Seems to free up some capacity to go, Oh, I’m going to try a little bit harder. Or I now understand that this is actually really important, not a magnanimous, you know, save, yeah. Like I’m coming in to help you like, no, you should, you legally have to do this for me. So let’s get it done. It shifts mindset in a way that hadn’t really sort of debated.

Renata Bernarde: I like the idea of sort of giving people some ideas of who to follow because you never know what you don’t know. I had a conversation via LinkedIn message a few years ago with an individual such a, a lovely man, and, and he said, you know, I am a polymath and I’m autistic.

But not autistic enough to be hired by the autistic groups that some of the tech companies have these days. And I thought of all of the, like, I had never thought of this. But he said, you know, I’ve tried and I’ve had conversations with them, but I don’t fit the disability sort of box that they’ve created.

And I’m like, this is just the most bizarre thing. And,

you know, it’s truly not. and I, followed him because I loved his fellows. He writes beautifully and really sort of. Interesting ideas that comes from a very sort of different mind that I just sort of said, like, I really like your post and I started commenting and then he realized it was a career coach and shared his experience with me and I’m like, I had no idea that this even existed.

So

Briar Harte: Cheeto! Sorry.

Renata Bernarde: would really like to talk to you about those, how do we empower professionals with disabilities in a world of people that sort of create sort of weird rules and barriers of entries like that and I’m fascinated to hear what you have to say.

Briar Harte: think it’s, I’m smiling for those that are listening. I’m smiling at the question, not because I love the answer or the example that you gave, but I can’t tell you how often someone says, I’m not disabled enough to identify as disabled, like people are more disabled than me. And honestly, I had the same thought.

I’m like, who am I to be leading disability inclusion? I’m not that disabled. And then. You know, there are things that I need that without, my boss can’t expect the same thing as me, as my peers, so I have, there is a barrier there, but it’s again, it’s coming to terms with that like, what is disability, that you have disability, disability, it’s the unlearning, it’s not linear, it’s not always the same, disability is often being thought of as like, this medical model of like, my leg doesn’t work, well actually, hey, The disability is not that my leg doesn’t work, the disability is more in the social model of disability that says my surroundings disable me and therefore in some circumstances I’m not, uh, I’m not impacted in other circumstances I am.

So it says that the person in the wheelchair is disabled. By the building with no ramp, because the wheelchair is actually enabling them to get to the building. And so, I think like, like shifting our mindsets and understanding of like, getting to that social model of disability, understanding that society is disabling, whereabouts is it, how can we change it?

Like this, that was a really fundamental thing, I think, for. To me to understand that it’s not linear, that sometimes I do need help and other times I don’t need help and then being far more clear when I need help. So if I need to sit in a meeting and a workshop for a day, I need a different chair, but I’m sitting in that same room for an hour, it’s fine.

I don’t need that, that additional chair. So like. it’s this, like, not disabled enough is a kind of a barrier, I think, to people understanding what the problem is or understanding what they should ask for, or even knowing what to include. And the idea that you’re not autistic enough, or the right type of autistic, I think is probably also within that story.

Renata Bernarde: I think so, too. Yes.

Briar Harte: Like, the right type Like you’re not Rain Man, kind of, I don’t, it’s probably not the right thing to say.

Renata Bernarde: I think that the idea of trying to use the sort of avenues that have been created for people with disability, sometimes, Doesn’t help people with disabilities because they might be too narrow or designed in a way that just doesn’t, that is a bit icky. And if you know that there is an allowance there for somebody to say, Oh, okay, but you’re very smart.

Let’s have a chat with you anyway and see if you know there’s an opportunity for you. In a different way. So I think that that’s

missing from a corporate world that’s still trying to add that sort of

Briar Harte: yeah.

Renata Bernarde: empowerment to decision makers and sort of understanding and not just trying to pigeonhole people into boxes.

Briar Harte: I think like two things come to mind there, Renata. One, I think disability, it’s frustrating, it, for for people because it’s not homogenous and sometimes it’s contradictory. So I would speak to someone you know, who has autism who would say, I really need my peers to turn their cameras on because I cannot fully understand The intention without saying the body language, right?

So for that person, their version of autism says, I actually really need that. Someone else within that team might also say, I’ve got high, I’ve got anxiety, debilitating anxiety, and I can’t When I turn my camera on, I’m paralyzed and I can’t actually continue to participate in that discussion. Both people have expressing needs to be a part of that, that are contradicting with each other.

But actually, like, it’s not the same. That one’s right and one’s wrong. And it’s not that the team has to pick one. It’s actually that you need to acknowledge it. You need to find a way forward. And it may be you can keep your camera off. But what we’re going to need to do after is if there are interactions between the two of you that need further discussion.

Let’s meet separately, just the two of you with cameras on to talk about, or, you know, there are ways forward and I think it’s like like Nes Campanella the ABC journalist, who’s just absolutely amazing, said it the best when she got her job at ABC, they said to her, what do you need to do your job so we can have the same expectations of you as other journalists?

Renata Bernarde: Okay.

Briar Harte: They didn’t ask her like, what do you need? I said, we want to have the same expectations of you as all the others. So what do you need? So we can put you on a level playing field and that’s her as an individual. But if you’ve got contradictory requests, then what do we as a team need? How do we need to manage this?

What can we do? Because when you. When you accommodate for people and you find a path forward for that team with those two people, everybody is doing better. Everyone belongs, everyone can bring their best selves to work. That person with anxiety might go, actually in this moment I can turn my camera on, it’s 10 percent of the time and it has a big change.

That person who said, I really need to see your face feels more confident to say, I couldn’t quite understand your intention there, can you please clarify? Like you build the trust, you build the belonging. But you can’t expect a homogenous set of asks, and you can’t expect everyone with the same condition to ask for a need and expect the same thing.

And if you are, it’s really, you’re really going to trip yourself up, I think, as a, as an employer, as a as a colleague that’s trying to be inclusive.

Renata Bernarde: Yes. Now, Bri, you’re very open about your disability now and advocating for others and involved in strategy for your own organization. But there are, you individuals that, as you mentioned before, don’t even use the word disability or they don’t bring it up when they’re looking for a job, for example, for fear of bringing it up.

Sort of being unhelpful to their success and acquiring a job. How do you feel people can go about opening up about their disabilities in a safe way or do you agree that sometimes it’s better to keep it on the wraps until, until you get the job? It’s such a weird way to navigate the world. I, you know, I’m interested to know what you have to say.

Briar Harte: It’s it’s, this could be the whole hour, Renata talking about this one. So I think there’s two parts to it. One, everyone should do what works for them and what’s safe for them, right? If, you know, if you’re under financial pressure and you can’t, Risk. You don’t want to risk it. Like that’s a different place than you’ve got a great job.

You just, you’ve been approached about some opportunities and you, and you want to be more open in this case. So it’s not black and white. You don’t have to like you don’t, you don’t have to. And employers can ask. You’ll see the question in varying different ways in a recruitment process. Do you have any accessibility needs for this recruitment process?

So I don’t believe, I don’t understand that you can ask someone, do you have a disability without giving them something in return? So in return, when someone discloses that they might say, I have a service animal and I need, you know, I need to make sure that the interview has been conducted in a space that’s large enough for my service animal, right?

That’s an. I’m disclosing this because what I’m getting in return is that accommodation. So you don’t You don’t have to, it’s circumstantial. If you join the organization and you, you’re not ready, like, you don’t have to, but it’s a trade off, right? If you’re not getting what you need, you’re also compromising your ability to be successful in that probationary period.

And I’ve certainly gone periods where I haven’t mentioned it until I’ve passed probation, and there’s other situations where I’ve said I actually really need to, to raise this with someone. The most important thing to start with is to make sure you’re safe and you understand your circumstances. So I really hate to hear where people are putting their own safety at risk.

But in reality, when you disclose having a disability, you expose yourself to a risk of discrimination, of piling on of assumptions, of people making decisions for you. And it’s not just a fear of, it’s often a lived experience of that happening. So while this new manager, you don’t know, this new manager may have a lot of experience within that, it’s a risk that someone may or may not be willing to take.

So, I think I’m at a point where I’m like, if you’re going to discriminate against me, do it early, do it in the recruitment process, so I don’t worry about anything else. Right? Like, but I’m, but I’m at a different, at a different point there. And it’s all over my LinkedIn. So it’d be pretty hard not to say.

, I think that what we need to make sure we’re doing is making recruitment processes and onboarding and workplace environments that you require disclosure as little as possible. Right? Like, We have far more like hot desking with sit, sit, stand desks with, you know, like you see those in offices all the time.

That actually means that someone does not need to disclose their spinal injury because there are different types of desks they can sit in. So you’re giving people the choice to disclose and you’re demonstrating your commitment to them by giving them. all the options that they might need. So I think that it’s about like, it’s, it’s a dance and it’s it’s giving people all of the cues and all of the proof points to say we are a safe place.

We do take this seriously. All the little things that you can do that would give someone the confidence and the comfort, to know that, that this is a safe place. But also don’t force it out of them and don’t bake it into the process and don’t make their some of those accommodations dependent on disclosure when they don’t really need to be dependent.

If someone’s asking for an agenda for a meeting, the differentiating factor in giving them that agenda should not be that they also disclose having a neurodiversity. I’m not neurodiverse and I really like having an agenda for a meeting. It’s actually just a really good way of working. So I think that, you know, it’s really want to stress like only do it if you feel safe.

If you feel like you’re going to get something out of it, don’t feel like you have to disclose. And also you don’t have to explain nearly as much as you think you do. And asking for those accommodations. So yeah, look after yourself first and employers like let’s all just. Be more inclusive.

Renata Bernarde: absolutely.

Briar Harte: simple, isn’t it?

Renata Bernarde: I love the discussion and I want this episode to come out in that first week of December. Am I right that that’s Yes, so we want to make sure that it aligns with, is it an international day for disability?

Briar Harte: So 3rd of December is the International Day of People with Disability. It’s the UN celebrated.

Renata Bernarde: Awesome.

Briar Harte: and, you know, to all the people listening, like, you know, have an event, like have a celebration, even if it’s, if it’s last minute, cause you just listened to the podcast, like celebrate some assistive technology that you use and go and use the Microsoft Excel accessibility checker in Word for the day and go and figure out how often someone, you know, all the little things that you could have done to help someone, you know, you know, Just spend the day using Microsoft Accessibility Checker, that would be a great thing to celebrate that day and to upskill a little bit.

Renata Bernarde: I know that LinkedIn is looking at some of that as well. I don’t know if they sent you an email, but I received an email from LinkedIn, telling why did I get it and not you, telling me to go and have a look at some better functions that they have for I will. If I find the email, I’ll send it to you.

Briar Harte: Yeah. I just want LinkedIn to have CamelCase

Renata Bernarde: Yes, I

Briar Harte: So LinkedIn defaults your CamelCase hashtags back to SnakeCase, and Instagram will leave them as CamelCase. And for people listening, A camel case hashtag is where the hashtag is a capital. So you can read it a bit easier than when it’s a snake case, it’s all in lowercase.

And the reason is that one, your it’s easier visually to figure out the words, but also a screen reader mashes those words together. So black lives matter could also be read as. Black live smatter

Renata Bernarde: Yes.

Briar Harte: because that that screen readers got no idea what where that you intended the s or the M to be the capital So I’ve got a beef with LinkedIn about like

fix

Renata Bernarde: I read, I read your post this week and I’m like, I will never do this again. I’ll have to go and have a look. Definitely, I’ve

Briar Harte: things but big indicators

Renata Bernarde: exactly. Thank you so much, Bria. Do you want to, is there any sort of final thoughts or ideas that we haven’t spoken about that you’d like to leave the listeners with?

Let’s see.

Briar Harte: over perfection.

So, you know, find me on LinkedIn or I also share stuff on, on Instagram, but find other voices and they think You can find a lot of people just living a disabled life saying this is what it takes to get to work, this is what it takes, this is what I’d like and you don’t have to go and interrogate your colleague.

You can actually learn about it passively in other places. So that would just be my call out to everyone is add our voices into your lives. Social media is a big part of it and give it a go and if you don’t know, ask and if it doesn’t work, try again and

Renata Bernarde: I think for anybody in a hiring position, an employer that is growing their teams somebody who is in charge of people in culture people that have stakeholder engagements internal or external stakeholders. It’s very important that this is part of your professional development.

Briar Harte: Like go to the human rights website and do, there’s a 20 minute e learn about inclusive hiring practices. Australian network on disability does a disability confident recruiter accreditation. And there are a lot of organizations that are accredited as disability confident recruiters. And you’ll start to see people prefer to go there because it’s not just an indicator that you are inclusive of people with disability.

It’s an indicator that you actually are inclusive. Generally, and those things get noticed, you know, and the saying that an AWEI accreditation is noticed from pride perspective, like that’s an indicator that you, are investing in inclusion and some of those disability ones are there too.

So the information is everywhere,

Renata Bernarde: Okay, thank you so much, lovely having you here.

Briar Harte: Thank you.