Creating Communications Accessibility in your Workplace

Workplace accessibility is a vital part of digital transformation. It’s not just about being compliant or a box-ticking exercise, but designing a workplace that is inclusive of everyone.

We’re not just talking about desk arrangements and other so called ‘reasonable adjustments’ but the actual technology that is the infrastructure of your workplace. Though accessibility is a niche area of developing new technology, we’re starting to realise the importance of it and the role it plays in a workplace that’s inclusive by design.

Workplace Modernisation is a business movement that you must adopt throughout transformation projects. It ensures that accessibility happens. Workplace Modernisation is against implementing technology for the sake of digital transformation. It’s about engineering the right culture and employees experiences that are underpinned by having the right technology. It’s an area we can help you explore at our Convergence Summit this year!

Communications for example, vital for business. Everyone in the business needs to be able to communicate with one another, which is why creating a workplace with inclusive communications is so vital.

IT and HR departments need to join forces

You might not think it at first thought, but for digital transformation projects to work, IT and HR need to join forces. They are strategic partners within businesses.

It’s a key focus for HR departments currently to ensure the workplace has the tools everyone needs, regardless of whether they have a disability or not.

Use your Voice

It’s still the most efficient and effective form of communications. And there’s a lot using voice within your workplace can do for making your business communications more accessible.

For example, for employees with vision impairments, using voice to help organise their calendar or to write emails for them is empowering. Speech-to-text transcription is a life changing technology for many working professionals, enabling them to easily craft documents as part of their day-to-day activities.

Voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, teamed with Robotic Process Automation (RPA), help to make appointments, organise your schedule, print your documents and book taxis for your clients, at just the sound of your voice!

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI has been put on a pedestal in recent years, and with good reason! We’re seeing massive advances in its capabilities.

Accessibility is one of the key areas of digital transformation where AI is going to be a great asset as it develops further.

It’s already providing language translation and caption for people who are deaf or have a hearing impairment. Applications such as Microsoft’s Translator live feature. 

AI can also help people with cognitive impairments like attention deficit disorders and low literacy skills to extract they key information they need. Abstract summarisation, like the machine learning algorithm Salesforce developed can distil an article, email or lengthy document into a single, succinct paragraph. 

On-call accessibility

There’s a variety of hardware and software that can make your employees lives simpler when they are making and taking calls. For example, a headset, which might seem like a fairly simply piece of kit, enables people to have their hands-free whilst on the phone. This will be very valuable to someone who has an impairment meaning that they cannot hold a handset.

CTI/Click-to-Call means that employees do not have to dial numbers, they can just call at the click of a mouse. Similarly, screen popping means that employees know who an incoming call is from. This makes for conversation ease and minimises physical effort.

Transcription for call recording

Call recording is a very valuable asset to have in the contact centre and for other areas of your business. But to make call recording accessible to all, you need to ensure that you can transcribe it.

Transcribing call recordings mean that people who are deaf or have hearing impairments can read the script of the call.

Britannic offers a transcription service, with fast, accurate speech-to-text transcription.