Helping Your Workplace to Become Disability Confident

With the huge focus across the UK on workforce planning and reducing employment gaps, we can help you to realise your businesses full potential. Being Disability Confident means you are officially recognised for being committed to making the most of the talents disabled people can bring to your workplace.

Disability Confident employers of all sizes are:

    •  challenging attitudes towards disability

    •  increasing understanding of disability

    •  removing barriers to disabled people and those with long-term health conditions

    •  ensuring that disabled people have the opportunities to fulfil their potential and realise their aspirations

Why you should become Disability Confident

Being Disability Confident could help you discover someone your business just can’t do without.

Whether an employee has become disabled during their working life, or you’re looking for new recruits, being Disability Confident can help your people fulfil their potential and contribute fully to your team’s success.

By being Disability Confident, you’ll also be seen as leading the way in your business sector and beyond, helping to positively change attitudes, behaviours and cultures.

By developing a new culture, you are helping to break down barriers which disabled people face in society, and are not only doing ‘the right thing’, but can also massively help your business. A recent piece of research from Harvard Business School found that the more neurodiverse a working group are, the higher the rate of productivity. Recognising the value in difference, is to fully realise your businesses potential.

Being Disability Confident helps businesses:

            • draw from the widest possible pool of talent

            • secure and retain high quality staff who are skilled, loyal and hard working

            • save time and money on the costs of recruitment and training by reducing staff turnover

            • keep valuable skills and experience

            •  reduce the levels and costs of sickness absences

            •  improve employee morale and commitment by demonstrating that they value individuals and treat all employees fairly

How we can help you

We are proud of our Disability Leader status and immensely proud of the work we do in the community to break down barriers to inclusion. We are committed to helping other employers do the same whilst also understanding that there are some concerns and worries as an employer and it can be difficult to know where to start. Completely free of charge, we will attend your workplace and provide an initial consultation to assess your current level of Disability Confidence. We will then provide you with a recommended action list for you/your organisation to carry out, providing you with any further support or guidance you may need in order to do that.

Once the action list has been completed, we will then support you with your formal application to be A Disability Confident Employer. You will then receive certificate in recognition of your achievement as a Disability Confident Committed employer as well as a Disability Confident Committed badge that you can use in your own business stationery, social media and communications for 3 years.

To arrange your initial consultation, or just to discuss this further, please email: Nicola@DivineDays.co.uk

Is your website legally compliant?

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a list of criteria your website or mobile application need to meet in order to be legally compliant. Many organisations are not aware of these requirements and in effect, their website is not only not accessible to up to 14.1 million people in the UK, but it is also not legally compliant and therefore could be liable to legal action.

In 2018 the UK passed legislation which stated that all Public Sector websites and mobile applications needed to be made accessible. There were several deadlines, and these aligned to the existing European Standards.

The deadlines are:

    • 23 September 2019 for websites which are created after 23 September 2018
    • 23 September 2020 for websites which are created before 23 September 2018
    • 23 June 2021 for mobile applications
 
The criteria make up 3 levels. A, AA and AAA. The levels build on one another, so to be AA compliant you need to meet all of the A and AA criteria. For A and AA there are around 50 criteria in total.

In order for your website or application to be legally compliant, it needs to meet the level of AA. This is outlined in the accessibility regulations.

You can find a list of all the A and AA criteria you need to meet in the W3C WCAG 2.1 QuickRef guide.

We appreciate that this can be overwhelming for any organisation who does not have inhouse web specialists. Additionally, an independent web specialist can charge up to £1,300 per day to take on a piece of website compliancy work. We are delighted and proud to have the inhouse knowledge and experience to be able to support businesses through this process at a fraction of the cost.

Don’t panic! We can help you.

For just £229 + VAT, we will:

Take your website through the digital assessment process.
Report on its level of compliance and risk.
Make the adjustments in order to make it legally compliant or provide you with a detailed report for your inhouse team to action.
If your website is built in word press, we will also provide an accessibility menu as part of that process, to ensure you that you are going over and above in providing a welcoming and inclusive digital ‘shop window’. 
We will then provide your website with an Accessibility Statement, which will ensure and evidence that it has met with its legal requirements.
To book this service or to discuss further, please contact: Nicola@DivineDays.co.uk