Founder and CEO, Albert J. Rizzi, announced today that My Blind Spot (MBS) is launching a podcast called AccessAbility Works.

The podcast will center around digital equity and authentic inclusion of Ability alongside Race, Gender, Orientation and Religion in both our social and corporate cultures. The podcast will focus on how important accessible, usable, and functional digital offerings, websites, mobile apps, and work environments are for people who just happen to have a disability. AccessAbility Works will discuss the legal implications behind digital equity and true inclusion and why it makes good business sense to tap into the disability market as a consumer group as well as potential candidates for employment.

Through interviews with thought leaders and other experts in the business, government, and the non-profit world, Rizzi and his co-host Jonathan Hermus will explain the issues surrounding accessibility in the workplace and make the case for highlighting how digital equity and authentic inclusion is a win/win both socially and corporately.

“True digital inclusion only serves to remove those virtual barriers that bar tens of millions of people from accessing and using all aspects of the digital world we now live in,” Rizzi says. “Many organizations are simply unaware that their digital assets and web-based offerings exclude people with disabilities, violating federal regulations. Fortunately, with a little foresight and planning, this challenge can be easily fixed. Given the statistics, it makes sense to do that sooner rather than later.”

The global community of people with disabilities is a population that is greater than that of China. Aside from the positive impact on an organization’s brand and image, addressing the digital programmatic glitches that exclude people who have a disability will open businesses to an untapped market of 1.4 billion people and their 2.3 billion friends and family with $8 trillion in discretionary spending power globally. Especially in a world of COVID-19 shutdowns, no business can afford to ignore a consumer market with that much spending power. In North America alone, the disability community has nearly $300 billion in disposable income.

Authentic inclusion means ensuring that people who have disabilities are part of the solution when it comes to solving the problem of inaccessible digital platforms and assets. “Nothing about us without us” is one way of looking at the best approaches to ensuring digital equity and authentic inclusion of Ability as a celebrated minority group all across our Nation. Hermus, who is also the Marketing and Outreach Director for My Blind Spot, says that organizations should concentrate on an individual’s innate ability instead of ‘dis’-labeling people due to socially imposed low expectations, ignorance, and fear.

“People who happen to have a disability make up some of the most loyal and effective members of any team if given a chance,” says Hermus. “Plenty of organizations have tapped into this underutilized resource but there are plenty that have not. In the podcast, we will celebrate those individuals and organizations that focus on authentic inclusion and digital equity and how they have positively impacted their bottom lines, brands., revenues, and office morale.”

The AccessAbility Works podcast can be found in all the major podcast directories including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn. The podcast webpage is at myblindspot.org/accessabilityworks.

 

My Blind Spot, Inc. (MBS) is a NYC based nonprofit dedicated to inspiring digital equity for people of all abilities in the 21st century. Advocating for authentic inclusion, MBS provides a range of holistic services that ensure digital offerings, websites, mobile applications, and work environments are accessible and usable to people of all abilities. MBS works with governmental agencies, corporations, and community-based organizations across all industries to champion the authentic inclusion of Ability alongside Gender, Race, Orientation, and Religion. This is achieved by relying on the MBS AccessAbility team, a contingent of internationally certified subject matter experts, many of whom happen to have a disability themselves. To learn more about MBS, visit www.myblindspot.org.

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