Years ago, I got a job out of the blue – an employee at a nonprofit had to be dismissed quickly and a replacement was needed immediately. There was no time for a usual recruitment process that included interviewing of several people – someone said I would be a good candidate and could start immediately, I got a call asking if I was interested, I got interviewed, I got the job and I began working – all within the span of maybe a week.
Months later, I found out that the Executive Director had not been happy at first when I was hired because she didn’t like how I dressed and, therefore, thought I wasn’t good at my job – which involved IT, and not any in-person interaction with the public or the high-profile Silicon Valley partners she collaborated with regularly. The office was very corporate: men in suits, women in business dress. I, on the other hand, was Silicon Valley casual long before it was the norm: I was neat, clean and quite presentable, but in comfortable clothes (I was very fond of flowy dresses and skirts in those days) and comfy shoes (never sandals, but also, never heels). She also didn’t like my hair: it’s clean, but it’s kind of all over the place a lot of time – unless I wear a head covering or cake it in product, that’s just how it is. However, she was very pleased with me once she saw my work and heard from my colleagues about my job performance. She ended up being a very enthusiastic professional reference for me for many years. But she said at one point to a colleague later, “I need to work on my assumptions about people based on how they dress.”
After hearing about that comment and spending a few days of feeling like I didn’t look very nice (I got over it), I ended up really appreciating that remark, because it meant I was being judged by the content of my work and my character, that she was learning that people who weren’t completely corporate could be more than competent and that she was willing to change her mind, something I always admire in people. But I’ve taken her comment to heart in my own interviews of candidates, not just with employees, but with volunteers as well. And not just about how people dress.
I know a lot of people who talk about the importance of “trusting your gut” when screening volunteers. But what if your gut is prejudiced? Let’s face it: we ALL have unconscious biases, at the very least, and if we aren’t constantly looking for those, and looking for ways to eliminate the possibility of them creeping into our decision-making, we’re going to miss out on some great volunteering candidates.
Unconscious bias can show up when we see and judge someone’s weight, or a certain brand of clothing they are wearing, or a hairstyle or hair color they are sporting. Or perhaps we’re judging them negatively because of hair loss. Or because of wrinkles on their face. Or perceived age. Or physical features. Or a regional accent.
It’s important to always be thinking about why you are saying no to a candidate for employment or volunteering, and having reasons that you feel confident in writing down on an evaluation sheet – and, potentially, having such read aloud in a civil suit.
Remember that just because someone doesn’t look like you or doesn’t look like someone you would socialize with, it shouldn’t exclude them from being a volunteer.
And on a side note: your program can certainly let applicants know, in your role description, that you have a dress code. But remember that there needs to be a rational basis for each dress code requirement, it must be applied in a consistent fashion, it should not obviously discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion and ethnicity and it should not overburden a particular group. For instance, requiring clean hands, faces and hair, and prohibiting shirts or pants with any words or graphics, prohibiting clothing that exposes legs above the knee or even the ankle, prohibiting torn clothes, prohibiting sandals, etc., can all be justified regarding safety and maintaining a neutral, positive image and culture in the workplace. Requiring people’s hair to be off the shoulders or even covered altogether for safety reasons can be appropriate, but having one rule for men and another for women can get you into legal trouble. And note the many reasons that the US Army had to change its hair policies for women.
If your reaction to all this is “I have no unconscious biases regarding people,” I would like to remind you that denial is not just a river in Egypt.
Today is Martin Luther Kind, Jr. Day in the USA – an excellent day to own up to the reality that we all have unconscious biases that we should all work on, as well as that there are profound social inequities in the world that are long overdue to be addressed.
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
A web site for any company based in the USA that is inaccessible to visitors with visual, auditory, or other disabilities may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), according to a recent federal appeals court decision in Robles v. Domino’s Pizza. This decision includes nonprofits’ websites, according to “Ninth Circuit Ruling Bolsters ADA Website Accessibility Suits: Risks for Nonprofits,” by DC-based law firm Venable.
But just as important as the legal aspects, a web site that is not designed to be accessible for people with disabilities – people who use verbal screen readers, people who use screen magnifiers, people with mobility issues that use assistive tech and cannot use a mouse, etc. – locks out potential customers, clients, employees, volunteers, donors, and other supporters. People with disabilities in the USA comprise more than 19 percent of the people living in the country, an even larger percentage than Hispanics and Latinos, who are the largest ethnic, racial or cultural minority group in the USA, making up 15 percent of the population. Law or no law, can any nonprofit really afford to leave out so many, many people?
71% of people with disabilities leave a website immediately if it is not accessible, according to 2017 research conducted by the governance committee of Section508.gov in the USA, as quoted on this 3playmedia website.
The population that needs accessible web sites includes people who don’t identify as people with disabilities. People who wear glasses, for instance. I wear reading glasses and have started using the accessibility feature on my laptop and phone that automatically makes text large – but it doesn’t work with a web site that isn’t designed to be responsive to such settings.
You don’t have to be a professional web designer or developer to produce a basic, content-rich web site. You don’t have to be a professional web designer to produce a web site that’s easy to navigate. You don’t have to know most web design and development terms to produce a web site, like HTML, CSS, Java, ARIA, and on and on.
And that’s been wonderful for many nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other mission-based organizations, as well as small, independent artists like musicians, dancers, singers, poets, sculptors, theater troops, photographers and on and on, as most can never afford to pay a professional web designer or developer.
But you do have to involve a professional web designer or developer if you want a web site to have certain advanced features. And you do have to involve a professional web designer or developer if you want your web site to be fully accessible for all users and all devices (mobile phones, tablets, the voice reader in your car, etc.).
That means, for the vast majority of nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other mission-based organizations, as well as for the vast majority of artists, they cannot have fully accessible web sites for all users, because they will never be able to afford to pay a professional web designer or developer.
That means many people with disabilities who want to donate to, volunteer to, or just learn about a small vast majority of nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other mission-based organizations, can’t do any of these things via these programs’ inaccessible web sites. That means many people with disabilities that want to buy a ticket to an upcoming event, to find out where to purchase a CD or poster or book or whatever, to attend a conference about a cause they care about, can’t do any of those things.
A study from 2019 by the nonprofit RespectAbility found that most foundations and nonprofits aren’t doing enough – if anything – to enable people with disabilities to have the access and accommodations they need to fully participate in the work these organizations are doing – not as program participants, as volunteers, even as donors. The study included a review of nonprofits’ websites and online videos. “Philanthropy-serving organizations don’t know what they don’t know and often haven’t even thought about including people with disabilities,” said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, president of RespectAbility. “Even among well-meaning groups who are engaged in a lot on racial and gender equity overall, disability is missing.”
What do we do about nonprofits not being able to afford fully accessible web sites? Anything?
The only program I know of that tries to address nonprofits that want accessible web sites, that tries to help small nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other mission-based organizations to have an accessible web site, as well as artists – just three to 25 organizations at a time – is the Accessibility Internet Rally, a virtual volunteering and web design/development training event by the nonprofit Knowbility. Otherwise… there’s nothing that I know of that is working to educate nonprofits, charities and other small mission-based organizations about digital accessibility – nor educating corporate donors and foundations about why they should fund such.
Are associations of nonprofit organizations going to explore how to address the inaccessibility of web sites for theater companies, dance troops, homeless shelters, nonprofits helping kids explore science, etc.? Are associations of museums, animal shelters, rural arts organizations, and other specific kinds of nonprofits going to at least discuss this?
Are companies that provide ready-to-use, customizable website templates and drag-and-drop web development platforms/web hosts like WordPress, Weebly, Wix, Square Space, Webflow and Jimdo going to address this, other than having a page on their sites that talk a bit about alt-text? (February 4 update: here is an excellent review of some of these sites regarding whether they are capable of creating accessible websites – spoiler alert: they aren’t).
Are companies and foundations that give money to nonprofits going to quit refusing to fund overhead – and, in fact, give special, additional gifts so that nonprofits can hire professional web site designers and developers to build accessible web sites?
Should associations like the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP), G3ict and/or the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) try to address this – or at least discuss it?
Or do we keep telling people with disabilities that want to donate, volunteer and otherwise support or be involved with nonprofits and artists, “Tough luck, they can’t afford to be accessible to you”?
I have no answers to these questions… if you have ideas or comments, I’d love to hear them. I have asked this question on Quora and my own Facebook page and ended up mostly with recommendations for techniques about how to make a website more accessible, rather than answers to how we elevate this as a priority at mission-based organizations.
In the meantime, if you need to make the business case to your board of directors for fundraising so that you can afford to pay a web site designer with accessibility training to build and maintain your site, here are some resources that can help:
And if you want to encourage your web manager, whoever that person is, part-time, full-time, volunteer, whatever: the government of the State of Illinois provides Implementation Guidelines for Web-Based Information and Applications (formerly Illinois Web Accessibility Standards) and, as a non-web site designer, I find it easier to understand than most other guidelines out there. These guidelines are good to ask your web site designer and manager – no matter that person’s web design skill level, to follow. These guidelines from the state of Illinois also provide links to resources from other organizations:
Knowbility has done a few webinars with TechSoup about accessibility for nonprofit organization’s websites and they are available free online on TechSoup. The most recent was this webinar with Knowbility Executive Director and myself in August 2017. This is a good video for anyone who manages your organization’s website, particularly the non-webmaster webmaster – the person who doesn’t have much training in web design but does have the responsibility to update the site.
It might be out of your nonprofit’s price range, but Knowbility also offers several online courses and onsite (Austin, Texas) training events that can raise the skill levels of your web site master regarding accessibility – they are worth looking into if you are looking for training for the person who manages your web site.
January 28, 2020 update: I encourage EVERY company, not just businesses but also nonprofits and NGOs, no matter your business or mission, to take the 2020 State of Digital Accessibility Survey from IAAP, G3ict and Level Access. For nonprofits and NGOs – choose “foundations & charities” as your org type. If you don’t have an accessibility program, don’t have an inclusion strategy, you should still take this survey – because we need to show that such strategies are NOT widespread (and that they should be!).
January 30, 2020 update: There are various web hosts that have ready-to-use templates that say things like “If your website is hosted with us or you are looking to switch to our nonprofit content management system (CMS), we can add an accessibility widget to make your website more accessible. Our widget will allow visitors to easily adjust settings on your website to meet their unique needs.” Among web accessibility experts, add-on accessibility toolbars are referred to as “toolbar overlays.” I asked a website accessibility expert about this and this was his response: “accessibility overlays are a scam and a lie and do not fix the actual problems” and then he linked to this article from Karl Groves and this website, overlaysdontwork.com. I also found this blog that begins: “Thinking about using one of those plugins or widgets that puts an accessibility toolbar on your website? This article will make you think again… What’s ironic is many of the toolbar companies tout the ‘We won’t touch your website code’ line as a selling point when, in fact, this is what buyers should want and expect.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
