Workplace Systems and Partnerships
Hub 1 is focused on workplace systems and partnerships. The Hub 1 team gives attention to organizational culture and climate, and innovative workplace partnerships that can be leveraged to increase the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the workplace. One of its initial projects is developing best practice guidance for accessibility planning and reporting. This is a requirement under the Accessible Canada Act, and something that all organizations should be doing to strategically address accessibility barriers that pose persistent problems for workers and clients. This is part of a continual improvement process through which organizations can improve their disability confidence and reach their inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility goals.
Employment Support Systems
Hub 2 is focused on developing guidance for job coaching and wrap-around supports to address the unique challenges faced by persons with disabilities who are particularly marginalized in the labour market. It is accomplishing this focus through two key streams of inquiry:
- Identifying and evaluating approaches to employment support services that support employers as they hire and retain people with disabilities who experience significant workplace stigma.
- Exploring intersecting issues of disability, gender and race in the context of employment support services.
Transitions to Work and Career Development
Persons living with disabilities encounter barriers as they transition into the world of work and advance within their careers. The work of Hub 3 is focused on understanding and supporting these critical work transitions, particularly on ensuring that persons with disabilities can obtain high quality work and achieve success across their careers. Research activities in Hub 3 identify best practices and generate innovative strategies that can be used by workplace stakeholders to foster inclusion of persons with disabilities in their recruitment, onboarding and career advancement activities.
Inclusive Environmental Design
Businesses have come to recognize the benefits of a diverse workforce. However, accessibility is often not integrated within the Inclusion, Diversity and Equity context, and is too often overlooked. The work of Hub 4 aims to understand how best to implement inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) in workplaces from inclusive and universal design perspectives. To achieve that goal, the Hub 4 team is working to assess IDEA activities across Fortune 100 companies through a website scan, validation survey, and focused interviews. Using a co-design process, the team is developing guidance on inclusive workplace practices and systems.
Disruptive Technologies and the Future of Work
The work of Hub 5 is focused on identifying and understanding bias against disability within artificial intelligence (AI) hiring tools. AI hiring tools are biased against diversification, which risks also filtering out applicants with disabilities. Hub 5 is raising awareness that certification of the absence of bias with AI hiring tools is not currently feasible. The Hub 5 team is creating resources and tools to illustrate the impact of AI hiring tools on persons with disabilities. The team is also developing guidance that details an approach and criteria for how an effective disability bias audit of an AI algorithm could be carried out.