Faculty need to teach about accessibility, so their students consider inclusive design in their future work, according to Kate Sonka, executive director, Teach Access.
She says there is a difference between teaching accessibly and teaching accessibility. Teaching accessibly includes, for example, making the syllabus accessible to students – while teaching accessibility means ensuring students understand the need for accessibility in the work they create.
The nonprofit supports faculty by providing curriculum on accessibility in numerous ways – online, virtual, synchronous, asynchronous, hybrid. Sonka says that, in the organization’s work, they see students get excited about being able to have positive impact as their awareness raised.
Sonka joined WorkingNation’s editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim for WorkingNation Overheard at CES 2024 in Las Vegas to discuss how the technology of universal design needs to be mindful of accessibility.
After attending CES multiple years, she says, “I feel like with each year, not only do I see a lot more products that are specifically assistive technology, but I feel like there’s just a general air of greater awareness around it.”
Sonka says, “One of the things as we’re thinking about universal design or inclusive design is really paying attention to who’s in the room or at the table and who isn’t. We find that it’s not that people are purposely trying to create inaccessible products. It’s just there’s not an awareness around it because maybe they don’t know that they have someone on their team who has a disability.
“What ends up happening then, of course, is we create the products based on the people around us as we’re thinking through that or who’s involved in the design process. And so that would be one thing that I’d really encourage people to consider is how are you inviting the disability community in to be with you every step.”
Learn more about Teach Access.
Learn more about CES 2024.
Funding for WorkingNation Overheard at CES 2024 was provided, in part, by Walmart.
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Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.
Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.
Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.
Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.
Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.
Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.
