Making Recruiting Sites Accessible for All

Society for Human Resource Managers
5/26/2010
By Rebecca R. Hastings, SPHR

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is sending employers an important message: “Talent has no boundaries; workforce diversity includes workers with disabilities.” As employers begin to hire once again, therefore, they had better make sure that applicants with disabilities can find and compete for jobs just like everyone else.
DOL’s message is actually the 2010 theme for October's National Disability Employment Awareness Month, an annual opportunity to remind employers that there’s a large pool of talent waiting to contribute. According to April 2010 figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than a quarter of the potential labor force of Americans with disabilities are employed (22 percent), compared with more than two-thirds of the labor force without disabilities (70 percent).
In order to tap into this population, however, employers need to make sure that their entire recruitment process is accessible. That can be tricky, because an estimated 15 to 20 percent of the U.S. population has a disability that might affect their ability to use technology, according to LaMondré Pough, vice president of sales for TecAccess, a technology company in Rockville, Va.

Full Report: http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/Diversity/Articles/Pages/RecruitingSitesAccessible.aspx