Blind Institute of Technology: Increasing employment, opportunity for all people with disabilities
By: Katy Brennan
Over the past several years, conversation surrounding disability and employment has increased in corporate settings. From Accenture’s disability employment report, detailing the benefits of hiring employees with disabilities, to Microsoft’s autism hiring program, companies have become increasingly interested in adopting inclusion measures in the workplace. For Mike Hess, the Founder and Executive Director of the Blind Institute of Technology (BIT), these ideas are not new or emerging, they are the basis of a lengthy career spent advocating for true inclusion of professionals with disabilities.
Born Blind, diversity has always been a cornerstone of Hess’ life. Where others may see his blindness as a weakness, he believes that if anything, his disability has been an asset to his career.
Hess started as a programmer in the 1990s, working at the peak of the first “tech bubble”. While he earned his way in the technology industry, he found expectations surrounding his blindness often did not meet his reality. Where many equated his blindness to an obstacle to overcome, Hess views his blindness as an asset that has made him a better programmer and self-described nerd.
Even so, he often found himself being tokenized in the workplace. Over time, he noted a disconnect between companies’ disability inclusion statement and the actual accessibility of the workplace. In order to tackle this issue, he founded the Blind Institute of Technology and began to educate companies on the value of hiring disabled professionals.
When analyzing the real problem Hess saw in the technology sector, it became abundantly clear to him that generally, companies lacked critical information on disability employment. Many businesses are simply unaware of the benefits disabled professionals bring to their workforce, including increased productivity and decreased employee turnover in general. Furthermore, even if a company was aware of these benefits, they often lacked the knowledge of how to recruit, hire, and retain disabled employees. Hess aims to fill that knowledge gap.
The Blind Institute of Technology targets, in particular, the internal accessibility and inclusive practices of a corporation. Hess works to educate companies on how their internal infrastructure, culture, and job application process could all be more accessible since these are common barriers to disabled applicants.
While he has been doing this work for seven years now, Hess spent ten to eleven years internally debating whether to address this issue. He found himself constantly asking himself why he was always the token blind guy, and finally said enough in February 2013.
Since then, in addition to educating and equipping companies with the tools to increase disability employment, Hess has focused on workforce development, providing Salesforce Administration training to professionals with disabilities. Most recently, Salesforce’s Office of Accessibility partnered with the Blind Institute of Technology in order to support BIT’s Salesforce Administration Certification Prep Course. BIT hopes to use this partnership to expand Salesforce training and overall employment opportunities for professionals with disabilities who participate in their program.
At the end of the day, Hess’ goal through Blind Institute of Technology is to increase employment for disabled professionals. Whether that means equipping prospective disabled employees with relevant, marketable skills, or re-framing corporate infrastructures to be accessible, BIT aims to increase disability employment and decrease tokenization one employee at a time.
To learn more about Blind Institute of Technology, you can visit their website at [https://blindinstituteoftechnology.org].