RAW FILE

DISABILITY:IN
FEBRUARY 27, 2025

INCLUSION WORKS SEMI-ANNUAL VIRTUAL MEETING
SESSION 7
BEYOND THE WORKPLACE: 
EXTENDING DISABILITY INCLUSION TO PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
2:15 PM ET

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(Recording in progress)

>> DIANA DOMENECH: Hello, everyone. Welcome to session 7, Beyond the Workplace: Extending Disability Inclusion to Products and Services. I am your Moderator today, Diana Domenech, Corporate Disability Inclusion, Disability:IN. I use she/her pronouns, and I am a brown‑skinned woman with brown hair, and sporting a pair of glasses today.
We are super thrilled that you are here to join us. We have on this team an esteemed group of panelists who are going to be sharing about their companies and their experiences in this space. So, you are really in for such a great time today.
Let's start off by going over some Housekeeping items.
If you need any session help, everybody is ‑‑ their mics are muted for the duration of this session. You can use the Q&A feature to communicate with any of us here at Disability:IN, or the presenters, so, any questions that you have, any comments, please use the Q&A, not the Chat functionality.
And you may need to reboot your computer or try logging out and back in to resolve any technical issues that you are having.
We are super thrilled to have our partners providing CART Services, as well as ASL Interpretation, so, please turn on the CART if you would like to use it.
For any questions that you have, please use the Q&A feature. There will be a live Q&A Session facilitated by my colleague, Lorne, in the last 15 minutes of the session. We will try to answer as many questions as possible.
This session is being recorded, and there will be an email sent with access to viewing instructions after the end of the conference, in case you want the review this again, or if you want to view it with another colleague.
So, with that, why don't we get started. I would love for our panelists to come on board so you can get to meet who we have joining us today.
Why don't we start with Vanessa?
>> VANESSA ABRAHAMS-JOHN: Thank you, Diana. It is a pleasure to be here with you. My name is Vanessa Abrahams‑John, and my pronouns are she and her. I am an African‑American female with a Caribbean background. You may hear a slight tilt in my accent. I am from the beautiful island of Jamaica. And I am currently leading Adidas, the best sports and apparel company in the world and I also lead the DEI Team with my corporate team based in Germany.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: Great, Vanessa. We are so happy to have you here with us today. Francesca?
>> FRANCESCA HARVEY: Hello. Nice to see you all. Thank you for having me. I am Francesca Harvey, Apparel Designer, Adidas. I have ginger hair, wearing a black top and Gold jewelry, from the UK currently living in Germany. I am excited to be here because I am a designer of specific clothing of Adidas' for people specific to use in wheelchairs. So, I am happy to be here.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: Thank you, Francesca. We are so happy to have you here. Chris?
>> CHRISTOPHER COWGER: Good afternoon. Thank you, Diana. I am Christopher Cowger, SVP and GM, Global Consumer, eCommerce and Online Experience, Dell Technologies. I have the honor of running both our Global Consumer Business, which includes all of our online and retail sales, as well as design, development and delivery of all of our Online Experiences and capabilities on Dell.com.
My pronouns are he/him/his. I am a white, Caucasian male. I think my hair is brown, where I still have it, and I live in the sunny State of Texas.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: Great. Thank you, Chris. We are excited to have you here!
And Ina?
>> INA CHARLES: All right. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everyone joining. Thank you, Diana, for having me on this panel. I am Ina Charles, Inclusion and Diversity, PM Lyft. Today I am wearing a light pink turtleneck sweater with gold hoop earrings. Some of my hair is brown and some of my hair is blond in a short, low cut. I am the Accessibility and fairness lead at Lyft on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and belonging team. I am based in Miami but today I am calling from the Lyft Seattle office.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: Hence the turtleneck. (Chuckles) Thank you, Ina. We are so excited to have you here, as well.
You can see, folks, we have amazing companies represented. We are super excited to start off with a little about what your company is doing today in terms of Disability Inclusion in your products and your services? Why don't we start off by doing a little round‑robin. You can share some of what people may already know, and maybe what they don't yet know. Vanessa, do you want to kick us off?
>> VANESSA ABRAHAMS-JOHN: Absolutely. So, I joined Adidas in 2022. While DEI was always a core part of our culture, a core part of our business imperative, we support athletes, we innovate product, we are a little sport and a little fashion and we do performance good, we have always had DEI as part of our core understanding of how we attract talent, best talent from around the world, how we partner with athletes, how we, you know, partner with designers and innovate others, but we didn't really have, sort of a concrete strategy until 2022.
That is when we sort of broadened our scope of what it means to be an exclusive culture. It is not just about race and gender, but creating this culture of belonging. Also in our Workplaces and teams for people who may have different abilities. People who may see the world differently, and people who have different sexual orientations and different needs.
As we evolved that, we said we are going to participate in the 2024 Paralympics. You may recall Paralympics 4 years ago was in the middle of COVID so we could not really participate. We attended and were inspired. We always have a Global Week of Inclusion in October of each year. So we agreed then we would put the concrete stake in the ground and have a place in the inclusion.
So, while we agreed on the concrete steps, the breaking down of the inclusion didn't happen until the Paralympics of that's year. We were inspired by the athletes and said we have to do something. It is not just about Disability Inclusion. We partnered with you, Diana, at Disability:IN.
We also really educated the Workforce. We started partnering with our ‑‑ we have a team called Workplaces. It is a team that builds Workplaces and the fields that our athletes train on. It is literally our Workplace, so, we started to partner with our Workplaces team to really talk about Accessibility, creating quiet spaces for people that may be Neurodivergent and need a quiet space to work.
Really looking at the width of our doorways, simple things like that, the colors we use on the wall.
So, really getting that education around how do we create an inclusive work space for people who fall under that spectrum of disability. Right? That includes our University colleagues, as well.
And then it really now extends to, as we start gearing up for LA 2028 Paralympics, making sure it touches everything. So, Francesca will share a little about what is happening on the design side, making sure we have adaptive clothing, making sure even the mannequins we have in our retail and all over our campuses reflect the broad range of diversity, including People with Disabilities.
Even the skin tone of the mannequins we talk about. We are not trying to white‑wash any of those mannequins, but we are also not trying to say that every athlete ‑‑ you know, one of the first athletes I met when I started working here was in a wheelchair. She won Gold in Paris this year. We still keep in touch. I don't want to call her out by name, but she inspired me so much.
She is a gay, disabled athlete, who is an Olympian, right? So, talk about the intersectionality of all the diversity, so it is really inspiring to our team to really understand how we create space, we create safety and Accessibility, we create clothing, and we provide that support for our athletes.
Then something simple like equity. That is something we always focused on, equity when it comes to gender, but we never really talked about pay equity when it comes to People with Disabilities. So, that is some of the work we are doing behind the scenes. Just a snapshot if I were to summarize educating the Workforce and inclusion that include as lot of Webinars and participation.
You participated with us, Diana, making sure our athletes get the same level of support, because that was a conversation we had to have last year. What do we do at the Olympic we should be doing at the Paralympics, right? We are getting ready for LA, we learned a lot of lessons in Paris, and we will be part of the team that prepares for the athletes and community in the next three years.
I could go on, but I know you have others who want to share. Thank you for the opportunity.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: Thank you for that, Vanessa. I think it is the perfect segue. Francesca, as an apparel designer, I would love to hear more about how Adidas is incorporating Disability Inclusion into the product design. I mean, it sounds like it is right into the apparel and you get to do this as you your job!
>> FRANCESCA HARVEY: Absolutely. It is a great job. Designing these clothes has been an amazing experience, and very necessary for the company, as well, and for our athletes and our consumers.
I am very fortunate to have been able to be a start of this process. This is project that started maybe three years ago for us designers. Across Adidas there are a lot of different business units. There was a group of designers from each different business unit that got together. We have frequent calls, learning with each other, sharing with each other, teaching each other, and figuring out actionable steps on how to push the importance of inclusive products within Adidas.
So, from this, my business unit of performance training apparel, we were given the opportunity to design multiple items of clothing made specifically for people that use wheelchairs, and this would later be offered to the athletes at Paralympics Paris 2024, and then we have also introduced it commercially to our consumers online.
So, this has been, yes, a very, very important process, and just the start. There is so much more to go.
But yeah, I think the most important part of this continued project for the team was and continues to be involving and designing with authenticity, care and collaboration. So, involving people with lived experiences throughout the whole process, from start, duration ‑‑ there is no finish to this. It will continue!
>> DIANA DOMENECH: Thank you, Francesca. That is excellent. Chris, can you share a little about what you are doing over at Dell?
>> CHRISTOPHER COWGER: Yeah. I am happy to. I have had the pleasure of sponsoring the Accessibility and Inclusion Group at Dell for a couple years now. The group was instilled I want to say four to five years before it with us moved over to my organization.
But I think that is timing of all of it was very good in that we have always had a tremendous focus around Accessibility and Usability of the products that we sell that folks are familiar with:  Desktops, monitors, keyboards, mice, et cetera, and making sure the usability of all our products is there for people of all levels of ability.
As we started on a path to modernize our company overall, how we do business internally, how we do business with our customers, we have been on a, I would say at this point now, about a 5 to 6‑year modernization journey to be more and more digital, more own more online. As the rest of the world, including all of our customers and partners goes more to that space, we want to good there and lead with them.
And one of the challenges, then, that that posed was the magnitude and scope of our online and digital businesses, and what it takes to make sure that those Online Experiences, and those Digital Capabilities are usable for everyone, and accessible to everyone.
The first part of the journey, obviously, is understanding the requirements, right? Where are there challenges for people of differing abilities, and then what are the right mechanisms and technologies for how you address those in a Digital space?
So, it is really kind of learning what we needed to do to not just be compliant, but do the right thing for our customers and our partners, was a big part of the journey.
But then what became really exciting and challenging for us is, how do we then do that at‑scale. So, if you think of Dell.com, kind of our digital public face to the world, Dell.com exists in 205 different locations worldwide. Several dozen of those are actual full end‑to‑end commerce, service, support, customer care sites. 
And in those locations it is more what I would call the full‑functioning site, commerce, care, service, support, et cetera, those sites have hundreds of thousands of pages.
If you go across all the different types of experiences. And all of those experiences and all of those pages need to be accessible. So if you do the math, the 205 times hundreds of thousands needs to be a very, very large number.
So, it is not something at a per person level really scales. You can't hire enough people to comb over enough pages to assess, hey, where do we have Accessibility challenges? How do we fix them, et cetera? So, as a technology company, we say, great, how do we apply technology to help us in this journey?
So, a lot of our development ‑‑ the one part of my role, again, the design, development and delivery of new Digital Experiences and capabilities online is, spending a huge amount of time to actually develop our own tools to be able to assess Accessibility Requirements, and ensure Compliance of our own pages, and our own online capabilities against those at‑scale.
So, we have an internal tool we call ACDC. Not the band. It is another acronym that happens to be ACDC, which makes it very catchy and so people can remember it.
But it is our automated tool, by which we can crawl all of our features on all the pages of all of our Global sites to determine our Accessibility score with an automatic detailing of what are the challenges?
So, where we are failing, or where we are not performing to a standard, whether that is our own high standard, or, you know, actually like a WCAG applicable standard, it gives the developers guidance on exactly what they need to do to fix the issue.
So, several of these tools we patented and use it for ourselves. It has been an interesting, exciting journey for us, in that we wanted to, across a vast array of Digital Experiences, to ensure our Accessibility for customers and partners.
But in doing so, leveraged and invented our own technology to do that at the massive scale that we needed to do it at. The teams count be any more proud of the accomplishments that we have had thus far.
We are not perfect. I am sure anyone could crawl any portion of our site any one day and find something that could be better, but if you look at the progress we have made, and the passion and the energy of our development teams, and ensuring that our sites are always better every single day, it has been a really great journey for us.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: Thanks, Chris. Wow, you put those numbers out there, it really quantifies and gives an idea of the scale that you are operating at. It is exciting to hear about your ACDC tool, and how it is working for you! Ina, would you share for us what you are doing at Lyft?
>> INA CHARLES: Yes, absolutely. I think where Lyft benefits is that we are a fairly young company. 10 to 12 years in the market. So, in starting, Lyft really incorporated Accessibility into our product design. We really ‑‑ our Co‑Founder's mission was to improve people's lives with the world's best transportation, but that also includes, how do we capture people who are not, like in urban city where is transportation is easy.
How to we capture those people who are marginalized, and outside of major cities, or people who don't necessarily have great access to public transportation?
So, the idea is, how can Lyft be accessible to all? So, especially within when we think of People with Disabilities, we have to make sure that our app is also compatible with a lot of different plug‑ins, and, you know Website Accessibility guides and not only to be compliant, but also, like, as a forward thinker in how to be accessible.
So, for us, for Lyft, I should say we have the rider and driver Accessibility functionality within the app, so anyone can turn that on.
In addition to the nine cities where we have our wheelchair‑accessible vehicle programs, and we also have Toronto, I should say, we do have a few different other features within the app. One is our Lyft‑assisted rides, which is available in some markets that come through our healthcare opportunities, or our healthcare partnerships.
Riders and drivers can utilize service animals and service animals ride in the vehicle free of charge. They are always welcome. That is one.
We have an option, or plug‑ins that riders and drivers with Low Vision can use, so that can be voiceovers for iOS and Google Talkback. For drivers who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing, their screen will flash and let them know that they have a new ride added to their queue.
For a passenger or a rider who has a driver that may be Deaf and Hard of Hearing, we are all notified, your driver may be Deaf and Hard of Hearing, please use messaging within the app.
And lastly, for foldable wheelchairs or any non‑foldable wheelchairs, there are ways we train our drivers to safely and carefully put multiple wheelchairs into the vehicle, and safely and carefully load our riders who do have non‑foldable wheelchairs.
So, there are a plethora of ways we are thinking of Accessibility, but it has always been baked into the company and the product.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: Thank you for that. I actually took a Lyft not too long ago and my driver was Hard of Hearing and the app notified me, which I thought was pretty neat. I thought, oh, my gosh, this is pretty fantastic.
>> INA CHARLES: And you even know basic Sign Language, it is a great way to say hello, or thanks for the ride. It is a great way for there also to be communication, so you are not just getting in a car and sitting in silence, or your driver doesn't think you don't want to talk to them, so it is a really good opportunity to bridge that gap in communication.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: Yeah, yeah. Definitely!
So, you shared with us what the end‑product is, but I am sure our audience is very curious about the journey, you know, getting to the state that you are in right now.
So, could you share a little bit ‑‑ Chris, maybe you can kick us off ‑‑ with, how did you kind of start on this journey? How have you done it?
>> CHRISTOPHER COWGER: Yeah. It is a good question, and one where I say our path is kind of adapted over time. At Dell, we tend to be very, very process and automation‑oriented.
So, whenever we have a new undertaking, particularly one that we want to address at‑scale, like the scale that I mentioned earlier, we want to embed it in the process up‑front.
So, we said, hey, if we really want to ensure the best, accessible, Digital Experiences, it needs to become part of our core process of how we design, develop and deliver those.
Which, to me, was ultimately the end‑state. We tried to start at the end‑state.
I would say, kind of stumbled a little bit, initially, because we first didn't have a lot of the automation enablement toolset that I talked about previously. But it was also something that I think we went right to the end‑state without bringing the company and the culture up on the context of why is this important? And why are we doing this in the first place?
So, I don't want to say we backed off kind of the embedding it in the process, but we recognized, hey, we do need to pull up a little bit and kind of take a company‑wide focused approach ‑‑ I call it the 50,000‑foot‑level, or training, awareness and education of why this is important. And a big part of that message was, hey, this is not just important for customer, partners and team members with different levels of ability, but this actually helps all of our customers, right?
So, when we look at use of the ACDC tool, and where we have our best, most accessible experiences, those rate the highest experiences for customer satisfaction overall, of people of all abilities.
Once we did this pull‑up, we centralized, and said let's make sure everyone understands what it is we are doing, why we are doing it, for people of all abilities, and why it is good for them, and good for us as a company, and we need to stay focused on it.
We then kind of go back into the part of the process, the part of the way we do business‑type of motion.
It was much more effective then. So, I think ultimately what we are discovering in our journey of where we are now, we really kind of have to do both. That there will always be some level of centralized focus, and a centralized set of communication, longer‑term strategy, roadmap and purpose, while at the same time it has to be fundamentally baked into the way we do work.
So, the notion was the end‑state was the former, the way we do work. Just changing the way you do work without context, and a broader strategy and a broader reason for being didn't work, so we pulled up.
But then, you know, couldn't go back just to the end‑state. We said, no, it is really about both. It is a centralized area of focus.
I had the leader of our Accessibility Center of Competence, as we call it, reports directly to me on my senior staff.
Beyond it, I think being necessary to ensure we are getting the right level of strategic focus and investment going forward. I think it also sends a very clear message of, this is how high we elevate that function at this company, and the level of importance we put on it.
But also, at the same time, it is fundamentally baked into our core processes of how our teams operate every day.
So, the journey was, is it A or is it B? And kind of flip‑flopped back‑and‑forth a couple times and said, no, it is really both. It is A and B. It is an always‑on type of activity, but again, it has been a great journey and a great cultural lesson for us so far.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: Excellent. Thank you, Chris. I love that. Start with the "why," build that awareness, then get it going.
Ina, how about at Lyft?
>> INA CHARLES: I think at Lyft, in ride‑share in general, it is addressing a gap, right? It is addressing a barrier to transportation that not just People with Disabilities, but everybody may have, right?
But when we think about People with Disabilities, especially when we think about, again, being not in a public ‑‑ in a city center, it is difficult to get around with public transportation. Or sometimes even when you do have companies that offer services to get you to‑and‑from one place to another, one, we have to schedule way in advance, or they may not always be reliable, or even a trip that could take 20 minutes down the street could take possibly another hour or two because, you know, they are doing multiple dropoffs or you have to rely on other transportation services.
So, I think in 2019 Lyft really recognized the gap where we saw there is a gap in Accessibility for People with Disabilities.
So, Lyft really sought to accomplish, like, how can we bridge that gap. So, even though we may not be in all cities, there are other partnerships that we do have, and that we do offer in certain cities. They can always be found on our website.
But it is about finding ways to, again, one, provide the world's ‑‑ improve people's lives with the world's best transportation, but also to serve and connect.
How do we get our riders and our drivers from one place to the next? So, really, it began with addressing a gap that was seen and recognized, and continuing to it rate on that, and how to improve and make sure that we are addressing, you know, more cities, whether they are big or small, and knowing that we are providing a reliable transportation alternative.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: That is great.
How about, Vanessa and Francesca, from a Adidas perspective, how did you start? How have you done it?
>> VANESSA ABRAHAMS-JOHN: Well, I think I alluded to earlier, it was more of a vision than a conversation. It was taking this sort of big idea that we had to evolve our DEI work in a way that is relevant to work in sports, and to our consumers, people who buy our products, broadening that net. The people who work for us. When you work at a sports company like Adidas, the average age of an employee is relatively young, it is in the 30s. Everyone wants to play ‑‑ I am looking right now at the soccer pitch outside my office. They are playing. It is lunch time soccer. So, it tends to be a very extroverted, sporty company. From a DEI lens, you can't do a one‑size‑fits‑all from another industry into sports.
You have to work with what is relevant to you, your consumers, your stakeholders, your talent, your athletes and your partners.
So, it came down to, hey, let's go to Paralympics, see what this world is about, let's witness it firsthand, let's see what is needed, see what experience the athletes are having. Because I had gone to Olympics, I saw the difference firsthand.
So, now as we go to LA, it is, and Francesca can talk about where the adaptive clothing work started, but it wasn't just about the clothing. It is about the support, the pay, the treatment, the, you know, do we have the same fancy things that we had for the Olympics ‑‑ you know, like, are we ‑‑ is there equity from across the board.
So, I can tell you, just having ‑‑ we brought some of our Paralympians to our headquarters in Germany in October. Having leaders and the entire Workforce playing games with them, wheelchair basketball, people ‑‑ able‑bodied people sitting in the wheelchair seeing how difficulty that was, it really just allowed the respect, had determination and discipline it takes for an Paralympian to get to that level where they are traveling across the world and competing. You almost don't really think about it until you see it or witness it firsthand.
So, it really is about making it relevant to us in sports. We always say, hey, we just sell t‑shirts and sneakers, but we can do so much more. We can inspire. We can have a North Star. We can raise the bar. With we talk and normalize things that people don't really talk about. That is what we are trying to do.
So, Francesca, what is your point?
>> FRANCESCA HARVEY: Absolutely. I agree with you. And I want to add to that that we have to acknowledge everything takes time. When we are creating product from a product side, this point of view, I think we want to come at it with a very genuine point of view. We want to do everything that is medically safe. We want to interview people who do the sports, using additional, for example, wheelchairs, and just making sure it is absolutely correct.
There are a lot of people involved within the product creation side, so, I mean, this ranges from patent developers, developers, marketing counterparts, and the list goes on.
It is going through all of these stages. We are a few years ahead designing, producing and getting everything ready to go to‑sale. So, I think it is important to acknowledge that things do take time, and especially when we want it to with medically safe and appropriate for the consumer.
Yes, I think that is what I would like to add.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: I love the research you are doing, getting that firsthand experience, that really helps to develop the business case around real examples.
And the theme of partnership. You are not just going this alone. You are also finding partners to enter into this market with and do some of this research and innovation along with. That is pretty exciting.
We can continue this discussion for the rest of the afternoon. But I am going to hand it over to Lorne to help facilitate a couple of questions. So, for all our participants, if you have some questions, you can use the Q&A, but let me pause. Lorne, I will hand it over to you.
>> LORNE NEEDLE: Thank you very much, Diana. I am Lorne Needle, Corporate Disability Inclusion, Disability:IN. What a fantastic panel. What fascinating and interesting information.
We actually are open for additional questions from participants, if people have something related to the topic that you would like to pose to our panelists.
In the meantime, a couple of questions to start us off. One is around executive leadership. We have several executive leaders on this call and other people fulfilling really important leadership roles.
But in the minds of our panelists, I would love to hear, what is the role an executive leader can play and needs to play in helping a company move toward meaningful progress on accessible products?
I will ask to start with Vanessa.
>> VANESSA ABRAHAMS-JOHN: Hi. I was going to jump on. Just because I have been doing DEI work for so long, there is a role that executive leaders play in changing culture. There has to be ‑‑ we could have the best products, the best standard, the best PowerPoint decks, but the leaders, if they aren't showing up and delivering that tone from the top in terms of inspiring and aspiring and educating the Workforce that this is tied to you are business strategy, our business case, it will not change. The culture will not change, it will not be normalized, and even though I am a leader, I am HR, right? I am not in a P&L role, I am not a Board Member, so I do really try for everything that we do, that we get the Board involved, we have our Board Members come out.
They were playing wheelchair basketball, partnering with the teams and with our athletes with disabilities. Last year when we had our Week of Inclusion, and that spoke volumes, because leaders set the tone.
What they say, where they spend their time, where they go, really sets the tone for what is important to the culture. If a leader suddenly starts wearing his or her shirt inside‑out, that is what everybody will do. So, there are definitely roles for leaders.
Yes, I am a leader of teams, so I make sure that my teams are really paying attention to culture, showing up, spending their time, making time and prioritizing time for these topics, but really getting the board at the very top of the house to pause what they are doing, and speak about these topics and show up for training, participate and role model as part of their behaviors.
For me, that is the role they can play.
>> LORNE NEEDLE: Thank you. Chris, I would love to hear your thoughts.
>> CHRISTOPHER COWGER: Yes. I would definitely echo a lot of that sentiment in terms of being a role model. I think the role model for the organization, I think, on a similar bent, tone from the top is what we call it here at Dell, where the messaging that people hear, how they see something highlighted as important in operational reviews, run the business meetings, Strategic Planning, you know, people know what the more Senior Executives are talking about, whether they were directly in those sessions, or they hear from the rumor mill what went on in bun of those sessions and what topics were discussed.
I think here, again by reporting our Accessibility Center of Excellence directly into my senior staff, and it having a regular time slot to kind of review how things were going, and where we needed to do things more better, differently, either in terms of development, deployment or maintenance of some of our Digital Experiences, started getting noticed and set a tone.
Then I think, you know, when we also kind of started to adjust the top track to be hey, this is not just an Accessibility thing. This is good for everyone type of thing. Start highlighting more and more the areas where we really showed demonstrable improvement in experience, Accessibility, and how ultimately the feedback we have gotten from all customers, all areas of ability, has risen. People started to see, this is an important way to run the business. You know, independent of calling it, Accessibility, or inclusion, or any of those monikers.
People saw that this is just good for the business. This is a good way to run it and it is good for everyone. Beyond that, serving as a role model, serving the conversation always as front, center and forefront. Then having people see you are actually changing decisions that are being made in the business, very large, impactful decisions, to be kind of inclusive and thoughtful of this area, is something that, like I said, really gets noticed and really sets that new tone from the top that people follow all the way down the organization.
>> LORNE NEEDLE: I think you make a really important point about the more executives are engaged in seeing the Accessibility work and the results of it, the more they with understand the benefits and what is possible across the customer base.
Ina or Francesca, anything you want to add on this question about what leaders are doing or could do to help move product Accessibility forward?
>> INA CHARLES: I am going to chime in really quickly. I agree. I think it is about making sure leaders are visible and advocating for Accessibility, and making sure it is baked into the run of the business, and making sure that not only there buy‑in, especially here at Lyft that there is buy‑in internally, but that there is buy‑in externally.
I think that leaders really pay an important role in driving that buy‑in.
>> LORNE NEEDLE: Thank you so much. I will move us to our next question. This relates to your Neurodivergent customers, so, customers who may be People with Autism, or ADHD, etc.
We would love to hear anything that your company is doing, or considering doing to make products and services more accessible, and more appealing for Neurodivergent customers.
And invite maybe Francesca to start, since we didn't hear from you on the last question. I know you are just hearing this question for the first time, so, take the time to think about it, if you like.
>> FRANCESCA HARVEY: Thank you very much. I have to say, I come at it from a product side of things, where I am ‑‑ sorry, would you mind repeating the question again.
>> LORNE NEEDLE: Yes, absolutely. If you are thinking about your customers who are Neurodivergent. For example, your committee: customers who identify as People with Autism, are there things that the company is thinking about for your products, or that you think might be really exciting to think about for your products to better serve those customers?
>> FRANCESCA HARVEY: Absolutely. I think a whole part of our process, and I can only speak on what I have experienced, is that we have spoken to a lot of people with different disabilities throughout this process. Obviously, there is always more to learn. And we also take into account personal experiences, who we know personally, and we share with others with their permission.
I think this, from a product and apparel design, specifically, point of view, this would be focuses on material, tactility, color, and I think there has been a lot of research by innovation, as well, into different ways that the actual product can affect the person, how they wear it, and how they feel in it.
Then, in addition to this, as we have been speaking with people that have disabilities, they have pointed out certain areas of the business that could be improved. For example, the shopping experiences online or in stores, which we then, from our team's point of view, report back to higher levels, and, yeah, continuously work on what we can do to elevate this and ‑‑ yes, this is the what I have an experience of from my job.
>> LORNE NEEDLE: Thank you for sharing that, Francesca. It is exciting to think about what you might do there.
Chris, what is Dell thinking about or doing for its Neurodivergent customers?
>> CHRISTOPHER COWGER: Yeah, so, actually I tried to jump on and answer this one, first, because I am like, oh, this is an exciting one.
If you, again, look at the suite of tools and technologies that we have developed to help with the Accessibility of our experiences overall, one of the particular areas of focus for us is what we call cognitive load.
So, basically, how to think about the amount of information on a page, or within a Digital Experience, and how human beings process that. Again, this is a human beings of all abilities. Not just those who are Neurodivergent, or may be challenged in that area.
Although they are, kind of the first, most direct beneficiaries of experiences that try to balance cognition evenly throughout a journey or an experience.
But it is one of the first areas that we looked into and developed a technology that could objectively score the level of cognitive load when interacting with any of our Digital Experiences.
But like I mentioned earlier, one of the great outcomes from it was, as we kind of looked at the science there and what is the right level of cognition for any customer to have with any kind of Digital Engagement, what we found is everyone benefited. People of all abilities, Neurodivergent or otherwise, submitting better feedback, seeing better results and better interactions with our site.
So, again, it started to make sure that we are focusing and driving for the benefit of our customers and partners in a center area. But ultimately it became very, very clear to us, again, that this is good for everyone.
I think that good for everyone type of theme is something that has really helped push us forward.
>> LORNE NEEDLE: Thank you. Ina, any thoughts on this from your perspective?
>> INA CHARLES: Yes. Absolutely. So, on our app, we are actually ‑‑ not we, but riders are able to communicate with our drivers through their app. So, once you get paired with a driver, you can communicate with them. You can send them a text message or note.
There are also certain ride features where you are able the control whether you have a quiet ride or not. I think that is super helpful for someone who is Neurodivergent. Man, they don't want to talk in the car, so you can always select a quiet ride.
If you don't have the option that comes up directly on your app, you can always share a note with your driver and say, I prefer a quiet ride, or, please make sure you pick me up exactly right here.
So, I think there are ways to communicate really well with riders and drivers.
>> LORNE NEEDLE: Yes, Ina. One thing that I think is so inspiring is what might seem like small features but make as big difference to someone, might be really encouraging for Neurodivergent customers to see I think they are trying to give me a good experience. Let me see if they can do what I need them to do.
Vanessa, any other thoughts from your perspective?
>> VANESSA ABRAHAMS-JOHN: Not really. I think we sort of shared what we are doing, where we are. As I said, lots of lessons learned. The world hasn't had an in‑person Paralympics for a long time, because of COVID. So, we are taking the lessons from Paris, you know, really motivated to create equity for our athletes and the right clothing and support as we go into LA 2028.
So, more to come., you know? We are trying to provide the same experience, the same support, the same sportswear and so forth. So, it is a journey, as Francesca shared, for us. We feel that we are a little bit early in our journey, but we are motivated, so, we are just looking ahead.
>> LORNE NEEDLE: I also want to compliment you and the company for going big, engaging with such a big event and so many people that can have ripple‑effects for many others.
That is it for Q&A. I will pass us back to our Moderator, Diana.
>> DIANA DOMENECH: Great. Thank you, Lorne, and thank you to all our panelists today for sufficient an engaging and interesting discussion. This is going to end our panel. I would like to thank everybody for attending. Enjoy the rest of the Inclusion Works day. Bye‑bye.
 
       (Session was concluded at 3:08 PM ET)
                                                       
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