Driving a More Equitable Workforce With Enhanced Accessibility Tools and Resources

To celebrate and support National Disability Employment Awareness Month, we’re proud to continue to bring new product updates and resources to improve accessibility for all of LinkedIn’s 850 million members. We hope our learnings and product updates further the conversation around building inclusive, equitable workplaces everywhere. 

Inclusive Conversations on “Accessibility” Are Increasing 

Accessibility in the workplace is an important conversation globally -- we’ve seen a 33% YoY increase in people sharing insights, ideas, and problem solving together related to accessibility. This corresponds with a significant uptick in the total annual number of U.S. job postings with the word "accessibility" in the job title. In fact, our data shows that these job postings have spiked 171% since September 2019, indicating that companies are actively not only talking about this, but taking action to hire accessibility specialists that can help them create products and services that work for everyone.

Standardized Accessibility Job Titles 

We recognize the importance of roles across the accessibility industry that ensure experiences and products are more inclusive, and now we identify those jobs through standardized job titles. If you work in the accessibility industry, you can now choose a standardized title in accessibility, such as “accessibility designer," "chief accessibility officer,"or "accessibility engineer,” that matches this work. This is valuable because standardized job titles help you get discovered for opportunities and more easily find opportunities that match your skills. 

Simply selecting a standardized accessibility job title in the experience section of your profile, or within the Open to Work section, will signal your interest in this area to recruiters and the broader LinkedIn community.

Ability to Better Showcase Your Skills and Identity

We know that people think and digest ideas in different ways. We believe that diversity of thought is a skill that should also be highlighted in meaningful ways. That’s why earlier this year, we partnered with Richard Branson and Made By Dyslexia to launch Dyslexic Thinking as a recognized skill members can add to their profiles. Through our research, we learned that dyslexic thinkers are often able to simplify complex products or tasks and see connections that others may miss. This example showcases that disability can also be viewed as a strength and meaningful differentiator.

We also realize that in order to build better products that work for more people, we need to understand our members better, too. One way we’re doing this is by asking them to voluntarily self-identify on disability and other demographic dimensions. Today, more than 10 million members have shared some aspect of their identity with us. We realize a special responsibility to use this data responsibly and with our members interests at heart by creating meaningful access to opportunity.

Improved Video Accessibility with Auto captions and High contrast 

As people share insights and work together to problem solve on LinkedIn, it’s important that all members can access these conversations to do their jobs, run their businesses and stay informed. In the coming weeks, we’re rolling out auto captions to make video content on LinkedIn more accessible to those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or prefer to watch videos with sound off. 

When you upload a video on LinkedIn, captions will be automatically generated for you (English-only for now). You can choose to add them as soon as they’re ready, or review them before they’re published to ensure accuracy for your audience.

Viewers can now also turn on high contrast when watching videos on the LinkedIn app, which will adjust the colors to improve accessibility for those with low vision or visual disabilities.

Alternative Text Functionality in Campaign Manager

With the introduction of alternative text (alt-text) functionality in Campaign Manager, advertisers can now easily add text descriptions to the image uploaded to image ads, so that it is viewable to all members. 

This update will roll out soon, allowing blind or visually impaired members to make sense of the imagery being presented.

Accessibility Learning Opportunities

Helping our members build skills in the accessibility field is critical to scaling the impact of accessibility.  With that in mind, we’re expanding our LinkedIn Learning library. Our newest course by instructor Chimmy Kalu is Practical Accessibility for Designers, which takes an in-depth look at how to design and build accessible experiences.

Join Live Conversations 

Starting next week, we’ll be publishing a video series featuring our Head of Equity Strategy, Imani Dunbar, and several of our Creators and Top Voices in Disability Advocacy. The panelists will discuss equity in the workplace and their own experiences navigating past physical and cultural barriers.

On October 28, our Get Hired Editor, Andrew Seaman, will also be talking with Neil Barnett, Microsoft’s Director of Inclusive Hiring and Accessibility, on the most common questions job seekers with disabilities have, so you can learn how to adjust your hiring practices. Sign up here to tune in live. 

While we’ve made strides in making LinkedIn more accessible, we know there’s more to do. We’re always open to feedback and ideas on how we can make the LinkedIn experience even better and more inclusive for all members of the global workforce.