CEO, CFO, CIO. What about a CAO? The Chief Accessibility Officer would coordinate and oversee all company accessibility issues. The CAO would ensure that disabled employees, investors and consumers would all have reasonable access to their relevant sections of the company.
Currently, these issues are covered,if at all, sporadically and in isolation. A human resources managers handles all the ADA matters for disabled employees. If at all, an engineer or designer may appoints herself the access guru for others in her team. Occasionally, the legal team is brought on for a quick opinion. Who is keeping an eye out for disabled customers? Who is doing long term planning on these issues? No one.
Instead of this piecemeal and disorganized approach, the chief accessibility officer brings accessibility into the larger picture. With the CAO, there should be less of a need to retrofit products, facilities or web sites to conform to legal requirements or market demands. A CAO would envision a corporate accessibility framework, bringing consistency, breadth and depth to the company’s accessibility.
I am not speaking here of a chief compliance officer. A compliance officer focuses solely on a firm’s legal responsibilities. Let this position remain in the legal department. A chief accessibility officers would have a much broader goal. The CAO, though aware of the firm’s regulatory and legal obligations, focuses on engaging all aspects of the firm with all aspects of disability.
Why now? America is aging. The baby boomers are reaching retirement. With the graying of the population comes the graying of consumers, investors and workers. Unfortunately, gray hair is often accompanied by other physical changes that may cause some form of disability. This demographic shift brings a broad range of accessibility issues to the fore. Accessibility is not just for the profoundly disabled. Arthritis as well as deteriorating vision and hearing are common conditions that do not normally cause severe disability. Yet corporate policies, facilities or products may need to change to remain accessible to their customers, their investors and their employees affected by these and other common ailments. Even more importantly for the bottom line, demographics are not just changing the needs of the population, but its ability to pay for them as well. The current generation of retirees is the wealthiest in history. Firms that ignore this additional shift in the market will pay a heavy price.
Tech companies, like Google, need someone on staff to ensure reasonably consistent attention is paid to accessibility issues across all its projects. Google could use someone to create an accessible Google CSS theme for all its properties. Apple could use someone to ensure that the same attention put into VoiceOver for OSX is put into a parallel iPhone project. Social networking sites, from Facebook to Flickr, need someone enforcing accessible web design principles and liaising with the disabled community.
Brick and mortar companies would also benefit from a CAO. Retailers need someone to coordinate the company policies on providing access to disabled customers, whether it be wheelchair accessibility or large print menus. Manufacturers and design firms need a CAO to make sure everything being produced is reasonably accessible, from the packaging to the instruction manual to the product itself.
If your company is in the market for a CAO, you have come to the right person. Let me know when I start.
If you find this post useful or interesting, please consider buying me a cup of coffee.
If you are interested in joining our mailing list, please submit your email below. 
