FORMATTED TRANSCRIPT

USBLN CONFERENCE 2014 ORLANDO, FLORIDA.SEPTEMBER 27, 2014

OCTOBER 1, 10:00 a.m. ET CRYSTAL D/E

Accessibility for a Smarter, More Inclusive, Mobile Workforce of the Future

PLENARY SESSION

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>> Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. Our show is about to begin.

>> Welcome to the podium, Belinda Reed Shannon, Vice President for Equality and Inclusion at GlaxoSmithKline and chair of the USBLN 2014 Annual Conference Workplace track chair.

>> BELINDA REED SHANNON: Good morning! I hear a lot of enthusiastic voices out there. It's so wonderful to see this room filled. And I'm so happy to welcome you to this second day of the USBLN conference. This is another great day of exploring how disability and inclusion can truly drive both innovation and growth in our workplaces. The USBLN conference provides a tremendous opportunity for us to bring key issues to the forefront and ensure that we all walk away with more information, insight, and more ideas to do a better job of hiring and integrating more differently-abled talent into our workplaces.

I accepted the role of workplace track chair here today because I wanted to be in a position to take an active role in starting and leading just that kind of dialogue.

I'd especially like to thank Jill Houghton and Mark Perriello for their leadership of this fantastic resource to help corporate America support the disability inclusive practices that

are vital to our future.Like many of you in the room, my professional career has

centered in large part on guiding and helping employers do all the things that they must do and all the things that they should do to ensure fair, equitable, smart, business relevant employment practices. We counsel on and direct everything from hiring to compensation, promotions, performance evaluations, and also to the inclusivity of the work environment, which is incredibly important.

I had the privilege of finishing law school and starting a practice in corporate law right around the time that the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted in the United States back in 1992.

So most of my first legal practice was focused on employment issues, giving advice on employment issues for large employers.

And I had the opportunity to counsel on how employers needed to respond to this new piece of legislation called the Americans with Disabilities Act. I remember explaining that, in addition to the technicalities of the law that establish the compliance standard, that the real purpose of the law was to move our society further along in the inclusion of persons with disabilities and, in particular for them, in the workplace.

So I'm sure you've seen that the ADA and its subsequent expansion focused primarily on accommodations for those already in the workplace or on physical accessibility to the buildings where, you know, our workplaces were established. And then other parts within that workplace.

So employers certainly responded and followed the articulated compliance embodied in the law. However, as the years rolled by, many recognized that we were still falling short when it came to bringing more disabled into the workplace and building workplace cultures and environments that welcome and integrated the differently-abled in the same way as our educational and other societal systems had already done.

Recent regulations from the U.S. Department of Labor have attempted to fill that gap by articulating provisions mandating that more be done to increase the size of the disabled workforce. And that's good. But, as we heard many times in our conversations yesterday, it won't be enough. We need to support and advocate for efforts to not only acquire the talent. But we need to also take steps to ensure they're coming into an inclusive environment that will ensure opportunity for the same long term professional success as others already in the workplace are able to enjoy. In recent years, you know, we've always focused on diversity groups based on quality such as gender, ethnicity and sexual preference, particularly when talking about inclusion in the workplace.

But we have to ask ourselves -- and we should be asking ourselves particularly during this time this week together -- are we giving enough attention and resources to the specific needs of the talented people who happen to be differently-abled? There's one other aspect that I want to mention. This one is a little bit more personal.

Have you ever noticed how today's younger generations have lived, learned, and played right alongside persons with disabilities their entire lives? I've had of the privilege and pleasure of raising my three children surrounded by what my husband and I call the village. I'm sure some of you here in knows what that means in your personal life. That's friends, neighbors, church members, coworkers and other individuals who are invited into your private circle of acquaintances and with whom we've had many, many wonderful and enriching moments in life. That village also includes a number of loved ones and friends of all generations that are differently-abled.

So the notion that our relatives, friend, neighbor, or loved one would be prevented from pursuing a full personal and professional work life because of their limited ability in some but not all capacities is one that would be completely foreign to my children who are part of the younger generation, part of our future workforce.

I'm sure that their way of thinking won't understand a world that prevents these wonderful contributing members of our village to find their place through working and/or professional life in the same way that the rest of society is allowed.

It just doesn't make sense.We know that differently-abled among today's society are

present in the form of our mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, veterans, college students. And that they are among a growing number of the talent workforce.

We also know that the vast majority are able to effectively utilize technologies and other services available in our advanced society to support their ability to work. This is an underutilized source of talent that most employers have not yet tapped. So when we know the value of a fully diverse workforce and in particular, the strong contributions that can be made by people with disabilities, why do we allow the continued absence of this population in the workplace? It just doesn't make sense.

(Applause) Doesn't make sense.So, if we want to continue being smart, successful

businesses, then we must turn our attention to finding ways to facilitate and support the active contributions of people who are differently-abled. That mindset of including differently-abled talent is directly aligned with the values that the company I

work for GlaxoSmithKline and our mission to help people do more, feel better and live longer. Our leaders have set a goal to become a disability confident organization that thinks about the needs of people with a disability when designing products services, and related marketing and when creating employment and advancement opportunities.

We are also extremely proud to have joined the USBLN's Disability Equality Index as a founding partner. And if you have not --

(Applause) >> You know, and let me tell you why. Let me tell you why.

Again, we see DEI as a fundamental tool for assessing how we're doing in key categories and where we could do more to enable all of our employees to achieve their full potential. It's just -- if you haven't looked at it, take a look at it. It's an excellent guide to all the areas that need definitive action. And to resources to support complete integration of differently-abled colleagues into our working environment.

Today we'll have an opportunity to look at how we can all establish a culture of accessibility to create a smarter, more inclusive workforce that empowers and engages employees and ultimately transforms the way we do business. The workplace track has emerging themes around new regulations, new avenues of college and community recruitment, new approaches to physical accommodation and accessibility. And new outlooks on culture and inclusion. Personally, I can't wait to get more learning inside my head. It's my hope that the workplace track sessions you've chosen will indeed help you -- help your companies bridge individual differences, better connect with customers, enable a diverse talent pool and improve the standard of living for all members of society.

But first, I realize I'm standing between you and a very exciting speaker this morning. So I'd like to introduce Frances West. Because she has some very important information and messages to share with us about inclusion and accessibility in the workforce.

Frances has a fabulous title of Chief Accessibility Officer at technology leader IBM.

She works to establish IT accessibility standards, shape government policy and develop human centric technology and industry solutions that not only create an inclusive workplace environment but that also help personalize the user experience so that all people reach their highest potential.

She's also a founding member of the USBLN board of directors. So without further ado, let me wish you all an exciting day of learning, sharing, and invite you to join me in welcoming Frances West to the podium.

(Applause) >> FRANCES WEST: Good morning! Thank you, Belinda, for that

wonderful introduction. Yesterday, in the kickoff session, Jill talked about USBLN is like a family. And now Belinda talked about I was the founding member. So I feel like a grandmother coming home.

(Laughter)So it's great to be here this morning, and I am just so

excited to be able to share with you some of the work we're doing at IBM and also share with you the excitement of how our thinking and our insight actually gained from working with this population or this segment of our world has really created new innovative perspective for business of all sizes. And for many years, we talked about in order to have our cause to be sustained, you know, you should not be a separate track in society. It should be embedded. It should be part of society. And we really think that the time has come partially due to technology to really blur the line between what the constituency of a different ability versus the quote, unquote, the mainstream population. So with that, I'm going to take you through the journey that we have been on at IBM. And we'll leave some time for question and answer. But again, I'm excited to be here to share with you our message and a journey.

So for those of you who are in the business community, I bet a lot of you are dealing with the compliance issues. And the perception about accessibility -- by the way, our definition of accessibility is not the physical access. It's about information access.

And a lot of companies business right now viewing accessibility as a compliance issue.

But in our view, it really is a business driver.It's not about compliance. It's about business driver.Another myth is that I think we have a problem projecting?

Is that -- hold on a second. I think we have -- I can keep talking, but until they figure out.

The information is not accessible right now.Let me read out -- actually, it's good that the chart is

actually quite simple. The myth number two in the business is that it is a niche market and only affects people with disabilities. How many of you have been asked by your CFO to give me the return on investment of accessibility. Raise your hand. So in our view it really is not about a small segment but it really is about all of us. Because how many of you in the room are over age 50? And according to American society of people with disabilities, if you're over 50, you're going to have at least one disability. And if you get to age 60, you're going to have at least two. So it's not about a small segment but it's

about all of us.Myth number 3 is that it's very expensive in the ROI with

return on investment is hard to justify.But in our experience, that -- yes, it may cause a little

incremental to produce or to develop. But in the end, you're going to gain back the customer loyalty and what we call the brand equity.

So the ROI is not just on the cost. But on the intangible returns such as customer loyalty.

Myth number 4: It's just an add on. You should think about it as add on or assistive technology. But we think the technology and also the expectation has come to a point where you need to design an integrated accessibility thinking from the beginning.

So these are what we see as a common myth. And then I'm going to end with a last one. Myth number 5 is oh, this is Americans with Disabilities Act. This is an American thing. I can tell you that this is a priority because in 2006 when U.N. passed the U.N. convention on rights of people with disabilities, now you have 158+ countries working towards a similar objective as ADA.

So as a global company like IBM, we operate in 170+ countries, this matters. This is a business initiative

In addition to the myth I just talked about or non-myth, I don't know what's the opposite of a myth -- that there are trends in the marketplace. On your table, there is a sheet of some of the statistics. There's 7 billion people on the planet now and 1.2 billion, which is about -- you know, on average of 13, 15% of the population. We all know the statistic. This is the same size of people as the country of China. So how many companies will say I will not invest in China? Nobody. Right? Yet this is an underserved segment that potentially can be huge. Another statistic is the cell phone. The mobile phone in itself is a technology, really bridges the gap between understanding accessibility or not understanding it. How many of you have problems standing outside using your cell phone and cannot see things because of sunlight? How many of you start doing this when you cannot see the font size? So overnight mobile and allow us an opportunity to educate our customers, our executives. Accessibility is not about them. It's about all of us

We talked about major trends in the world that's happening that's affecting actually it's creating an underpinning of kind of a business force that creates business opportunities. We just talked about the U.N. Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. 150+ countries. If you are a global company, you're not going to ignore this topic. We talked about aging populations that's coming on. 76 million baby boomers here in

the United States. In China by 2050, you're going to have 365 million people over age 60. That is the entire population almost of the United States. So as a government, they are very, very active in looking at the accessibility issue. Not necessarily because of ADA. But it's a pure economic issue.

I mentioned earlier about the cell phone. Mobile phone really revolutionized people's understanding of accessibility.

And now we're social business and also with growth market coming in, when we say growth market, it's India, it's Africa. You know, these countries with relatively low literacy and low understanding are coming online. Africa will have the youngest population in the entire planet. And how they use technology is going to dictate the next generations to come. So all this creates a very unique market opportunities for businesses.

And talking about legislation, we talked about it's not just an American thing. We certainly know section 503, the past couple days we actually talked a lot about section 503. But how many of you know that Ontario government in Canada has just as progressive if not more progressive laws? How many? So we already have financial services company who wants to open, you know, branches in Toronto having to deal with you know, issues such as accessibility. And European Union 375, a very progressive legislation is just being studied and we think it's going to come on line in the next couple years. But last, but not least, the U.N. convention is just kicking in in terms of right now they're still going through the policy implementation phase but after policy will be actual implementation plans and that again will involve accessibility.

We talked about mobile earlier. The references of accessibility become very, very relevant for everybody.

And we call it situational disabilities. You know, outside lighting, ambient noise, bumpy road. All these are situation we are on the go that create a temporary disability.

So the technology has come that so far that we can enable and help to mitigate the gap of experience that one may experience in this kind of a mobile situation.

A bit more statistics. You know, we talked about the aging population. In business we always talk about what is disposable income? What is the market sizing? Just on the aging alone, we're talking about potentially two trillion dollars’ worth of spending. And when you get old, I know I am, I will pay to get service. I will pay to make me -- you know, just that much more able. So this is a market that is just waiting to be -- waiting to be explored.

Millennials, what we have found is that the young people who are born, you know, in that kind of a post 80s stage, have a huge, huge demand for technology such as mobile phone.

One statistic on the list says 65% of them say they -- say losing the phone would have a greater negative than losing a car. I mean, can you imagine? I think Henry Ford must be turning over in his grave, right? We all can relate, right? If you have to make a choice between a phone and a car, I think I'll go for the phone as well.

So the phone, think about mobile phone, the new future of accessibility. And that means that the spending power of the millennial that's come up is again, another $2.5 trillion.

And the topic I think is not an accident. This topic of accessibility now. All of a sudden, just within the past six months has become focus of mainstream media. Do we have a Disability Inc here? Disability magazine has been our biggest advocate, right, for many, many years.

But now we're joined by, for example, "Wall Street Journal". I mean, that's not a bad company. Right? And we've seen Gartner for those of you who are in information technology, number one analyst company, when Gartner writes, everybody listens, your CIO will listen to Gartner. So this isn't just another indication of how this -- this is just another indication of how this topic has come to its age and that it's becoming a very, very critical topic.

And Gartner published a report -- again, this is the most reputable, highly referenced analyst company by all the information technology CIOs. And they talked about by 2015 -- that's only, what? Four months from now? -- 50% of organizations will have technology projects underway that support the enablement of disabled people in the workforce.

I mean, that's pretty substantial statement here. That means this is right on the cusp to see the growth curve. So what is IBM's view of accessibility? So I have an organization in IBM located inside IBM research. It's an organization that's been in operation for over 10 years now. And our nucleus mission is to make sure that we support IBM across the board to make sure everything we produce is as accessible as possible. But beyond that we support our entire IBM workforce. We have now close to 460,000 people around the world. And we hire people with disabilities all around the world in many cases in some of these what we call the emerging countries like Africa, India and China.

We also deal with our aging executives. They are the ones that need the most help even though they won't admit it.

(Laughter)And this is a real case. We actually have one of our senior

VPs has some issue with his hand. Cannot type. And we literally have to fly in experts overnight to use speech technology to enable this executive. Not something you know, we want to put in the "Wall Street Journal". But this is another example of how

aging actually does matter in our technology accessibility can help. And we work a lot in terms of promoting the idea is that when you do accessibility innovation or design, it benefits, yes, the original constituents of people with disabilities but the application is to aging, to cross cultural and also to all people. So you can think of your investment in compliance today actually allow you to have usable access. It gives you a better customer or employee relationship. And eventually, it really helps you to drive what each, I think, company inherently has, which is the social responsibility of helping to transform the society to the better place.

Again, on the table that chart line gives you a history of IBM. This is not a new topic. This is not a topic du jour even though my organization has been in existence about 10+ years, we have hired -- we've been on the accessibility journey for over 100 years. First blind scientist was hired just exactly 100 years ago. Over the years we have to innovate for our own employees. This is a great examples when you do the right thing for your employee or yourself, it actually benefits because in many cases we were able to take our technology we developed for our own employee and externalize it or commercialize it for our customer consumptions. How many of you heard of Via Voice? So Via Voice was actually developed for our deaf employees in the beginning and then we commercialized it. I think back in the '90s was the go-to shrink wrap package for speech dictation.

So our definition of accessibility now is broader. It's more than just meeting the compliance of section 508. It's really about customer or employee experience. Because if you think about it, accessibility is what I call extreme personalization. What it says is that you use technology to complement or supplement the person's ability so that the potential of that person can be maximized. But in the process, you have to make the process very easy, very consumable, very usable you know, very personalized and adaptive. So, if you put those words up, these are exactly the same words I bet your CMO, your chief marketing officer is talking about, that how can I have a closer relationship with my customer. How can my product or services be more adaptive? How can I make sure that my information -- again, my service is more consumable. And we're moving from an old 80 or 90s market segmentation idea what is the market segment, where are the baby boomer segment where are the millennial segment to what we call the market of one. The technology will very soon enable you to adjust situationally to each individual's needs and wants at the time of relevance. Our view of accessibility is to focus on the design and delivery of what we call the human centric solutions that personalize the user experience on any device, creating parity for the broad

range of individual human needs.So parity is very important to us. We want to make sure

that everybody comes to work or every customer we serve there is parity. There is no -- you know, distinct differentiation because we need to treat everybody equally.

We have long been on this kind of technology journey for many, many years as you all know. Because this is our business. We went through what we call the computer centric era back in the 60s and 70s which is an era where you remember there's big big -- the huge computers, to what we call centric era of the 80s and 90s of personal computers to an era now in the year 2000 we enter what we call the connected technology where, you know, we begin to see things like everywhere you go the technology follows you. Now we think we're entering into what we call the human centric technology phase. You know, you all heard about the wearables, Google Glass was a great example. You see the biometric band. It's personalized. We're entering a personal space even 5, 10 years ago when the computer was optimized to the system performance, you're going to see computer going into an era to optimize a human experience. There's goings to be a completely transformational opportunities coming up. This all speaks into what we'll be calling the individual enterprise that I will become the center of the universe. I've always known that. My husband doesn't, but --

(Laughter) But the market has proven that I'm right. So for those of

you who want to welcome the individual enterprise, raise your hand. Because you are like the commercial, the cosmetic "I'm worth it", right? It is all about me. So put yourself in the today as CIO's environment. We have the millennials coming in. We have the cross generational middle aged managers and senior executives. Everybody coming in. So that means as a workplace, you have to be able to accommodate all of these different needs and wants.

It used to be that we go to the office, you know, 590 Madison was IBM's New York City office. But when you go there today there's very few people because we all work remotely and people work in different time zones, different geographies, everybody -- how many companies have a bring your own device policy now? IBM certainly does. You know, we all use our own device. We register with our CIO office. So we have the convenience of personalizing the device but we also have the security of the company firewall.

So there's all kinds of diversity, I guess, in a way in the technology usage front.

And so as a company, think about what we have to do to accommodate the different types of employee needs and wants.

The -- what I call -- I like the word "experienced workers" that's another way of saying the oldies.

(Laughter) They have the organization wisdom and intellectual capital.

Isn't this great? I love my team. They just made me feel so good. And our preferred mode of communication of course is what? Is email. How many depend on email as your primary -- I see these are all these experienced workers here. And then you have a mid career workers, 35-50. These are the kind of usually the core of any company.

They use instant messaging as a preferred way. How many of you prefer instant messaging? I see hands. And then we've got the next gen. We've got the genY or next Gen that prefer using moral and social media. They don't just do one-on-one communication, they communicate to the whole world. It's almost too much information. Too much detail. How many of you prefer that? Yeah, I see a lot of interns raising their hands.

So this is the world we live in. This is the world we really will be not in society but in the workplace as well.

So as a company, if you are HR directors and you try to hire millennials with different abilities, you need to think about whether you have accommodating environment. You need to have that conversation with your CIO to say are we really equipped to adapt to these different requirements needs. Because we are in a new world where working -- when the employee comes in, they want to work when they want to work and they want to do what they want to do. And you, as a company, need to accommodate that kind of expectation that you can allow them to be connected any device and give the support when they need it, when they want it.

So another statistic that we are in this -- what we call the big data era. When you post pictures on Facebook, think about the trillions of -- you know, storage that your needs actually created. And that kind of growth on the data or information is continuing. I mean, some of these numbers are just mind-boggling. By 2020, 12 billion machine to machine devices. And 42% of data will be machine generated. When we see machine generated we're beginning to see smart devices they can just monitor for example, the room temperatures, can turn on your refrigerator, these are what we call the instrumented environment that we're beginning to see.

So, again, all that means is that the technology is moved to a point that it can really help drive and understand your needs and your wants. And what we see in terms of priority is that the CIO or your technology officers in your company are dealing with all these mobile, you know, upsurge. And the mobile as a technology will affect every aspect of your organization.

From your customer relationship management to marketing to

supply chain to finance to talent management, and also to your research and development. Because according to, again, to survey by Gartner, 84% of your technology officer's focus will be on mobile. And so, if one thing that you remember, even though you're not a technologist, just remember that mobile application or mobile support for your employees is going to be absolutely critical. So ask that extra question of your CIO. Are you enable your mobile applications and support to your people or to your employee with disability or customer with disability? Because it will matter. I couldn't stress any more about the individual enterprise, you know, concept. This is a big concept we're sharing. We're beginning to push out in the marketplace because we think this is a next-generation of kind of computing model. And you will see a lot of work from company like IBM working on this and moving basically the computing power from the back office, you know, I mean, the technology term is called the system of record. All that means is that the back office stuff, the HR, your payroll, some of these standard business processes and pushing up to the what we call the front office engagement. Front office meaning directly with a customer or directly with employee. So we're working very hard with different universities around the world to understand how can I use technology meaningfully so the technology can enhance you by providing you with the right insight at the right time at the right place. And not just be a marketing machine trying to take advantage of understanding you to market to you. We really try to do what we call the enterprise research to make sure that the information we gather about you as an individual helps you in your workplace environment on your productivity, on your knowledge acquisition and all that versus just trying to sell you candy crush

(Laughter)By the way, I'm on 53. So anybody can give me free,

underline the word free, I'm not buying that -- what do you call that thing?

(Laughter)So IBM responds anywhere, any place, any time, anyhow, any

device. This is a very complex issue. But also tremendous opportunity. So what we are working on is trying rationalize all this mobile to cloud. How many of you heard about cloud. Do you know anything about cloud? It doesn't matter. It's just something in the sky.

So because it truly, it is our job to make it so you don't care. You just want to have your information that's security developed -- delivered to you. And that is a challenge that we worry about every day and every night.

So human centric computing. Now I'm going to bring it down to more specific what my organization has been working on.

We have been on a journey from I would say the early 2000s from what we call the user accommodation type of solution to a workplace accommodation. And then we started working our product team to work on the -- what we call the social business, inclusive social business solutions. Because you know, collaborations very important, especially for the millennial generation. They don't like to work by themselves. They like to work with each other. So, if you have a work team with different abilities, how do you make sure that everybody can contribute?

And then we move into mobile and now we're actually embedding accessibility requirements in to our IBM for example design camp. IBM is hiring thousands of new programmers and designers into our company so that our next-generation of computer, whether it's hardware or software solutions it's easier to use. And in that ease of use process, we're embedding accessibility in. Because remember, early on I talked about one of the myths is that you know, you can always add in accessibility afterwards. No. You got to design in.

So we're working on, for example, even changing our user design language to embed accessibility in there.

And the next-generation thing we're just at the cusp of studying that or examining that or researching that is this whole personal experience I mentioned earlier. And one of the early technologies that we're working on for example on the content side is e-pub standard. Again, how many of you have heard of e-pub?

Oh, I'm surprised. So e-pub stands for -- it's a publishing -- it's a content standard. Let me just give you a very quick reason why this is important.

If you hire a person with a disability coming in, let's say he or she has vision impairment whether it's blindness or low vision. You know, today's working environment is such that you have so many different content at you, you have text -- the traditional word, right? But you also have video. You could have graphs. You could have charts. You could have forms. And all these different what we call content types are jiving right now, it accessible. We worked with university to come up with content standard. So, if you create for example your employee orientation guide or your product guide, if you use the e-pub standard, you follow the rules so to speak, then the end result of your product manual, your employee how-to guide will be rendered accessible. Think about the savings and also the ease of use and productivity you will gain. I mean, this is a kind of underpinning investment we do and we invest as a company because we know that we don't -- we don't invest in assistive technology. What we do is invest in infrastructure level kind of innovation. Because by having this standard adopted like for example, Pearson

publishing one of the biggest already adopted e-pub standard, that means in the future if your child has a disability like blindness, then he or she will be able to use Pearson's curriculum you know, in an accessible way. So this will fundamentally change the content management experience.

We also have technology that just kind of -- I will say just hop ton to your current Web site experience. Earlier I talked about user experience breeds loyalty. So we actually came out with technology called easy web browser, we're going through the second generation, this is cloud enabled. All that means is you can easily install it on your Web site. Again, your company Web site, with this kind of technology, easy web browser technology, you can change, you can personalize it, you can change for example your -- by the way, for example, Macy's uses this technology. So when you go to Macy's.com. We all go to Macy's.com. Right? When they give out that coupon, he just can't say no, right? 25% off $100. Got to go. When you get op Macy's Web site, you download this technology. And then you can change the font size or the color contrast or even background color like black against yellow to your liking. So this is for example, Macy's way of trying to say you get to shop Macy's, my Macy's.

Accessible workplace connection: This is a technology, it's actually application, a corporate application that we worked out for the past few years that basically allow you to centralize the accommodation process. And also the design thinking to make sure the hiring manager does not need to know anything about accommodation. Because in our own experience, we know that if the first line hiring managers perceive that there are difficulties or there's a knowledge gap or does not know how to accommodate a person with a disability, they're going to shy away from hiring. It's just human nature. It's just too hard, too difficult or too time consuming because in today's world everybody is working overtime. They just don't have the time. So not necessarily because they don't want to hire, they just don't have the time.

So by -- because we know there has been the kind of issue, we try putting in place a process to say Okay. When you hire a person, anybody, you need anything from IBM, you go down this list. And it is just a question. Is the person -- does the person have any kind of disability whether it's blind or deaf or whatever. You check the box. You kind of -- you know, it's like a the ball, it walks you through the process. We automated the workflow process of accommodation to best practices so individual managers, individual hiring or self-serve individual, I don't want to go to my manager and say I need a -- you know, JAWS

screen reader or I need zoom text you know for enlargement. I just go on the system and self-serve and follow through the process. And then at the end in our case, we actually tried to -- we're working on combining with our procurement system and it will kick off a -- you know, a purchase order or some sort.

And that way it becomes a regular corporate application worldwide. We can track the accommodation costs. We can understand what kind of a technology people tend to procure more. So it becomes a very easy corporate wise -- corporate-wide solution.

Social business earlier I talked about today's workforce, especially the younger generation, they prefer to work in a collaboration mode. And this is one commercial. IBM collaboration system is something that my team worked with, a development team from the ground up. So we built what we call office automation, office collaboration system that allows you to do, you know, create communities, post things in the blogs or to do personalized wikis to share knowledge. Everything in this collaboration system is made accessible.

And for our deaf employees, we noticed a trend of the upsurge of using video as the preferred communication. How many of your executives communicate through video now? Quite a few hands. Like in IBM, all our senior executives now prefer to communicate through video. And a lot of our employees, they will -- you know, post videos in our IBM library. But you can imagine to make the video accessible or captioned, could be very, very costly if you have to send it out to be captioned professionally.

So we invested in our own technology, speech recognition, and created this thing called media captioning and editing technology. We put it in our library. People who create a video can go to the library and download basically this MCE tool. Then it will use machine to do the captioning. Now, of course, speech technology is such that it's not 100% perfect yet. So it has an accompanying editor that you can use.

And we created this technology, five, six, years ago, now it's in production. We just embedded it in one of our technology, one of our products called Conexa. We haven't even pushed it out for more than six months. We already won an HR executive award. We also won the CIO 100 award. And this technology is actually deployed at Boston Children's Hospital in an open pediatric, you know, initiative.

It's an initiative at Boston's Children's Hospital to share knowledge about children's disease with all the doctors around the world.

So this is an example, prime example that you do what's right for your own employees and in turn that technology or that solution can be socialized or commercialized.

Some of the new stuff we're working on are location-based technology. We think because eastbound’s on the go, you know -- everybody is on the go, mobile workforce is the way of the future, it's very important that we can leverage location-based technology to help an employee or customer go from point A to point B. We're working on inter-navigational. Everybody knows GPS. You can go from Epcot center to the airport. But when you are inside, how many of you trying to find out where the room is. Where's coral room, where's Atlantis room? I don't know. So hopefully in not too soon future, with this kind of technology, you download it on your iPhone. Then it will show you indoor navigation from point A to point B.

I already talked about the e-pub as a content, so I'm not going to cover any more. And last piece that I'm going to share is that -- is what we call the blue access platform. We have an experiment going on in Tokyo Research Lab because Japan as a country is the fastest aging country. So the accessibility needs is already there. Plus, we're working with a Japan government to try to hire more people with disabilities en masse. One of the things that we think, you know, I think also section 503 is going to create this kind of a need, that is, you don't hire people with disabilities one at a time. I think historically, you know, you tend to hire, you know, small number so you have the time, the energy to accommodate them. But what if you have to hire 5 or 10 or 100 at a time? So how do you accommodate, you know, what I call the en masse with different abilities? So we are experimenting creating what we call the blue access room. Office of the future kind of environment.

You know, equipped with -- embedded in the room things like captioning capability, screen reader capabilities and walking robots, you know, to give you the presence kind of -- presence.

And using location. We're trying to pull these together and see where the technology of the future can enable an office intelligent office environment of the future. These are just kind of experimental technology we're working on but we think potentially we have break through and also begin to engage cognitive disability which is yet a completely kind of open field. But I think we all need to begin to address the cognitive as a topic.

So our learning and our experience and our journey has been that making accessibility core to your business is absolutely a seed for growth. It's not a cost. It's not a just to kind of you know, clients issue. It really should be positioned as a business differentiation topic

The last chart I will share with you that you know, this accessibility journey we have gone through really has taught us that it just is -- it's just like any business initiatives. It

takes a roadmap, good thinking, good policy on the front end, so your government, not government, your executives or sometimes company can be like a government.

And you need to have very good and clear policy, HR policy, you know, your technology policy and governance model. You need to think about using standards, follow, you know, the best practices and standards that's out there like e-pub, I mentioned. The content on standards.

You want to really think about technology. People with disabilities actually require the most advanced technology. You cannot think of giving them yesterday's technology. If you truly want to have the parity in the workplace, you've got to give them the most advanced. And they are the data or best test bed because they are the most creative. That's what we found. Think about using advanced technology. Think about not just giving them technology but overall services, what can you as HR. We have our HR partners here with us. We work with our HR partners all the time because they have the subject matter expertise. We have the technology expertise. But you need to work together

Then you can think about hiring, you know, employment en masse. Then you can then really, you know, really enjoy the fruit of your labor in this case if you set the right foundation, then this kind of a collaborative parity based workplace environment can become a reality. So we really believe that accessibility that is everyone deserves for the digital world every needs. And with that, I think I'm done with my presentation. And we do have some information on our Web site. IBM.com/able. And you can certainly follow us on Twitter. And my personal Twitter is fwest -- actually, that's wrong. It should be 34. So --

>> JILL HOUGHTON: Could we entertain just maybe one or two questions?

>> FRANCES WEST: Yeah. So, if we have the time, absolutely.

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, is this on? Good. Hi, thank you very much for that. I found it very, very informative. My question is about the security. You talked earlier in your presentation about how this would be a secure environment. Can you give us some more information about how?

>> FRANCES WEST: Well security is just like accessibility. I will say there are three things that always has to be considered together. That is privacy, security, and accessibility.

So we work with our technology department very closely to make sure that these three elements are actually considered in every application we do. But usually any big company they have foundational security in place, especially for mobile. So that's

not something we need to reinvent. But when we create our solution, we do make sure that we understand, you know, the security assumptions or criteria so that we don't, you know, accidentally undo the security.

But that's why this is a coordinated effort.

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: David Fazio again, sorry, I talk a lot. You mentioned Africa and mobile. I thought that was interesting because Kenya has had an economic boom thanks to devices and one application called Mpasa that allowed entrepreneurs with disabilities, customers in rural areas and those that speak other languages not only to participate in banking but also in entrepreneurship and business development so now they have an economy that is rivaling Silicon Valley that is being called silicon savannah. With their growth and vision 2030 plan to develop KANZ and be the leading technology provider of South Africa, how is IBM -- are you looking to target that market.

>> FRANCES WEST: Absolutely. If you look at IBM's growth plan, if you read our annual report, Africa is the country that we're focusing on. And our CEO just took her entire management, senior management team to Africa and we just started a research lab in Kenya. And so we are doing a lot of very, very interesting work. And we're hiring researchers from the Kenyan universities because we believe that we have the Africa solution is going to be somewhat unique to Africa. And that's why we need to have on the ground investment of resources.

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, Samantha Raynar. Hello? Okay.One of the issues that I think we're facing is our legal

department and making sure those policies are published and getting the governance board because they often say if it's not a compliance issue, then we're not going to publish anything or document anything in our policies. So how -- I was wondering how does IBM get around that?

>> FRANCES WEST: Well it's very interesting because my -- we actually work with our legal perfect the very beginning and inside -- from the very beginning and inside IBM we have a governance structure called corporate instruction. It's like IBM law. You have to do. And for accessibility area, which follows kind of the ADA spirit, we have the -- in our case, it's CI162 which is a broad policy statement that says every division in IBM needs to adopt best practices for accessibility. And we do try to work very hard with our legal department. And in the best influencer of legal's interpretation of this area is actually through our government program office and we actually have one of our government program leaders here who really understands the policy intent of the government. So I think sometimes you really have to go that extra step in interpreting the law for the legal

department. And perhaps bring your legal to some of these, you know, sessions, hosted by for example by ODEP and all that. Because they need to understand the broader construct. So this put your head in the sand and let's not publish because you know, then -- because with that line of thinking is if we don't publish it, they won't come. It's actually the opposite, if you don't say anything you're conspicuously absent and people are going to ask questions.

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you for coming and presenting to us. I'm Chris Teal from McKesson and Jill has informed me I'll be the last question. You talked about the individual enterprise and the greater trend towards mobile computing and mobile working. I was wondering how does that square with the trend in social media and tech companies towards trying to engender greater face-to-face interaction such as Yahoo! reducing the amount of work from home, Facebook and Apple campuses being developed or Apple's new campus and also the great expense of having to transport workers from around the Bay Area so that they actually work face-to-face rather than relying on mobile devices?

>> FRANCES WEST: I think it's one -- I've been in this a long time. So you see the pendulum come and go.

I do see that there is going to be -- I think it depends on the project or the company. There will be need for example more close face-to-face time. So give you an example. IBM research tends to be very much on-site organization. In other words, everybody going into the research lab and do a collaboration face-to-face, but our sales organization on the other hand, they're all over the place. Because in theory, they're out there calling on customers. In theory.

(Laughter)So in that case, you don't need to have as much of a quote,

unquote coming to the office time. So I think the technology is going to allow us to have that kind of a hybrid model. I myself have found that we went through a phase where it's very decentralized but I'm now creating a hub in Boston, that's where I'm based in Cambridge because I think in certain areas I think that face-to-face time is important. So but the good news is that the technology now allows us to do both. Okay. Well thank you very much for your attention and have a good day.

(Applause) >> JILL HOUGHTON: How do you follow that? How do you

follow Frances. Thank you, Frances, again, for just turning everything on its head. Accessibility clearly is the seed for growth. And I would encourage you all to seek out Frances and her team. She's got a whole team here. Team IBM.

So thank you. (Applause)

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Catherine Salvador. Catherine is HR director for UPS. UPS is our sponsor for what's coming next, which is our networking luncheon. So Catherine

>> Good morning, it is a hard act to follow, Frances, I'm going to try my best. In the next five minutes I want to review with you UPS's initiatives and activities of would working with individuals with disabilities. UPS is committed to ensuring individuals with disabilities have an opportunity for meaningful employment. A robust outreach enables UPS to benefit from the vans that exist with a diverse workforce. It also provides an opportunity to act responsibly as a business, an employer and a corporate citizen.

We have three focus areas. First one being employment. To establish relationships with key groups that can provide potential candidates for employment at UPS. The second engagement: We want to increase the level of employee volunteerism with agencies that work with the disability community through the UPS neighbor to neighbor program.

And then third: Enhance our reputation as a company that values the skills and abilities of individuals with disabilities.

Our approach to establish relationships with existing organizations and agencies in the communities where there are UPS facilities. When appropriate, we bring together a variety of groups and establish a coalition that will be focused on the record referring candidates -- on reserve candidates. We'll provide groups with tours of our facilities, job descriptions and essential job functions. Some of our activities outreach programs are UPS air group in Louisville, Kentucky, has been leading the organization and providing opportunities for individuals with disabilities are bringing together over 30 different organizations all focused on helping individuals with disabilities to secure gainful employment and launching the disability coalition known as the Coalition for Workforce Diversity.

The coalition works to connect companies and agencies to actively promote diversity in hiring, training, empowerment, and attention of people with disabilities.

Last year through efforts of leading the coalition, UPS was named employee of the year through Harbor House, which is a Louisville-based nonprofit organization committed to providing support to individuals with physical and developmental disabilities. Our main air hub in Louisville called Warpart, we have a training area that will simulate the actual work environment and replicate primary jobs within our facilities. The new diversity coalition training area will allow individuals to experience a UPS package handling job. Candidates will learn

about and perform all the central job duties the package handler including physical aspects. Job setup, SAP training. With 10,000 square foot area is being renovated to include sorting workstations as well as classroom. And those renovations are expected to be complete and the equipment fully operational by the end of this year.

Our largest sorting hub in Chicago called "catch" has a consortium of agencies that was developed by the United Way of Chicago. And helps individuals with disabilities find employment, hire package handlers and supervisors from that group. UPS's working with la grange area Department of Special education which is a network of school district vocational staff, community organizations, and employers who work together. This network assists students with disabilities to gain work experience and employment opportunities. UPS is conducting tours and providing job shadowing opportunities for students in those groups. Some of our also initiative is of course individuals with disabilities BRGs. We have a couple chartered BRGs and several of our online locations. All of this is possible with maintaining, sustaining and building relationships with different organizations, to name a few, Paralyzed Veterans of America, autism society national convention, national organization on disability, and of course the USBLN.

And finally, our veterans initiative is providing UPS with opportunities for outreach to individuals with disabilities. We have established relationships with two groups that assist our veterans as this he work our transition back into the civilian world. Marine Corps wounded warrior regiment and Army wounded warrior transition command. So welcome to the 2014 USBLN expo. On behalf of UPS thanks for letting us share our initiatives and activities. As a final reminder join us in the discovery ballroom for the UPS-sponsored lunch. Thank you.

(Applause) >> JILL HOUGHTON: All right. Thank you, UPS. Thank you,

Catherine. A few housekeeping items. So we are going to disperse. And as Catherine said, there is a networking opportunity. You asked. We listened. A networking box lunch in the Discovery Ballroom in the expo hall. But before depart from that, we have prizes. The first is from one of our mentees who is a wounded warrior. His name is Doug Brinker. He's a Toastmaster. He will autograph this for you. And the winner is ... get rolling here. And the winner is ... what is the person's name? Dennis Milton.

And the next prize is $50 from Sanofi. And the winner is -- I like the Price is Right music. Renee Sansom. Oh, boy this is rigged.

And the next prize is from Walgreens. And it is wow, it's

some fat gift cards.Okay. Let's see here. And the winner is ... the winner

is ... Betsy Silva from Boehringer. Are you here Betsy? Is Betsy here? She just stepped out so -- we'll find her.

Okay. The next exercise bag from Cigna. Winner is Linda Wiley. All right, excellent.

Okay. So now to keep things on time, you're going to depart for lunch. You're going to network in the discovery ballroom. Then we're in for super awesome breakout sessions. And we will see you again in the general plenary session at 4 -- it's kind of an interesting time, 4:05. We'll see you at 4:05. Thank you.

***This text is being provided in a rough draft Format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) or captioning are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

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