Global Accessibility Awareness Day: Small changes that open more doors

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is a great reminder to pause and think about how inclusive digital experiences really are. Accessibility can shape whether someone applies for a role, completes an application, or feels confident engaging with an organisation in the first place.

We recognise that inclusive recruitment must go beyond a postive workplace culture. It's also about ensuring candidates can access information, navigate digital experiences and engage with opportunities without unnecessary barriers.

Accessibility is a journey

Improving accessibility is an ongoing process. It starts with making steady, meaningful changes that help more people access and engage with content confidently.

That can include improving readability, simplifying navigation, supporting assistive technologies, and creating a more flexible digital experience for people with different needs and preferences.

Improving accessibility is an ongoing process. It is about making steady, meaningful changes that help more people access and engage with content confidently.

That can include improving readability, simplifying navigation, supporting assistive technologies, and creating a more flexible digital experience for people with different needs and preferences. But accessibility in recruitment extends beyond the digital experience - it shows up in how roles are written, how processes are structured, and how organisations respond when a candidate needs something to be done differently.

It's important to actively seek feedback from your team and the people you work with to understand what is working, where gaps exist, and how your approach can keep improving. Inclusion isn't something we set and move on from - it requires listening, reviewing, and being willing to change. That commitment to continuous improvement is what turns good intentions into meaningful progress. 

With today's hiring journey being largely digital - everything from careers pages and job ads to applications and onboarding, if those experiences are difficult to use, candidates may disengage before recruitment has even properly begun.

Small improvements in accessibility can therefore make a significant difference to candidate experience and opportunity.

Supporting inclusive recruitment experiences

As part of our commitment to accessibility and inclusion, we provide the Recite Me Assistive Toolbar, giving visitors the ability to customise their experience to suit their individual needs.

The toolbar allows visitors to personalise their digital experience in a way that works best for them, with features including text-to-speech functionality, reading aids, screen customisation, translation support and more.

These tools can help support candidates with visual impairments, neurodivergence, learning differences, literacy challenges or those who speak English as an additional language.

Inclusive recruitment is about creating opportunities for more people to engage, participate and succeed -and digital inclusion plays an important role in that journey.

What inclusive hiring looks like beyond the screen

Digital accessibility is one part of the picture. The other part is what happens in the hiring process itself  and this is where we believe the real work sits.

We work with both candidates and organisations across the full hiring journey. For candidates, that means ensuring the way we communicate, assess and engage doesn't create unnecessary friction - whether that's offering flexibility in how conversations happen, being mindful of how role requirements are framed, or simply taking the time to understand what someone needs to show up at their best.

For the organisations we partner with, we increasingly see inclusive hiring not as a compliance consideration but as a commercial one. Shallow talent pools, skills shortages, and the growing complexity of leadership roles mean that the organisations finding the strongest people are the ones casting the widest net - and removing the barriers that cause strong candidates to opt out before the process has properly begun.

Continuing to improve

We are proud of the progress we have made so far and recognise there is always more to learn and improve.

Accessibility is not a one-off exercise. It is an ongoing commitment to creating digital experiences that are more inclusive, usable and welcoming for everyone.

If you're interested in checking your own website, you can do that here: run a free accessibility check.