Accessibility training for recruitment

This training course gives everyone the basics of how to make their work and environments accessible. It introduces disability and accessibility before going into detail about best practices.

This training course gives HR and people teams the knowledge to make each stage of the hiring process accessible and inclusive. It introduces disability and accessibility and covers the law and adjustments. It then goes into detail about accessible content and inclusive recruitment best practices.

Attendees can have roles in or related to:

• HR and people teams
• recruitment and talent
• hiring and line management
• equality, diversity and inclusion

Anyone involved in recruiting needs to know how to make the process accessible. Whether you’re writing the job description or sitting on an interview panel. Candidates shouldn’t have to keep asking for adjustments. Or get excluded from employment because of attitudes or inaccessible processes, policies, and workplaces.

Training outline

The training includes a mix of trainer presenting, interactive activities and exercises. All training includes the social model of disability. This is fundamental for disability awareness and understanding.

The topics included in the 1-day recruitment training are:

• understanding disability from a personal perspective (trainer’s story)
• introduction to the social model of disability and its language
• disability statistics and why disability inclusion benefits organisations
• attitudes to disability and the barriers
• the Equality Act 2010 and reasonable adjustments
• accessible content and formatting: plain English, headings, fonts and type, bullets, links
• accessible design and formats: colour contrast, PDFs, images, video
• accessible meetings and presentations
• accessibility in recruitment: job descriptions, advertising, applications, interviews, onboarding, review

I can adjust the topics covered to fit the needs of your organisation and those joining the training. I can go into more detail about what I cover in an introduction call.

Exercises and activities

These include:

• barriers to adjustments and adjustment scenarios (group)
• plain English ‘bingo’ (group)
• short plain English exercise (individually)
• find the metaphors and figures of speech (group)
• Word and PowerPoint demos
• 40 minute editing exercise (pairs)
• barriers to recruiting disabled candidates (group discussion)
• interview barriers across different interview formats (individually)
• lived experiences: impact, disadvantage and harm (groups)
• reviewing and monitoring your own processes (reflective)

The exercises done individually include time for people to share what they did with the whole group. There are other points of interaction where questions may get asked to the group. I also encourage questions throughout.

Online, all exercises and activities can be verbal or shared in the chat. For the editing exercise, the group splits into breakout rooms. I can make adjustments for anyone who does not want to join a breakout room.

Capacity and format

Up to 20 people can join this training. This allows me time to make sure everyone is supported throughout the day.

The session can be in-person or on Google Meet. There is a 15 minute break in the morning and afternoon. The lunch break is 90 minutes long. This can be reduced to an hour for in-person sessions.

I use PowerPoint to present slides. All information on the slides is read out, except for decorative items. Trainees get a workbook and editing exercise document in Microsoft Word before the training.

Accessibility

I will send out the PowerPoint presentation slides 3 days before the session with a couple of the activity answer slides missing. I also include a detailed agenda of the day. I share the slides with full speaker notes to everyone following the training.

I always aim to make sure the training is inclusive and accessible as default. If someone has specific access needs, let me know what these are and I can make adjustments.

Cost

Note: prep covers any modifications to the session, adding references relating to your organisation or industry, and depending on the product, the tailoring and bespoke design. It also includes admin time such as scheduling, emails and invoicing.