This year, IBM also marks its 100th anniversary. From its earliest days, the information services giant has been designing products, including Braille printers and typewriters, aimed at helping people with disabilities fulfill their potential. IBM hired its first disabled person in 1914, and in 1942, it hired blind psychologist Michael Supa to create a program for hiring and training people with disabilities.

Fittingly then, that Helen Keller wrote a letter to IBM’s founder Thomas J. Watson in 1952 to praise the company’s work and express gratitude for Watson having encouraged his engineers to devise “mechanical and electric aids for the blind.” She wrote: “The more openings you make for them in the wall of darkness through invention, the greater will their contribution be to public service, both as productive workers and responsible members of society.”

Two years later, Keller presented the Migel Medal, the American Foundation for the Blind’s highest honor, to Watson for IBM’s “dedication and achievement in significantly improving the lives of people who are blind or visually impaired.”

To mark its 100th anniversary, IBM created a website to promote its initiatives for people with disabilities, which continue in full force today as the Internet brings about new opportunities for technology product and service innovations.

One IBM employee who is blind, Chieko Asakawa, opened the web for non-visual access in 1998 with her IBM Home Page Reader, which converts text to speech and helps blind people navigate the web. She is also helping to improve IBM’s Spoken Web technologies, which make it easier for blind, elderly and illiterate people to learn and do business on the web.

Another innovative product that has had far-reaching impact is the Social Accessibility Project. It’s an open social community that lets blind and visually impaired web users send an online report about a website’s missing accessibility features. Sighted volunteers can then add accessible features — such as alternative text for images — without changing the original content of the page. The features are then stored in a file and automatically loaded when the user or subsequent users visit the page.

Helen Keller would be pleased with these accomplishments by IBM, and by dozens of other technology companies that are helping to make information and communications more accessible to people with disabilities.

An astute Wall Street executive says that going to college today may be a waste because of changing economic conditions and the rise of the global marketplace. Instead, Bill Gross, Managing Director of PIMCO, the world’s largest mutual fund, argues that some young adults should consider skipping an undergraduate education in favor of technology education, internships and apprenticeships.

Gross says he believes that college served a purpose when jobs were abundant, but in this economy – with a 9% unemployment rate – a job isn’t a sure thing. That number is even higher for people with disabilities, who face a 15% jobless rate. Furthermore, the average college graduate has $24,000 of debt and total student loans.

For people with disabilities, Gross could be onto something. There’s a growing need for middle and high-tech skills across the U.S., where companies are currently turning to foreign workers to fill. People with disabilities are technologically savvy; technology (and assistive technology) helps put this group on a level playing field, and could be the answer to higher unemployment rates among this talent pool. There’s also the added benefit for that tech jobs allow for flexible schedules and workers can often work virtually, which is a positive for those who cannot work in an office.

Gross says U.S. government must take a leading role in job creation. While he says the private sector is the best source of long-term job creation, the government must put its faith in our nation’s youth – which will encourage corporate spending on a homegrown marketplace that’s skilled in math, science and technology, he says. Where would the jobs come from? Investments in new industries, like green technologies.

Gross isn’t the only financial leader who believes on-the-job tech training could do far more for a person’s career and the U.S. economy than a four-year degree. Peter Thiel, an early investor in Facebook and head of hedge fund Clarium Capital, recently established a foundation to give 20 $100,000 grants to teenagers who would drop out of school and become world-changing visionaries.

Of course, not all students can be like Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates and drop out of school. Economist Fareed Zakaria proposes a program similar to the GI Bill, with a focus on retraining existing unemployed workers and redirecting future students. Instead of liberal arts, Zakaria suggests focusing on technical education, technical institutes and polytechnics as well as apprenticeship programs.

Other countries seemingly have already taken this path. In Germany, people with good technical skills but limited college education can earn a decent living, Gross says. In China, investment in green energy requires the government to get involved and fund projects, which has created millions of jobs.

In summary, our country needs to do more to give high school graduates a leg up over global competition. The same argument certainly holds true for people with disabilities, a group that can truly benefit from technology-skill building and training programs that will help them better compete in the 21^st century marketplace.

With all the talk of veterans returning home with service-connected disabilities, it’s inspiring to hear about companies that are supporting programs that help veterans, wounded warriors and their families transition back into civilian life, and in particular, find jobs. For example, Hire Disability Solutions held its Global Veterans Career Expo in May for veterans with disabilities and their families, which was attended by blue-chip companies looking to hire from this talent pool.

Another program that’s growing rapidly is Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans (EBV), which began in 2007 at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management and trains veterans in entrepreneurship and small business. The program begins with a three-week online course and culminates in the on-campus residency “boot camp.” There is an application, but no cost to participate. On-site classes are followed by 12 months of ongoing support and mentorship from faculty experts and industry professionals.

Now, Syracuse, along with Florida State University, will continue their EBV program success with Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans’ Families (EBF-V), which teaches small-business ownership skills to family members who now serve as caregivers of military veterans with service-related disabilities, as well as spouses of those killed in action. FSU classes will start in February 2012 at its Panama City campus.

Many corporations are on hand to make the EBV and other programs financially viable. Ernst & Young is the founding partner of the EBV program, and the Walmart Foundation has pledged a five-year, $10 million commitment to the EBF-V. PepsiCo also supports the EBV program through its Dream Machine recycling initiative, and has committed to $500,000 in support over the next several years, all of which is helping EBV to have a “profound and enduring impact on the lives of so many of our veterans and their families,” says Mike Haynie, the founder and national executive director of EBV programs who is a veteran and an amputee.

Haynie is also the founding director of Syracuse and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s newly created Institute for Veterans and Military Families, a national center focused on the issues impacting veterans and their families post-service. JPMorgan Chase made an initial commitment of $7.5 million to support the institute. Also, JPMorgan Chase and Syracuse teamed up to create a new, tuition-free online Technology Certificate for post-9/11 veterans who are pursuing a career in technology.

It’s heartening to hear how companies are providing financial and other support to help wounded warriors and their families build new dreams and chart a new path towards meaningful employment. These programs demonstrate their commitment to our nation’s heroes and give new meaning to the words “welcome home.”

Today, disability encompasses more than just the stereotypical view that “emphasize wheelchair users and a few other classic groups such as blind people and deaf people.” People with disabilities include the child born with a congenital condition such as cerebral palsy, or the young soldier who loses his leg to a land mine, or the middle-aged woman with severe arthritis, or the older person with dementia, among many others, the report says. And their health conditions can be visible or invisible; temporary or long term; static, episodic, or degenerating; painful or inconsequential.

The June 2011 report depicts the situation of people with disabilities around the world and touches on areas such as health, environment, education; and employment. Some interesting findings:

- Childhood disability (0–14 years) is estimated to be 95 million (5.1%) children, of which 13 million (0.7%) have a “severe disability.”

- Global aging especially in wealthier countries has a major influence on disability trends because older people tend to live longer.

- People with disabilities and their families have excessive out-of-pocket expenses such as for health care services, assistive devices, and transportation. In the U.K., cost estimates range from 11% to 69% of income.

- Women with disabilities around the world experience gender discrimination as well as disabling barriers and may be less likely to marry than non-disabled women.

While the report makes wide-sweeping recommendations for global governments and organizations, such as developing a national disability strategy, better research, working to improve public perception and requiring relevant training on disability issues, WHO also gives some pointers to the private sector, which is refreshing to read. For corporations, WHO recommends:

- Promoting diversity and inclusion in work.

- Facilitating the employment of persons with disabilities, ensuring that recruitment is equitable, that reasonable accommodations are provided, and that employees who become disabled are supported to return to work.

- Removing barriers of access to microfinance, so that persons with disabilities can develop their own businesses.

- Ensuring information communication and technology (ICT) products, systems, and services are accessible to persons with disabilities.

WHO and World Bank write that people with disabilities have diverse personal factors with differences in race, ethnicity, gender, age, and sexuality. Each has his or her personal preferences and responses to disability. Though this group is diverse, know they share a common link: Facing adversity and learning how to adapt to, and surmount, the barriers that stand in their way of full economic and social participation.

In 1957, when he was 2 weeks old, Gary Patti just started crying and crying and it was neither his diaper nor hunger. Distressed and worried and confused, his parents finally discovered that he had somehow broken his femur bone. Now today, child abuse might well have been suspected, but it was appropriately written off as a freak accident. Yet only two weeks later, the crying resumed and another broken bone was discovered.

Surely child abuse might then have been assumed. But the earnestness and the almost transparent despair of his parents kept everyone searching for the real answer. Other breaks followed and one sharp doctor isolated the problem. It was osteogenesis imperfecta, a extremely rare genetic disorder that negatively retards the body’s production of collagen, a natural protein that strengthens bones. Often referred to as ‘brittle bone disease’, it comes with a lifetime sentence, no cure and great pain attached. Fragile and brittle and twisted, its victims will forever be.

For Gary Patti, it would result in almost 100 major fractures before he reached the age of 12. Growth was impacted and there was nothing normal about a childhood that was spent in and out of hospitals, a childhood devoid of play or classrooms or formative friendships. Long tutored, his first placement in an actual school wasn’t until his junior year at Newark’s Arts High, where all other attendees went because they could sing or dance or play a mean piano. But Gary wound up there, only to be isolated again, because it was Newark’s only wheelchair accessible high school facility.

He encountered all the socialization issues impacting one who had for so long been isolated from what was normal and there too, he encountered the stark disparities and injustices that separated the able bodied from the disabled.

But Gary was blessed with what he calls “a resilient spirit” and a rare determination. And despite those stark differences and injustices, his inert outgoing nature, interest in people, and willingness to take risks ascended, all qualities that he believes his mother instilled in him. So he was drawn to wheel chair athletics and to the one college in the land that friends at the Division of Vocational Rehab and a visiting nurse told him best embraced those who were then referred to as handicapped, the University of Illinois.

To Illinois he went and blossomed in student government and in wheel chair athletics and in a performance, The Sideshow, which was a satirical look at people’s perceptions of the disabled. He excelled, in everything, in fact, except the classroom.

“In my youth, with a primary support system of church and family that was non-disabled, I found myself wanting to associate with people who used their feet and not with my fellow disabled,” Gary said. “In my fellow disabled, I saw too much passiveness and acceptance and resignation, while I rather longed for independence and achievement and success. So keen was I on this that I remember being repulsed when my Mom gave me a brochure for a Handicapped Summer Camp. Disabled as I may be, I wanted to be with the abled.”

“Of course, my perspective would mature, as I grew wiser and today, I am involved with so many disabled groups and efforts,” he added.

Back home at Rutgers, after his Dad’s open heart surgery in 1978, while preparing for the wheel chair nationals, he was introduced to a nautilus training facility that left him in pain for days.

“I was so impressed with the equipment that a friend and I did our due diligence, sought a $35,000 start up loan from the Small Business Administration’s handicapped assistance program, and opened a small 2500 square foot nautilus center in Cranford, a 2500 square feet that wasn’t even accessible,” added Gary.

Over the years, he faced many setbacks and challenges, but today his Medal Gold Fitness in Garwood, New Jersey and its 25,000 square feet is a great success. It is attached to an 8000 square feet athletic performance or speed center designed for young athletes looking to discover that winning edge. Today, his 73 employees, including a number of disabled, bear witness to his success and contributions. For a life full of setbacks and “punches in the gut” never dismayed him or cut him down.

“I have lived a life where a hard sneeze could break a bone and where a series of breaks in my adult life took me out of my game for two years. Recoveries have become increasingly difficult and I have been forced to ask myself if I can I go through this again far too many times,” he added.

Well, he did and he does as he always has. He lives and he lives large. He likes to say that no one ever fails, they just quit. And his message today and the thematic underpinning of his soon to be published biography, Unbreakable Hope, is to give what you are and not what you have. A frequent speaker at churches and schools, he points to his own life lived and to the hundreds of opportunities for him to quit.

“But,” he says, “you must never quit on yourselves, for in the heart of disability, there is always the strength of ability, be it head and heart and spirit alone. You must be relentless for yourself.”

At his performance center today, he holds free classes for young disabled children. Designed to get the most out of the physical abilities left to them, Gary is always taken by their wide eyes and look of surprise when they learn that he, in the wheelchair, is the owner, the owner of place dedicated to enabling.

The telltale, giveaway line of the martyred gay advocate, Harvey milk was “You gotta give them hope.” So too is it for our impassioned advocate for the disable and abled alike, Garry Patti — “You just gotta give them hope.” A hope that every single day of his life bears witness to!

Shortly after returning home after a 15 month exile in hospitals and rehabs, an exile that was complicated by near death and comas and surgeries and atrophy and amputations, an exile that stripped me of both legs and all but the stub of one finger, Jeff Klare, the founder and chief executive officer of Hire Disability Solutions, somehow came rumbling into my life.

I met him through the Meadowlands Regional Chamber of Commerce where I had once long served. But in my post apocalyptic, disabled and dependent life, I held on to only 2 vestiges of a once great purpose driven working life. The door to teaching at Fairleigh Dickinson University remained open, but online, which scared me for two reasons – the first, because I was a technological dinosaur and the second, because I was an in-your-face warrior in and lover of the classroom.

So I was holding on to those hallowed halls by the fingernails that I no longer had. Then too, my old friend, Jim Kirkos at the Chamber, welcomed my continued contributions to Meadowlands USA, a magazine that I had edited for more than 25 years.

Both allowed me to work from home, a now essential component of my new and non-driving world. As luck would have it, an early assignment from Jim sent me off to write an article about Hire Disability Solutions, an assignment that introduced me to the great passions and visions of Jeff Klare. In the course of conversation, he was introduced to my history and I to his and I came away with great respect for him and he somehow for me.

He proceeded to invite me to some of his organizations many events and he asked me to be an “expert” contributor for one of his outreach arms, for which I did answer some heartfelt and tender questions and do a bit of good. He also invited to be the keynote speaker at a Bergen Community College Conference in 2010 aimed at getting more companies to look to the great benefits of hiring the disabled.

Then too, he and his Hire Disability Solutions also became tremendous supporters of my Friends of Rich Fritzky Trust, where their perennial presence at our Annual Giants Banquet mightily helped to sustain its success.

So having recently determined to throw off the yoke of Social Security Disability, to relight the fires of productive capacity, and to begin altering the paradigm of dependency that had become my life, I set off to work more (speaking, teaching, writing, consulting, etc.) But having enhanced the relationship with FDU and garnered a couple of additional writing assignments and having, at least, produced more than disability had, I still wasn’t taking the bite out of the dependency on the Trust that I had hoped to.

So I penned one of those almost desperate, “can you think of any work for me to do, old friend” emails and fired them off to the unsuspecting. Within an hour, surprisingly and unexpectedly, Jeff Klare responded, talked a bit about their Newsletter, sung the praises of their upcoming “To Be a Hero, Hire a Hero” jobs fair, invited me to write 2 articles a month for the Newsletter, and said that he’d leave the topics each month to me.

Had I asked, I know that he would have said no to this, but hey, the topic was mine to choose. So I decided that it was best to salute my immersion into this world by saluting and paying tribute to the man responsible for this world in the first place, a friend who goes above and beyond and who wears his passions on his sleeve.

With that in mind, I looked at all recent posts on his website, looked at the articles that were referenced, and traced his unrelenting stream of consciousness on Facebook. One of the most impassioned articles was the Huffington Post’s, “Out of Work, Out of War” piece’ which had a Jeff Klare thematic underpinning. The conclusion read:

“We need to ensure the skills they’ve learned in the field transfer into the certifications they need to perform those same duties at home,” Sen. Murray, who is the chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, wrote in an email. “We need to improve outreach and oversight of current administration efforts to address this problem, and we have to eliminate the stigma many veterans feel is attached to their service because of the invisible wounds of war.”

Sound familiar! In the wake of the historic Jobs Fair at the New Yorker in May, Jeff was quoted by CBS as saying, “Many of the service members come back and they don’t know how to tell their story – to tell the story of how does a person who has operated a .50 caliber machine gun fit into JP Morgan Chase. And those who can tell their story, be it as a welder or medical technician or electrician find that their story is non transferable because of certifications or unionization or what have you. Committed, loyal, and dedicated, they drift and there is no excuse for it.”

On this subject, Jeff Klare has advocated, urged, coddled, praised, and begged people to step forward and to become part of the solution. The day after the fair, he noted that 100 veterans were already hired, as a result of Hire Disability Solutions’ effort, but there was no satisfaction, only continued urgency. It had to be more than 100!

Tired and relentless, he reminds everyone to, “Get ready for the “Be a Hero Bike Ride” on September 25th.” From the George Washington Bridge to West Point, he urges everyone to start training and to help raise money for the children of those killed in the line of duty.

He regularly uses words like hero or triumph and he betrays his own relentless commitment with quotes like, “Are you a giver or a taker” or “Words don’t mean anything, actions mean everything,” or “People only appreciate what they are missing, never what is right there in front of their own noses,” or “Some of the biggest companies in America talk about how much they want to help our veterans and then do nothing.

Go figure.” And in light of Starbucks refusal to get involved with the Fair, he sings Dunkin Donuts praises.

To his 1773, friends, he unleashes his passions and his frustration, and his unbridled commitment to all disabled jobs seekers and dreamers, veterans and non-veterans alike. Tired, frustrated, edgy, happy, grateful, he is all of that and more, in his making a profound difference, day by lonely day.

Yes that was 1773 friends and growing, I am sure, and I am proud to be one among them.

Following the Iraq and Afghanistan wars of recent years, the philosophy that soldiers with physical and mental disabilities cannot work has been flipped on its head. Today’s soldiers have been rehabilitated, are eager to work – and many companies are ready and willing to hire them.

Looking for a Few Good Heroes
That much was clear last week at Hire Disability Solution’s first-ever Global Veterans Career Expo, which was held in New York City. More than 2,000 and qualified veterans, their spouses and family members filled the New Yorker hotel to participate in one-on-one interviews, workshops and networking sessions, and mentoring opportunities. The theme was “Be a Hero, Hire a Hero,” and the event is part of Hire Disability Solutions’ ongoing commitment to placing veterans with disabilities into jobs.

Companies traditionally known for hiring veterans, such as federal contractors who must comply with certain hiring requirements, had an outstanding presence at the expo, including Caterpillar, a major U.S. defense manufacturer. The halls also were lined with blue-chip firms like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Verizon, all who were excited about the prospects of bringing veterans, including those with disabilities, on board into professional jobs.

Wounded Warriors Return Home
Currently there are about 300,000 recently returned veterans in the U.S. Armed Forces who have one or more disabilities. They include soldiers who may have lost one or more limbs as the result of a bomb or an interactive explosive device (IED). Other “signature injuries” of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Fortunately, our nation’s wounded warriors with physical disabilities receive excellent care; many are fitted with arm or leg prostheses to help them participate in society. Conditions like TBI and PTSD are treatable, and often temporary.

This is good news for Corporate America, who will greatly benefit from the leadership skills of our nation’s veterans. Military service can be strong predictor of a candidate’s leadership skills, their ability to receive and respond to supervision and training, and their sense of commitment to the job, says Jeff Klare, CEO of Hire Disability Solutions. “We know today that soldiers are loyal and dedicated to whatever they put their mind to,” he adds.

Specialized Military Recruiting
The nearly 100 employers at the expo agreed. Some companies decked out their booths with military-themed brochures and flyers, including MetLife, which is looking to build out its financial services operations, says Bonnie DeVito, a recruiter. Verizon’s flyers featured a photo of service member and a list of benefits of working with the telecommunications giant, including up to $8,000 in tuition assistance for college degrees. “We’re always looking for high-performers and self-motivators like our nation’s soldiers,” says Nicolas Relacion, a military recruiter for Verizon.

Other companies kept their marketing materials general, but all hands were on deck to meet and greet each and every job candidate who walked up to their booths. Jessica Rodino, a recruiter at UBS, says her company is looking to hire in their wealth management division as well as for corporate jobs such as in operations, control and compliance, communications, real estate and information technology. Enterprise-Rent-a-Car sought candidates for its management trainee program, and a handful of universities, including the University of Phoenix and City University New York, had hopes of drawing new students onto their brick-and-mortar and online campuses.

Non-profit and military service organizations also lent their support, including America’s Heroes at Work, a U.S. Department of Labor project that addresses the employment challenges of returning service members and veterans living with TBI and PTSD. The Professional Golf Association was there, too, to promote Birdies for the Brave, an initiative where PGA TOUR players and corporate partners raise millions of dollars for wounded warriors and military families. “We do everything from fundraising tournaments to letter-writing to care packages for soldiers,” says Daniel Chelel, the community outreach program administrator for the PGA TOUR.

Workshops for Learning
In addition to the career booths, Hire Disability Solutions organized a series of workshops aimed at helping veterans with disabilities learn about topics such as transitioning to civilian employment, buying a home, starting a business and accessing VA health benefits. JP Morgan Chase held a series on financial literacy, and Caterpillar presented a session on making a successful transition to Corporate America.

The Global Veteran’s Career Expo’s sponsors included corporate employers and military agencies and universities. It was held in partnership with The New York Times, Veterans Across America, RecruitMilitary and the New York City Business Leadership Network.

For those who could not attend the Expo in person, it will also run virtually (online) for several weeks at military bases around the world, helping to ensure that wounded warriors get a fair shot at the best jobs Corporate America has to offer.

Check out CNN’s coverage of the Global Veteran’s Career Expo here.

Examine Your Goals
First, think about your organization’s overall mission and how this population of job seekers fits into your recruitment efforts. Some companies might be looking to hire veterans for patriotic reasons, while others are looking to hire this population because of the pure return on investment.  Regardless of the reason, they’re skilled team players and they tend to work well independently and deliver results in a timely and efficient manner. In other words, the very valuable skills they tend to bring to the table include leadership, management, teamwork, accountability and responsibility.

In order to help you plan for your hiring initiative, elicit and write down input from your coworkers. Brainstorm and identify needs and potential partners; recognize what is already in place and list questions. Regular meetings to discuss the hiring of veterans will ensure that all items you’ve discussed are addressed in a timely manner.

Keep an Open Mind
Throughout your planning, it’s important to note that veterans and transitioning service members shouldn’t be pigeonholed into a position or a career pathway simply because of their military service. There are a variety of industries and positions that service members can apply their own knowledge and skills. It’s ultimately up to the veteran’s interest, knowledge and skill set when it comes to an ideal post-military career.

A great place to start is America’s Heroes at Work, a U.S. Department of Labor project that addresses the employment challenges of returning service members and veterans living with TBI and PTSD. The organization has created a free, step-by-step Veterans Hiring Toolkit for employers. America’s Heroes at Work encourages employers to keep an open mind when looking to hire from this group.  Though some sources have attempted to identify the top civilian jobs for transitioning Service Members and Veterans (see Online-Education.net’s “Top Ten” and Money Magazine’s “Top 20″), it is important to consider there are many industries not identified in which Service Members can apply their knowledge and skills.

Look into Tax Incentives
Don’t forget about tax incentives. When it comes to filling out paperwork, most people think that it’s not worth the effort. But how would you feel about filling out paperwork that could save your organization up to $4,800 per veteran hire? Actually, the laws are straightforward and the forms are relatively easy. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC), IRS Form 5884 is the primary tax credit. Also, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides tax incentives for hiring of any veteran (not just veterans with disabilities or those with service-connected disabilities). For more information, contact your state’s WOTC coordinator.

Learn the culture
It’s also helpful to learn about military culture. Acquiring knowledge about this population’s values and structure can result in an employer’s improved ability to understand, communicate, and effectively interact with service members and their families.

You can learn more about military culture regarding rank structure, branches of service, active versus reserve component, demographics, and military speak from a variety of websites, including America’s Heroes at Work and EssentialLearning.net, which offers a free a military cultural competence test.

Attend career events
There are many military-themed recruitment events that are designed to help companies hire recently returned veterans, including the Global Veterans Career Expo, hosted by Hire Disability Solutions. The first expo was held on May 24 in New York City, and included nearly 100 employers and federal agencies all looking for top contenders for professional positions.

The Department of Defense hosts the Hiring Heroes Career Fairs throughout the year around the country. And The New York Times held a veterans career event in November called Salute Our Heroes: Veterans Career Fair and Job Expo. These events are also great opportunities for employers to find candidates for internships and mentoring roles, and there are usually virtual recruiting components available, such as online resume submissions.

By examining your mission, considering the needs of the job-seeking veterans, taking advantage of tax incentives and attending career events, you’ll be well on your way to a solid plan to recruit qualified veterans to your workforce.

With so many ways to communicate with customers and employees these days, and with the rapid speed at which technology is evolving, it can be almost impossible for employers to keep up and make sure their communications tools are accessible to people with disabilities. From videos and social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, to websites for both internal and external use, removing accessibility barriers is one of the most critical things you can do to make sure your company and brand is inclusive to everyone.

The Job Accommodation Network (JAN) has 10 practical tips for making sure your company’s website is accessible. JAN, a service of the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, provides free, confidential technical assistance about job accommodations and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

1. Review online application systems. For employers who are providing materials to job seekers as well as employees, your online human resource system should be accessible. This includes recruiting tools, applications, calendars, benefit forms, time sheets and leave relations. An online HR system that has forms or other unavoidable custom designs needs to have alternative options such as e‑mail, fax, telephone or mail.

2. Use text descriptions. For any type of visual material such as graphics and programs, you should use text‑only alternatives called alt‑tags.  Alt‑tags are supported by a variety of browsers and are basically text descriptions of graphics. These are used for instances when images cannot be seen by the user. You can ask your web master to test your website for alt-tags using free screen reading software such as nonvisual desktop access, or NVDA.

3. Caption all audio and video. For all audio and video applications, podcasts and trainings, including YouTube videos, try to use open or closed captions.  If audio and video are designed in-house, you can hire a service to caption the audio and then that service will match the text with the exact timings that you need. It will cost around $100 for a five-minute video.

4. Maintain a consistent page design. Keep a standard header and footer that includes navigational information and statements on accessibility, the disclaimer, copyright, site map, as well as privacy. This will decrease confusion when people are moving within your websites and moving from page to page.

5. Consider your colors. For those who are colorblind, websites should have enough contrast so that the background and the text are distinct to allow for other means of conveying information besides color. There are many online tools that can be used to simulate what a website would look like to someone with color vision deficiency.

6. Allow keyboard navigation. Programming keyboard navigation into a website will enable individuals who use assistive technologies or have fine motor, vision or cognitive impairments to easily navigate a website without having to use a mouse.

7. Set user controls. Items with audio, video, motion, and even those timing elements should be programmed to allow a user to control variance of sound, visuals and time limits.  Menus should allow users to be able to mute, increase and decrease volume options for visuals. For any moving objects, you want to make sure your pages don’t time out when someone is working slower than expected, perhaps due to a disability. Also, elements that blink more than three times per second can induce seizures, so steer clear of these.

8. Use default human language. Programming the default human language as a page allows assistive technologies such as braille translators or screen-reading software to provide more accurate content to the user. For example, if a page is written in English, there’s a hidden piece of code in the webpage template that tells the assistive technology what language to cue.

9. Provide accessible documents. Companies should post and provide users with accessible documents, such as accessible PDF and Microsoft Office documents. Adobe Acrobat now has a built-in accessibility check that will help you find accessibility errors in PDF documents, although it’s not perfect.

10. Evaluate! You can evaluate your the website using an automated checker.  Depending on the web browser, there may be built-in tools or extensions available that can be used to quickly evaluate a website. There are also several online tools such as the Wave Accessibility Tool from Web Aim.

To that end, JAN has developed a tool called SNAP, whose acronym stands for the following: “Select” IT people who are accessibility advocates; don’t take “No” for an answer when it comes finding solutions; “accept” challenges for all types of users and don’t ignore the feedback and suggestions from people who use your site; and “prioritize” accessibility first, with support from top management.

SNAP is an Excel spreadsheet consisting of 15 steps, with each step graded with green for fully accessible, yellow for partially accessible, red for inaccessible, and NA for not applicable. It can be downloaded here.

Remember, a good web master can make your website user‑friendly as well as accessible. So select well, don’t take no for an answer, get as much feedback as you can, and prioritize accessibility for everyone.

The Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) recently published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposes to strengthen affirmative action requirements of federal contractors and subcontractors for Veterans protected under the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 (VEVRAA). Veterans protected by VEVRAA include those with disabilities and those recently discharged as well as those who served during a war, campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge is authorized. Check out the NPRM link to the Federal Register, where a list of frequently asked questions can be found.

OFCCP proposes several changes to the requirement that employers doing business with the federal government engage in specific types of outreach and recruitment that target veterans. One proposal requires federal contractors to evaluate annually the effectiveness of their efforts to ensure that protected Veterans have access to employment opportunities. The NPRM also proposes requiring federal contractors to establish and maintain quantitative data on the number of protected Veterans they learn about through job referrals, the number of protected Veterans applying for jobs, and the number of protected Veterans they hire. OFCCP’s proposal also requires contractors to establish annual hiring benchmarks based on available data and other relevant information. These benchmarks will enable contractors to measure their success in recruiting, employing and retaining protected Veterans.

Any company, organization or individual can submit comments on OFCCP’s NPRM electronically at www.regulations.gov. Comments must be received on or before June 27, 2011.