Adobe : Celebrates International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2021

Adobe Celebrates International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2021 Leading toward an inclusive, accessible and sustainable post-COVID-19 world

This week we will mark International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD), aligning with the theme for this year, Building back better: towards an inclusive, accessible and sustainable post COVID-19 world by, for, and with persons with disabilities. This year's theme focuses on recognizing the impact the pandemic had on people living with disabilities and the immediate response necessary through open, inclusive, and innovative digital solutions, tools, and resources.

With many industries looking to return to "normal," we must continue to keep inclusivity and the disability community at the forefront of planning and policies. Using this past year as a learning experience helps us to better understand diverse communities to further enrich and enable people's work and daily lives.

Through our Adobe For All vision, we strongly believe that everyone deserves respect, equal treatment, and opportunity, and that we must actively work to build diverse and inclusive workplaces and communities. We support employee engagement and diversity and inclusion with our employee networks, including Access at Adobe, to help employees build a supportive culture of inclusivity. When people feel respected and included, we believe they can be more creative, innovative, and successful.

https://blog.adobe.com/en/promotions/adobe-life/diversity-inclusion

Below is a list of events we are hosting in December to help recognize this important milestone and impactful community:

• Our Access at Adobe employee network is hosting an internal discussion with product and workplace design teams, to share insights and opportunities that can help further accessibility for all. The session will offer tips on how to champion disability inclusion by, using visual descriptions when introducing yourself during meetings, leverage closed captioning or transcription features, and adding alternative text to images across communications channels. We encourage everyone to be an ally and share their voice on disability inclusion, by thinking through accessibility considerations across workplace design, product experiences, and interactions with one another.
• As part of Adobe's Women Create initiative to amplify the stories of inspiring women who are using their creativity to produce meaningful and lasting change, actress and disability activist, Lolo Spencer will share her career journey and the importance of combining creativity, passion and purpose to define your own story and success. The Adobe x Create & Cultivate mentor session is Thursday, December 16, 2021, at 9:30 AM PDT. You can RSVP for the session here.
• The Adobe Wellness team is bringing in a licensed therapist to hold a group counseling session exclusive to Access at Adobe members to work through specific topics that our network asked for help with namely: anxiety around returning to the office, disclosing disability without compromising privacy, and effectively requesting accommodations.
• We also showcase employee stories like, Sipan Asatryan, who has been visually impaired since childhood in Yerevan, Armenia. After learning to use the white cane to navigate the world, Sipan has now become an advocate for disability inclusion in Armenia and beyond as well as working as a quality engineer on the Adobe Digital Experience team. Read additional stories from our employees across the globe Jessica Michaels who is raising awareness around autism spectrum disorder (ASD) - and Lauren Gardner, who has cerebral palsy and is encouraging others to speak up.
• We're always seeking opportunities to support and work with leading organizations to drive greater impact, and we're proud to be partnering with the Disability Rights Fund to support the important work they do to drive progress and advance rights for persons with disabilities. The Disability Rights Fund is a grantmaking collaborative between donors and the global disability rights community that provides financial and technical resources to organizations of persons with disabilities to advocate for equal rights and full participation in society.
• We support and build upon our work with the G3ict - the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies, an advocacy initiative launched in 2006 by the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development, in cooperation with the Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at UN DESA. Its mission is to facilitate and support the implementation of the dispositions of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) promoting digital accessibility and Assistive Technologies.
• We continue to evolve our disability awareness training for employees and plan to launch the new training content later this year.

While International Day of Persons with Disabilities promotes and recognizes disability inclusion on this special day, we're committed to empowering our employees and colleagues year-round. We will continue to share more of our initiatives and stories throughout the year and help promote and encourage others on the importance of accessibility.

#IDPWD #AdobeForAll

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/10/01/inclusion-and-creativity-for-all-adobe-celebrates-national-disability-employment-awareness-month

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/07/26/celebrating-anniversary-americans-with-disability-act

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/05/20/the-evolution-of-digital-accessibility-over-the-decades