This week we’ll be joining businesses around the world to celebrate Global Inclusion Week. Run by one of our amazing partners, Inclusive Employers, the primary goal is to shine a light on inclusion in a global context. The theme for this year is ‘Cultural Intelligence: Inclusion Across Cultures’ which encourages organisations to explore how they can navigate the challenges and opportunities of engaging and connecting with colleagues operating across the globe.
The Rise of a Globally Interconnected Workforce
In today’s interconnected world many businesses operate across multiple continents, using digital platforms to maintain real-time communication among employees in different countries.
The internet enables employees who work remotely or in a different country to collaborate on work, stay up to date with company news, and access essential resources and tools, ensuring they remain integrated and productive members of the team.
However, this reliance on technology can exclude individuals with disabilities, who are neurodivergent or speak English as a second language if digital platforms aren’t accessible. Without inclusive design and accessibility features, these employees may face significant barriers to effective communication and collaboration. So, ensuring digital platforms are accessible is crucial for fostering an inclusive work environment where everyone can contribute fully.
What are the Benefits of Connecting your Global Workforce?
Enhanced Collaboration
Connecting employees across different regions facilitates collaboration on projects. Through virtual meetings, shared documents, and collaborative platforms, teams can work together in real-time, overcoming geographical barriers and time zone differences. This enables faster decision-making, improved coordination, and a more cohesive approach to problem-solving.
Diverse Perspectives
Global connectivity encourages the exchange of diverse perspectives among team members from various backgrounds and cultures. When individuals with different experiences and viewpoints come together to tackle challenges, they bring unique insights and ideas to the table. This diversity of thought sparks innovation, creativity, and out-of-the-box solutions, ultimately driving the company forward in a competitive landscape.
Better Talent Utilisation
Connecting a global workforce enables companies to tap into talent pools from different regions. This ensures that the right skills are utilised for each task or project, maximising efficiency and effectiveness. Whether it’s leveraging language skills, cultural insights, or specialised expertise, having access to a diverse array of talents allows companies to adapt to changing market demands and stay ahead of the competition.
Download our 2024 Language Report
Download this report to read about the benefits of a multillingual website, facts and statistics about the global populations and the benefits of using machine translation to connect with your international audience.
How to Make Your Website Inclusive to Your Workforce Worldwide?
Multilingual Support
Over 7,000 languages exist in the world and 7 of 10 countries with the most remote workers do not speak english natively. Providing your website in multiple languages ensures that employees and users from different regions can access and understand the content. Switching between languages should be easy and intuitive. Additionally, localization goes beyond translation; it involves adapting content to the local culture, including date formats, units of measurement, and cultural references, to make the user experience more relevant and comfortable. Explore our blog The Importance of Multilingual Websites to learn more.
Accessibility Compliance
Ensuring accessibility compliance means adhering to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which help make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. This includes providing text alternatives for non-text content, ensuring that colour contrasts are adequate, and making all functionality available from a keyboard.
Cultural Sensitivity
Using inclusive imagery and content that reflects a variety of cultures, genders, and abilities is important for making all users feel represented and respected. Avoiding content that might be offensive or inappropriate in different cultural contexts helps prevent alienating any part of your audience. Using gender-neutral and inclusive language further ensures that your website communicates respect for all individuals, regardless of their identity. This approach fosters a welcoming and supportive environment for a diverse global workforce. Download our Inclusive Communications Guide for more information on providing inclusive communications.
How can Recite Me Help?
Assistive Toolbar
One of the best ways to avoid all of the question marks and make your website inclusive to as many users as possible is to use assistive technology. Recite Me’s assistive toolbar makes websites inclusive by providing:
- Text translations in over 100 languages
- Text-to-speech in 65 languages
- A built-in dictionary and thesaurus to check definitions
One of the most significant benefits of our toolbar is that you won’t just get linguistic assistance. You’ll also get the entire range of other features that help employees with various disabilities, including physical, visual, auditory, cognitive, and neurological conditions. In addition to the linguistic features above, the toolbar also offers:
- Font personalisation for size, typeface, and colour
- A mask screen tool to help with focus
- A ruler to make reading easier.
- A built-in dictionary and thesaurus
- Audio file content downloads as an alternative to real-time reading
- Customised and accessible PDF downloads
- The ability to strip away image carousels and graphics
Accessibility Checker
Our Recite Me Accessibility Checker is a tool that higher education providers can use to highlight and fix inaccessible website design. The tool works by taking the URL of your website and performing a scan of the domain. The checker will then pull a report of accessibility issues into an actionable list, with suggestions and recommendations to help you resolve the issues. The step by step process of the checker is as follows:
- Step 1: Scan Your Domains
- Step 2: Identify Accessibility Issues
- Step 3: Fix Accessibility Errors
- Step 4: Track Your Progress
- Step 5: Download & Share and Accessibility Report
Download Our Online Accessibility and Inclusion Toolkit
Recite Me’s Online Inclusion Toolkit has been developed to help businesses make a real difference for the lives of the millions of people around the world who encounter online barriers.
The toolkit provides practical advice covering the complete landscape of online accessibility. Download your free toolkit now to unlock the power of digital inclusion.
