The Disability Confident scheme helps employers improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people.
If you’re thinking about becoming Disability Confident, you might be wondering what’s actually involved. What do the different levels mean? Who can sign up? And what changes might you need to make?
Here’s what you need to know.
What is the Disability Confident scheme?
Disability Confident is a UK government scheme that helps employers create more inclusive workplaces and improve opportunities for disabled people and people with health conditions.
It’s free to join, voluntary and open to employers of all sizes and sectors.
The scheme encourages employers to look at how they recruit and support people, spot potential barriers and make changes that can improve the experience for disabled candidates and employees.
What are the three Disability Confident levels?
There are three levels, starting with making a commitment and progressing through to becoming a Disability Confident Leader.
Level 1: Disability Confident Committed
This is where every employer starts.
To become Disability Confident Committed, you’ll need to agree to five commitments. These include making your recruitment process inclusive and accessible, communicating vacancies, offering interviews to disabled people who meet the minimum criteria, providing reasonable adjustments and supporting existing employees who acquire a disability or long-term health condition.
You’ll also need to commit to at least one activity that makes a difference for disabled people, such as offering work experience, apprenticeships or paid employment.
Level 2: Disability Confident Employer
The next step is becoming a Disability Confident Employer.
At this level, you’ll complete a self-assessment looking at how your organisation attracts and recruits disabled people, as well as how you support, retain and develop your employees.
You’ll be encouraged to look at areas such as barriers within your recruitment process, reasonable adjustments and whether the information you provide is accessible.
Level 3: Disability Confident Leader
Level 3 is the highest level of the scheme.
Disability Confident Leaders are expected to go beyond their own organisation and encourage other employers to improve disability inclusion too.
To reach this level, you’ll need to have your Level 2 self-assessment independently validated and show how you’re championing Disability Confident with other employers.
Who can become a Disability Confident employer?
The scheme is open to UK employers of all sizes and across all sectors.
You don’t need to have everything in place before you get started. Every organisation begins at Level 1, Disability Confident Committed, and can work its way through the different levels over time.
Disability Confident status lasts for up to three years before it needs to be renewed.
What does your website have to do with Disability Confident?
Quite a lot of recruitment now happens online.
Think about the typical candidate experience. Someone might browse your careers website, search for vacancies, read a job description and learn more about your organisation before they’ve ever spoken to your recruitment team.
If they struggle to access or consume that information, you’ve potentially created a barrier at the very start of the recruitment process.
That’s particularly relevant to the Disability Confident Scheme. It asks employers to think about accessibility throughout recruitment, identify barriers that could stop disabled people from applying and provide information in accessible formats.
So, when you’re reviewing how inclusive your recruitment process is, your online experience is an important part of the picture.
How can Recite Me support your Disability Confident commitments?
The Recite Me Assistive Toolbar isn’t a shortcut to becoming Disability Confident. What it can do is help make one important part of the candidate experience more inclusive: your website.
People don’t all access online content in the same way. The Recite Me Assistive Toolbar gives visitors a range of tools to customise your website based on their individual needs and preferences.
This includes options to change text size, fonts and colours, alongside text-to-speech functionality, reading aids and translation tools.
For a candidate visiting your careers website, that means more choice over how they access and consume information.
For Minster, the Toolbar has also supported its progress through the Disability Confident scheme:
“As a business, we’re looking to reach Level 3 Disability Confident, and the Recite Me Toolbar has formed a large part of our Disability Confident submission. It makes our website so much more accessible for anyone looking to join Minster as a colleague and apply for a role.”
Annie, Customer Experience Manager
It’s a great example of how improving the online candidate experience can support a wider commitment to becoming a more inclusive employer.
Becoming Disability Confident means looking at where people might face barriers and what you can do to remove them.
With so much of the recruitment journey happening online, your website is an important part of that.
See how Recite Me can make your careers website more inclusive.
