We often treat accessibility as something that begins with an accommodation request.

An employee encounters a barrier.
They disclose a need.
They ask for help.
Then the organization responds.

But what if we moved some of that work upstream?

Accessible documents from the start.

Captions already turned on.

Meetings designed for different ways of participating.

Digital tools evaluated for accessibility before they’re purchased.

Flexible ways to communicate, learn, contribute, and work.

Managers who understand that access doesn’t always look the same for everyone.

That is what I mean when I talk about access before ask.

Individual accommodations will always be important. But the more accessibility we intentionally build into everyday workplace practices, the fewer barriers employees have to navigate just to do their jobs.

And there’s another benefit:

Employees get to spend less energy advocating for access and more energy contributing their talent.

Accessibility isn’t an extra feature of a good workplace.

It’s part of how a good workplace works.

As we recognize National Disability Employment Awareness Month, this is a great question for organizations to ask:

Where are employees still required to ask for access that we could have already built in?