SB4All Benchmarking Tool

Smart Business for all Benchmarking Tool (SB4All)

IAAP is exploring the development and implementation of an inclusivity benchmarking tool that can be packaged and deployed to empower corporations to create disability-inclusive infrastructures that will ensure that customers, employees and job applicants with disabilities are fully included.

Scope of Initiative

Currently, organizations have various laws, guidelines and policies requiring accessibility for employees, customers, and others with disabilities in their digital, physical, and work activities.   Responding to these directives after barriers are identified or requests or complaints are made, can require costly, time-consuming remediation, rebuilding, or complicated workarounds that require constant upkeep. 
 
By contrast, incorporating inclusivity practices up-front and as a matter of regular practice helps minimize accessibility problems, complaints, and special requests, along with their resulting remediation costs. This cross-disability benchmarking tool identifies best practices that anticipate the actions necessary to be inclusive and incorporate them, not as bolted-on, but as built-in.  These tools allow companies to take ownership and control of their disability compliance and inclusion efforts – reducing reliance on vendors, complaints, and after-the-fact fixes.  

To ensure authenticity, Dan Goldstein, Esq. compiled the tool based on input from disability rights consumer organizations. The result is a checklist in three levels: silver, gold and platinum, that gives organizations the ability to know exactly what they need to do to make their organization fully inclusive to persons with disabilities.  This allows them, for example, to make their expectations clear to vendors and hold them accountable, thus leveling the procurement playing field and helping to make sense of quoted costs.

The hoped-for outcome would be organizations ready to hire persons with disabilities and do business with persons with disabilities.  Currently, no other system fills this gap.

Current Objectives:

• Review of the tool in its current state and any updates, changes or additions 
• Implementation of beta testing by corporations
• Options for how best to package the tool for use 
• Discussion on how to marry the tool to existing maturity models
• Consideration of the role of vendors and how to vet them (e.g. a certified vendor community) 
• Options for reporting on and recognizing progress or completion for organizations participating in the process