Celebrating National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) at LinkedIn with new features and important conversations

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), a time to celebrate the contributions of workers with disabilities and to raise awareness around disability employment issues. This year’s theme is “America’s Recovery: Powered by Inclusion.” At LinkedIn, we’re amplifying this theme on a global scale to recognize the incredible contributions and impact that people with disabilities have made in the workplace and economy. 

At the same time, we are acknowledging that the pandemic has exacerbated challenges people with disabilities face in the workplace, including job loss and slower recovery to employment. To help them overcome these hardships and connect to opportunity, we’re providing all of our members the tools to learn skills for in-demand jobs, search and apply for those jobs, and prepare for interviews. Our goal is to make LinkedIn the most inclusive platform possible, and that includes the over one billion people, around the planet, with disabilities or impairments.

Steps to make LinkedIn a more inclusive platform

NDEAM provides us with an opportunity to share some big changes we’re making to our platform to get us one step closer to the vision of creating economic opportunity for everyone:

Launch of dark mode

I'm excited that LinkedIn has rolled out dark mode to give all of our members the best possible visual experience.

Dark mode meets accessibility standards, with color and contrast elements that help reduce eye strain, account for light sensitivities and provide better text legibility. We also added dark mode versions of illustrations that capture a wide variety of industries and fields beyond tech, and represent professionals of all abilities and backgrounds, bringing to life our vibrant and diverse LinkedIn community.

Addition of reflow and orientation support

This year, we’ve also focused on adding reflow and orientation support. Reflow is the process of fitting content to the width of a screen so that all content remains within set boundaries when users zoom in to enlarge content or use smaller screens, like a phone or tablet. The layout and distance between objects on a page might change with enlargement, but all content on the page remains fully usable. Meanwhile, the addition of orientation support means that you can now use LinkedIn in a vertical or horizontal orientation on your device. Both improvements will allow you to consume and engage with content in the way you prefer. 

Our ongoing commitment

These updates all build on recent enhancements, many of which can be found in Melissa Selcher’s April 2021 post, Our journey to make LinkedIn more inclusive and accessible. In addition to Melissa’s updates, over the last couple of months, we’ve also:

• Increased our alternative text character count from 180 characters to 300 so that our members can provide more detailed descriptions for uploaded images,
• Released our first-ever audio described LinkedIn Learning course, Digital Accessibility for the Modern Workplace, and 
• Added Be My Eyes to our Disability Answer Desk so that our members and customers can communicate directly with a Disability Answer Desk agent via video call to get help whenever they need it. Visit linkedin.com/accessibility to learn more.

How you can get involved in our NDEAM celebration

In addition to exploring these product improvements, we invite you to celebrate NDEAM with us by updating your LinkedIn banner with one of our accessibility themes.

Be sure to listen to the special NDEAM edition of our Hello Monday podcast which will feature Hugo award winner, Elsa Sjunneson, a deafblind writer and professor who’s fighting to end ableism. And if you want some ideas on the job application process and accommodations, join our November 3 Disability Talent Panel, hosted by Blake Lawit, LinkedIn's General Counsel. The Disability Talent Panel will bring together managers from Microsoft, Walmart, and John’s Crazy Socks, to discuss the hiring process for job seekers with disabilities. Job seekers will come away with tons of great information from discovering more about these companies’ disability inclusion efforts to navigating job interviews, including disclosure and accommodation request concerns.

Sign up to attend the November 3 panel, Disability talent: Tips for job seekers with disabilities, here. 

Whether you’re an ally or a person with a disability, we hope you’ll join us to celebrate NDEAM and this year’s “Powered by Inclusion” theme. Together we can build workplaces that better reflect our vibrant communities!