Interview with Michael Fiore of the Sierra Group

Sierra Group, Inc., is a rehabilitation engineering consulting firm that works with organizations, educators, individuals, and rehabilitation professionals in the area of assistive technology to help increase employability of people with disabilities. The following interview with Michael Fiore, a Rehabilitation Engineer and Consultant with the Sierra Group, offers insight and best practices based on Fiore's experiences of consulting with organizations that are integrating accessible technology. The interview was conducted by Microsoft Accessible Technology author Janice Hertz.

Janice Hertz (JH): What are the primary reasons organizations come to Sierra Group for consultation?

Michael Fiore (MF): There are two primary reasons people come to use our consulting services.

Many organizations come to us when they need assistance in addressing the accessible technology needs for a particular employee. In these cases, it is typical that a lot of organizational activity has already occurred, and the employee is already starting to show some frustration because a comprehensive solution is still elusive. We often see the human resources and production issues starting to escalate up the chain of command.

Organizations will also return to Sierra (after we've helped them on a few individual instances) and ask us to help them develop and implement an accessible technology and training plan to reduce their need to intensively and individually remediate employee needs for similar types of positions or functional abilities.

JH: Who do you primarily work with in organizations—individuals, HR, IT managers, others?

MF: Actually, the common link that exists in almost all of the work that we do centers on our style of working with all of the corporate members you've mentioned. In order to craft a solution, we work to allow all parties to achieve their success. Production rates must be maintained. Software solutions must integrate with the network and support needs of the organization. Human factors and governing employment policy must be adhered to, and most of all, the individual with the need has got to know how the solution works within his or her job.

JH: What improvements or cost savings could organizations benefit from if they take a proactive approach to planning accessible technology?

MF: In order for the ounce of prevention to be worth the cost, you have to know the selling price of the pound of cure. Many organizations have an understanding of the prices they pay for a variety of cures—from employee training (and retraining) costs including those for production rework due to error to worker's compensation and other insurance costs as well as various other identifiable process inefficiencies. These are broken down into both fixed and variable costs.

Those companies that use the leveraging power of accessible technology and training strategies to attack the issues surrounding efficient and accommodated productivity to the individual employee find that the cost of the prevention is a great investment.

Take the case of an organization that has 500 people typing the equivalent of 30 words per minute for 5 hours per workday. If access to accessible technology and training solutions could be implemented that save (on average) each employee as little as 50 keystrokes per hour, it would result in a net productivity gain of nearly 1.7 percent per day—every day.

Therefore, in a production environment, a company benefits when you can give managers the increase in productivity that a good AT plan incorporates.

Also, lower worker's compensation costs and heightened ability to hire from a diverse pool that includes workers with disabilities are additional benefits of having a comprehensive accessible technology plan.

JH: What would you recommend to organizations that are interested in integrating accessible technology but aren't sure where to start?

MF: The first thing an organization should do is to figure out where their pain is. In other words, they need to identify their areas of opportunity. To find the easiest avenues to start their accessible technology plan, a company should ask questions like:

1. Are my employees who use accessible technology/assistive technology trained to fully use and adjust the tools of their job?
2. Do my employees actually use the tools as directed?
3. What are the factors that contribute to variable performance levels, and can these be accommodated differently by using accessible technology/assistive technology?
4. What tasks do the employees in question consistently have a hard time doing correctly?

Once you discover the answers to these questions, you have the foundation for logical next steps in building a comprehensive accessible technology plan.

JH: Are there common elements to an accessible technology plan that all organizations should consider?

MF: Yes. Although all organizations have varying degrees of need in their accessible technology plans, they all share the common need of developing a process and specific procedures that support the long-term evolution of the plan. This means that organizations must commit staff time and other resources to interact with all of their stakeholders as workflow processes, technology, human resource strategies, and customer service needs change over time. From the development of the processes, specific procedures must be identified and then adhered to.

A common element to all successful accessible technology plans is that a responsive leadership team be in place. This leadership team must understand that its success is only realized when the team wholly supports successes for its various stakeholders.

JH: What are the biggest success factors?

MF: Although there are many success factors, the biggest are organizational leadership and employee training.

Organizational leadership focused on allowing all of the stakeholders to make well-reasoned strategic investments in personnel training and infrastructure is critical. It also allows all of the active parties to focus their energy on how something should happen, not why it should happen.

Having a fantastic training program geared to the specific demographics of each business unit is also critical. Communicating results and instructing all appropriate stakeholders on procedures so that they develop subject matter mastery, not just competency, will allow your accessible technology plan to reach its widest audience.

JH: What are the most common mistakes organizations make?

MF: The most common mistake that we see is that people in an organization might not reach high enough to gain a leadership statement as to what the accessible technology plan should do. Having parts of your organization focus on how the plan should come together when some members are asking why the plan should come together can (and often does) derail a plan before it starts. Sierra finds that when a discussion begins with the phrase, "The way we do things around here is...," the stakeholders must be encouraged to spend some quality time reviewing the leadership statement.

Another typical mistake is that organizations do not move quickly to internally own the accessible technology plan and its process after it's developed and initially rolled out. If an organization is not committed to building internal resources that can quickly, cost-efficiently, and knowledgeably interact with coworkers, the long-term contractor alternative will often lack the full patina of a skilled and invested workforce.

JH: What are the most expensive mistakes that are typical?

MF: As we've discussed, developing an accessible technology plan and then not supporting it by both employee training and ongoing administrative development can keep the cost benefits from being realized. A commitment to full implementation and follow-through can keep costly mistakes to a minimum and allow all the benefits to occur.

JH: If you could offer one piece of advice to an organization that is considering creating an accessible technology plan, what would that be?

MF: Develop easy-to-use training tools that allow employees at every level to know what it is, how to get it, how to use it, and what they need to do if it breaks. The biggest part of a successful accessible technology plan is making it relevant to the day-to-day work lives and responsibilities of every employee in your organization. Rule number one is—make it relevant, then use it!