Building a Business Case for Inclusive Speaking

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In recent posts, we’ve talked about the impact of disabilities and exclusion on our bottom line as professional communicators.

We’ve started looking at how much of a driver the inclusion of people with disabilities and seniors can be to our businesses.

We’ve looked at the largely untapped and underserved market of people with disabilities.

We’ve measured how they collectively own hundreds of billions of dollars of disposable income annually, a market more than ready for the taking. One that we can — and should — be opening up to.

And we’ve peeked at the tip of the inclusive speaking iceberg, by considering some of the situations people might find themselves facing, that will inevitably impact how they experience and perceive the content we share from the stage and beyond.

We’ve already covered a lot of ground.

By considering the many ways in which communication can break down between the communicator and those on the receiving end of that communication, we’ve explored some of the ways in which we can proactively tip the scales for our audience members, and ourselves, all at the same time.

Through this process, we’ve also defined just how much money our businesses may be leaving on the table, and one thing for sure, that picture isn’t a pretty one. Based on these recent conversations, I’d like to offer you what might be three of the most important takeaways. This post will summarize them.

The untapped market of people with disabilities

It may be tempting to discard your audience members who have disabilities by assuming that they will be part of an underprivileged group of people who are simply not worth marketing to. That may have been true, to some extent, in the past. But in the hyper-connected 21st century economy, this is simply no longer the case. Research and data from credible sources, such as the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and the Ontarian Chamber of Commerce (OCC) suggest otherwise. So do the many lawsuits filed annually against organizations that dismiss people with disabilities as edge cases.