Joining us now in studio is Caroline Casey, who is a disability activist and the founder of the Valuable five hundred. Good morning, Thank you so much for your time and for being with us on Bloomberg Radio. I suppose first of all, I'd just like to introduce the audience to what the Valuable five hundred is and what your campaign is all about, sort of trying to focus on disability.
Well, the Valuable five hundred is the world's largest business partnership of five hundred organizations and their CEOs working together to accelerate global disability inclusion and like we have a unified purpose for system change, end of nothing less than and today with Global Accessibility Awareness Day, it's really putting our energy and force and power behinding ensuring that we disrupt the culture of digital and technology product design to
make sure accessibility and inclusion is a core requirement. Why not? Why wouldn't we?
And you've got big corporates falling over themselves to talk about D and I diversity and inclusion. But you say that CEO being silent on inclusiveness for people with disabilities.
Well, so I think we should talk about de I and A accessibility right, But what the valuable five hundred we began for was to break the CEO silence because the CEO's at the top of the organizations, the choices they make are going to affect where the investment, where the energy and the intention is and without those CEOs
we can create inclusive business. So we've broken that silence and today on our second birthday, on the eighteenth, we are announcing our next big move and that is really about getting our five hundred companies to start reporting on their disability performance, digital accessibility being one of them. And can I just say, we're sitting here in the offices in London, do you know that of our footy one
hundred companies, thirty percent of them do not have accessible websites. Seriously, why would you stop people with disabilities and their families doing business with you?
Okay, but I think for this and for other campaigns around other diversity issues, the problem is in delivering, isn't it. And we've been talking a lot about the Confederation of British Industry, the biggest lobby group in the UK. They are losing members because of a culture of sexual harassment, you know, for all the talk and they were leading partly that charge in the UK. For all the talk about inclusion and diversity and respect within the workplace, you
know these issues are quite persistent. How do you make it more than lip service?
Oh?
Thank you. One of the biggest things that for us is accountability and we had those five hundred companies have to commit to a board level commitment over the last two years and we've seen them do that. I mean, it is extraordinary to see what has been done. But now what we believe is the only way to capture and to ensure accountability is to get our companies to report on their performance in their annual reports. So we will be calling out all are valuable five hundred companies.
We've identified five key metrics. There are companies that agreed on whether it's about an E or G group, whether it's about digital accessibility, whether it's about training goals self ID. We want you to report because if we don't report it, we can't measure it and we can't manage.
But that is a huge issue, isn't it. It's huge because, for example, the government mandated reporting around women's pay in the workplace. That is something the UK does. You can't do because well, yeah, there's also been a talk about doing this for ethnicity as well, but the difficulties around that it's quite difficult actually to pin down, isn't it, Because it's it's individuals who must come forward and explain their disabilities.
And also Caroline talk about accountability. Not all disabilities are visible. Do you think there's still fear for people to disclose nerdiversity at work?
This is the thing. Eighty percent of disability is invisible. Twenty percent of our global population lives with neurodiversity, neurodivergence or neurodiversity. I have a disability. My disability is invisible. You wouldn't know that I am registered blind. I think there still is a reticence to speak about your disability
because it's how it's perceived in the world. If it's seen then less than or costly or you know, for us, the valuable five hundred is trying to shift that narrative to say, look at the value of this one point three billion people and the insight and the innovation they can bring and the growth because if you think about that one point three billion and a mother and a father, that's fifty four percent of our global economy. That's thirteen
trillion spending power. That's value. So if we can see people with disabilities adding value, right, if you can see those role models, then people will disclose. But we don't see it now we are seeing changed, right. Look at the front cover of Vogue magazine. Wasn't it brilliant to see Selma Blair and Lola Love and Ellie Goldsting and Shneid Burke. When we start seeing positive examples of the value of people disability in the community, then I think people will come forward.
Caroline, can I ask you, was part of the reason that you were inspired to start all this because of your own experience?
Well, the real reason I've been at twenty three years an activist. I came out of the disability closet when I was working for a management consultancy and I've been hiding my disability. Today that we know that seven percent of our CEOs are living with the disability and four out of five of them are not disclosing it. How is that still case twenty years later? I created the
value of five hundred out of sheer frustration. We need to see accelerated change, We need to see system change, and it is not possible unless we have business meaningfully at the table. Being accountable very important, doing action and having the will and intention. And I don't believe it can be resolved by one company or one CEO. It needs the power of a collective force that can can share with each other, fae with each other, learn together. But no more excuses.
Okay? Are there enough skilled jobs people with disabilities? That that is a kind of crucial issue in the cost of living crisis? We know that that has affected certain communities more severely in some senses than others. Are there enough well paid skilled jobs for people with disabilities?
Well, when we even say that, the word disability is a tiny word that covers so many vast experiences. And as Lizzie was saying, it's neurodiversity, its censor, it's physical, it's mental health, it's learning disabilities. There's not one size that fits all. Are there jobs? Of course there are jobs.
If you want to serve a market that has one point three billion people who have different needs, how can you serve that market and attach yourself to that growth and opportunity without bringing that talent into the business And today being global accessibility wherein today I just want to say we need to bake in design in inclusion in the products and services that we are designing today and stop leaving disability or inclusion or accessibility as a sort
of an afterthought. And if we want to grow, and if we want to capture the the insight and innovation that this community has to have, bring them in, employ them, work with them,