Increasing the Employment of People with Disabilities in the Tech Sector

Wheelhouse helped build and manage a national program for the Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy, to create resources, policy, and technical assistance to increase hiring of people with disabilities (PWD). The program provides support to employers as well as working with tech companies to ensure they design and develop workplace technologies that are accessible to all people.

In its first two years, the program did not meet expectations. Our team was brought in to lead a program transformation and developed a strategic plan and stakeholder engagement plan to realign the program. Today, the program has developed into a well-respected national resource that continually creates high-profile opportunities for government leadership to engage with key stakeholders in the business, academic, and advocate communities around the critical intersections of technology, disability, and work.

Approach/Solution

Our team was brought in as a project leaders to transform the project. Our methodology included:

Facilitating visioning sessions with key stakeholders from technology companies, academia, the disability advocacy community and government.
Interviewing the project stakeholders, conducting surveys, and leading focus groups with PWD.
Auditing the marketing collateral and processes.
Relationship building and the development of grassroots initiatives and solutions in direct response to stakeholder feedback.

Key Outcome/Key Data

Our team worked with 500 stakeholders to co-create a new plan, approach and metrics to ensure program adoption and success. Our team:

Retooled their marketing approach based on the marketing audit, and overhauled the program messaging to meet the needs of the stakeholders.
Oversaw the user experience strategy and design of the program’s updated website. The site has received wide national acclaim and includes a wealth of robust, plain-language resource tools targeted to the needs identified by stakeholders. These include articles and tip sheets, assessment tools and templates, several dozen videos produced by our team, along with popular ongoing podcast and webinar series. The related eNews newsletter consistently grows its readership and widely surpasses the read rate for federal agencies.
Established a formal Think Tank community that reengages regularly with stakeholders through virtual and in-person events.
Tracked nearly 50 separate metrics on resource use, webinar attendance, website interaction, social media followers and more to continue measuring the success of the program.