DALLAS — The Dallas Regional Chamber is unveiling a new disability inclusion toolkit Wednesday for area businesses.
The first of its kind digital toolkit will be a website area companies can use to learn about how to better recruit, retain, include and support employees with disabilities.
"Oftentimes, this population is overlooked and under championed," Latosha Herron Bruff, Senior Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement for the chamber told WFAA.
The toolkit will not only support employees in the city with disabilities, she said, but also improve economic prosperity for businesses.
"It's not just because it’s the right thing to do," she said. "Companies that lead on disability inclusion are two times more profitable."
Yet Herron Bruff said statistics also show people with disabilities are two times as likely to be unemployed.
"People would rather work with someone who is hearing and pick up the phone," Meryl Evans, a DFW woman who is deaf told WFAA. "I mean that’s the reality."
Evans is a disability inclusion consultant who was interviewed by the chamber as it built the toolkit.
She said people with disabilities are often terrific employees because they know how to overcome obstacles, overcommunicate and get creative and innovative.
"That’s a skill you can’t teach in school or on the job, it comes with the lived experience," Evans said.
She said she hopes business leaders are eager and open to reading the toolkit and implementing its best practices.
"That’s what needs to happen to make it truly useful," she said.
The toolkit will go live on the chamber's website Wednesday. It will be free and available to all businesses.