More than one billion people around the world live with a disability. At some point, most of us will likely experience a temporary, situational, or permanent disability. Employment and education rates are lower for people with disabilities and poverty rates are higher. This disparity has caused a “disability divide,” a social inclusion gap that has persisted for the more than three decades since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

From our nearly 30 years of work on accessibility at Microsoft, we have learned that people with disabilities represent one of the world’s largest untapped talent pools. Studies show that companies that hire, support, and promote talent with disabilities financially outperform their peers, and at Microsoft, we have benefited from a long list of technologies ideated and created by our employees with disabilities. And yet this talent pool too often confronts closed doors. We all need to act with bolder ambition to open doors and empower disabled talent.

We are committed to creating opportunities for people with disabilities by driving the development of more “accessible by design” technology across our industry and the economy, using this technology to open doors for more people with disabilities, and intensifying our focus on building a workforce that better represents the disability community. It’s the right thing to do and it’s good for our business.

Microsoft has a clear goal to reduce the unemployment rate for people with disabilities and work with industry partners, nonprofits, the public sector, and the disability community to address barriers to hiring people with disabilities. To achieve these aims, we are taking several actions.

We have learned that understanding digital accessibility is essential to advancing inclusion. Since accessible digital technology can play a critical role in eliminating barriers to communication, interaction, and information, we are focused on growing our work with workforce development organizations and empowering them with digital tools and trainings that focus on digital accessibility. This effort includes a pilot program with the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to train 26,000 work coaches on modern accessibility tools to assist job seekers with disabilities. Such partnerships are at the core of our strategy to scale this effort in the future.

Read the full article about inclusion in workforce development by Jenny Lay-Flurrie at Stanford Social Innovation Review.