Disability Inclusion · Strategic leadership

Measuring Culture and Sustained Progress

Choose leading and outcome measures, treat feedback from disabled people as a core input, and run review points that produce decisions rather than presentations.

44–52 minutes · 4 lessons · Voluntary learning

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Course outline

Activity is not outcome
Learn to tell what the agency did from what changed for people, and rewrite the measures that confuse the two.
11 minutes
Leading and outcome indicators, by area
Build a small executive progress summary across digital accessibility, workplace accommodations, service access, culture and governance, with indicators that predict and indicators that confirm.
13 minutes
Feedback from disabled people as a core input
Design feedback from disabled employees, service users and partners so it is voluntary, safe, compensated where appropriate and treated as performance data rather than testimony.
12 minutes
A review cycle that leads to decisions
Run review points that end in documented decisions and corrective action, sustain improvements after the project ends, and report progress honestly.
11 minutes

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What you’ll be able to do

Explore and practice

Distinguish activity measures from outcome measures and rewrite an activity measure as an outcome.
Select leading and lagging indicators for digital accessibility, workplace accommodations, service access, culture and governance, at the level of systems and aggregates rather than individuals.
Design feedback from disabled employees, service users and partners as a core performance input, with privacy, voluntariness and compensation built in.
Establish a review cycle at agreed review points that ends in documented decisions and corrective action.
Explain why measuring or ranking individual employees on disability inclusion undermines the system the measures are meant to improve.

What you can take into your work

Four knowledge checks tied to measurement decisions.
A sort of measures into activity, leading, outcome and inappropriate.
A drafted progress summary for your area with no more than two leading and two outcome indicators per category, and the decision each review point must produce.

Draft the progress summary for your own area using the five categories in lesson two. Take it to the accessibility lead and the steering committee, ask what is missing and what would be misread, and bring the revised version to your next review point.

Read the introduction

This course is about knowing whether disability inclusion is working, in a way that changes what the agency does next. It separates activity from outcome, leading indicators from lagging ones, and system measures from anything that scores an individual. It treats the experience of disabled employees, service users and partners as a core performance input rather than a survey appendix, and it ends with a review cycle whose purpose is decisions and corrective action. You will leave with a small progress summary for your own area and the questions each review point must answer.

Measuring what changed

A one-page reminder for sponsors, senior directors and steering committees

If this number moved, what changed for a disabled person?

Keep the progress summary small, honest and about systems, and keep review points producing decisions.

Activity counts what the agency did; outcome describes what changed for people.
Two leading and two outcome indicators per category; every one about a system or an aggregate, never an identifiable person.
Feedback is voluntary, safe, compensated where appropriate and answered where people can see it.
Every review starts with last time’s decisions and ends with new ones recorded.

Draft your area’s progress summary, ask the steering committee what is missing and what could be misread, and bring it to your next review point.

Before an indicator goes on the progress summary

Is it about a system, process, product or aggregate group?
Can we source it, and who owns the number?
Would a disabled employee or participant recognize the change if it moved?
Are group sizes safe, and will reporting it change what people say?

Feedback that stays alive

No diagnosis required; no link to a named manager or employee.
Voluntary and anonymous where the person wants it; safe group sizes or suppression.
Pay service users, self-advocates and community partners for their time.
Publish what was heard, what was done, and what was not done and why.

At every review point

Last time’s decisions first.
Each red item as a question: fund, stop, reassign, escalate or close?
An operating owner and a sustainment indicator for every improvement.
Open items named in the public-facing progress report, where appropriate.

Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.

Sources and further reading

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, Planning and Managing Web Accessibility
Guidance on monitoring, reviewing and sustaining accessibility, including involving users with disabilities and tracking progress.
Section508.gov, Manage Accessibility Programs
Program management and maturity guidance, including measurement and reporting practices for accessibility programs.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Disability Inclusion
The framing of inclusion as participation supported by policies and practices, which outcome measures should reflect.
Job Accommodation Network
Employer guidance on accommodation processes and response practices that workplace accommodation indicators draw on.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Employment obligations, including limits on disability-related inquiries, relevant to how workforce feedback and data are collected.
Minnesota Council on Disability
Minnesota guidance and technical assistance for public bodies on accessibility and disability policy.

All research and sources across the program

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Course outline

Activity is not outcome

Learn to tell what the agency did from what changed for people, and rewrite the measures that confuse the two.

11 minutes

Leading and outcome indicators, by area

Build a small executive progress summary across digital accessibility, workplace accommodations, service access, culture and governance, with indicators that predict and indicators that confirm.

13 minutes

Feedback from disabled people as a core input

Design feedback from disabled employees, service users and partners so it is voluntary, safe, compensated where appropriate and treated as performance data rather than testimony.

12 minutes

A review cycle that leads to decisions

Run review points that end in documented decisions and corrective action, sustain improvements after the project ends, and report progress honestly.

11 minutes

Sources and further reading

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, Planning and Managing Web Accessibility

Guidance on monitoring, reviewing and sustaining accessibility, including involving users with disabilities and tracking progress.

Section508.gov, Manage Accessibility Programs

Program management and maturity guidance, including measurement and reporting practices for accessibility programs.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Disability Inclusion

The framing of inclusion as participation supported by policies and practices, which outcome measures should reflect.

Job Accommodation Network

Employer guidance on accommodation processes and response practices that workplace accommodation indicators draw on.

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Employment obligations, including limits on disability-related inquiries, relevant to how workforce feedback and data are collected.

Minnesota Council on Disability

Minnesota guidance and technical assistance for public bodies on accessibility and disability policy.