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This is how we make our training accessible and autism-friendly

We train our digital accessibility specialists ourselves. This allows us to guarantee high quality and ensures that new colleagues quickly become familiar with our company. We mainly hire people with autism, which is why it is important that the training itself is also accessible. Specially for Accessibility Week, with its theme of ‘accessible education’, consultant Renate talks about this.

A lot of attention for resilience

Autism is different for everyone and manifests itself in different ways. But there are a number of things that are beneficial for everyone with autism. That is why we have a number of house rules at Swink. These help to ensure a low-stimulus working environment.

We also follow this approach for the digital accessibility specialist training program. “We have shared house rules within the training program. These rules concern what we consider important in terms of how we interact with each other. This allows us to create an atmosphere in which we all feel comfortable. We encourage everyone to express how they feel. If someone is not feeling well one day, we can take that into account. So we pay a lot of attention to people's resilience,” says Renate.

Training for and by people with autism

Digital accessibility consultant Renate Roke
Digital accessibility consultant Renate Roke
The training is provided by our specialists with autism. The trainers know from experience that it is important to pay attention to the capacity of the participants. The trainees do a lot at home, but there is also a weekly training day at the office. Renate: "Such a day is long and intense. There is a lot to learn. The training lasts 20 weeks, during which we cover everything in detail. We also focus on soft skills, such as presenting to clients. This can be quite nerve-wracking for our colleagues, so we guide them through this during the training so they can gain experience."

During the training, people are encouraged to be open about how they are doing. “In addition, the new colleagues have a weekly coaching session with one of the team leaders. This mainly focuses on how they feel and whether they can keep up. Especially in the beginning, it is important to stay on top of things.”

Digital accessibility is complex, which makes the training program quite challenging. By paying close attention to our colleagues, we make the training program as accessible as possible. In this way, we not only create more jobs for people with autism, but in turn, they also contribute to greater inclusion.

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