The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dark and Silent Office: A Digital Accessibility Guidebook for Inclusive Communication in the Workplace by Stephanie Warlick

Episode Date: February 9, 2025

Dark and Silent Office: A Digital Accessibility Guidebook for Inclusive Communication in the Workplace by Stephanie Warlick Stephaniewarlick.com Amazon.com Ask anyone and they would agree that technology is a necessary component of the workplace. But have you ever relied on technology and it failed — just before your deadline? Think about having that experience all day, every day while attempting to meet your daily work objectives. There are approximately 37.5 million adults in the US with trouble hearing and another 50.18 million adults with some degree of vision loss. The fight for equity in the workplace has very much focused on gender and race, and while these steps are completely necessary, visually-disabled and hearing-disabled individuals are a minority group that is significantly overlooked. Jenny sat in a meeting where the manager was detailing the quarterly financial review. As they discussed the colors of charts and diagrams, Jenny, being colorblind, couldn’t keep up. She left the meeting exhausted and deflated. Mark was typing away on his computer when the team leader informed the office about an important update. If it hadn’t been for his colleague advising him, Mark, being deaf, would have missed out on this information. Nobody intentionally excludes the visually and hearing impaired. But that’s not enough in the year 2024 where the benefits of inclusivity have been demonstrated time and time again. But there is a huge gap between wanting an inclusive workplace and actually achieving it. It’s a gap that you find yourself standing in right now! The workplace is buzzing in a digital era and overall, technology is closing so many gaps across the industries. At the same time, it’s sadly making the gap bigger for those with sight and hearing difficulties. The first step to standing in this gap is to transform your organization into one that is digitally accessible, particularly in the realm of document accessibility that is utilized in daily communication with coworkers and customers! That’s not going to be easy if you have no idea where to start! In this guide to inclusivity through digital accessibility, you will discover: Why inclusivity goes beyond skin color and legal obligations and how accessible digital content is the key to including EVERY employee A walk in the shoes of the hearing-impaired and visually impaired so you understand exactly what challenges they face on a daily basis! 6 must-have assistive technologies for different levels of vision loss and best practices for making digital content The best equipment and assistive listening devices to run successful meetings so that the hearing-impaired feel valued and included Insider tips on respectfully communicating with visually and hearing impaired colleagues— on and offline Your guide to navigating the legalities of digital accessibility and how to go above and beyond the law with ethical considerations How to carry out an accessibility audit and commit to inclusivity with a digital accessibility policy Bonus checklists to ensure your documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and websites are fully accessible And much more. Change is never easy, but in this case, it’s crucial. Everyone in your workplace is an asset with original ideas, different perspectives, and contributions to offer. Any person who doesn’t have equitable opportunities to contribute means a missed opportunity elsewhere. Whether you are an employee, manager, HR/DEI leader, or company owner, this guide provides practical and achievable steps to ensure everybody can fulfill their role to the best of their abilities while feeling respected! Today is the day for you to stand in the gap and take those crucial steps to create a thriving and all-inclusive workplace! Scroll up and click the “Add to Cart” button right now.About the author With over thirty years of rich experience, Stephanie Simmons Warlick is a seasoned expert in ...

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, that makes it official. welcome to the Big Show for over 16 years and 2300 episodes, we bring you the Chris Voss Show. And as always, we are joined by the most amazing guests and amazing audience.

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Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today we have an amazing young lady on the show with us today. She is a multi-book author. We'll get into both her books and some of the work that she does in speaking, consulting, and coaching as well. Her latest book is out called Dark and Silent Office, a digital accessibility guidebook for inclusive communication in the workplace out May 8th, 2024. We're going to get into it with her and all the good stuff of what she learned. Now we can learn more of it. She's got over 30 years of rich experience. She is a seasoned expert in guiding small businesses towards sustainable growth as the visionary behind 5ft consult view consulting i should say 5ft view consulting stephanie's leadership is defined by her remarkable knack for pinpointing and resolving

organizational gaps she champions a steadfast dedication to achieving true equity not just through equality within the workplace. Welcome to the show, Stephanie. How are you? I'm great, Chris. How are you today? I am excellent. Welcome to the show. Give us any dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? The best way to find me is stephaniewarlick.com. That has all of my information. So we're going to talk about your book, Dark and Silent Office, and we'll lead into a children's book you wrote called Squirrels, Bowling on the Roof, which is a great title.

So give us a 30,000 overview of what you do there, or what the book Dark and Silent Office is about. Dark and Silent Office is a guidebook to help individuals in the workplace communicate with their coworkers that are visually impaired and hearing impaired. Ah. I noticed on the cover there appears to be Braille on there? Braille and sign language letters, yes. There you go. So people can look at the face of the book and they can read it, as it were, with their sign language and stuff.

So that's really cool. I noticed that as I was looking at the cover. So give us a more in-depth thing. Why did you write the book? What was the proponent for it? Why did you feel it was important that people learn the knowledge inside? Yeah, well, first of all, I want to compliment you because I think you're brilliant just because you called me young lady. So thank you for that.

So how did I start it? After many years in the workforce and achieving a role as a chief administrative officer, I was continuing my work in accounting, finance, human resources, recruiting, and I worked for a digital accessibility company. This was about three years ago. And for the first time in my career, I found myself unable to communicate with my coworkers, the staff that I was supporting, because there were several individuals with disabilities,

including visual impairedness, complete blindness, or deafness. And I didn't know how to communicate with them effectively in writing or in meetings. So I said, that has to be fixed. And the concept of when I say that has to be fixed, that's what I call standing the gap, kind of bringing in some of my coaching. But I believe that standing the gap by looking for problems in the workplace that can be solved, that we can take our own skills and abilities that we have and solve a problem for the organization makes us stronger in the organization. So I solved that problem. I gave HR people, my peers, the resources that they needed to be able to not experience the same embarrassment that I did.

Yeah. And I imagine it can be hard communicating when there's that sort of, you know, when people are using sign language, Braille, you know, I mean, what we've always talked about on the show is there's no shortage of people that have great ideas. Everyone, you know, there's no, I learned a long time ago as a CEO that I wasn't the purveyor of all the greatest ideas in the world. It seemed to be that way when it started, but then I started missing a few home run and missing a few balls. And I was like, maybe I don't, maybe I'm not the greatest guy in the world. And tapping into your employees, your employment base, your workforce, you know, you never know where the richest ideas are going to come from. And sometimes an employee can have an idea or a contribution or many contributions on a daily basis to the betterment of the company, the betterment of everyone.

And you need to be able to tap into those resources. I mean, you just never know where that great idea or innovation is going to come from. You're 100% correct. So this guidebook that I created as a neurodivergent person who's ADHD, I made a quick and easy read with lots of bullet points and checklists to kind of make it absolutely easy to absorb. being open to hearing those different diverse voices and not presuming that someone that has a physical disability or an invisible disability that can't be seen isn't as smart because lots of individuals have all kinds of things and are brilliant, but opening that space and being inclusive so that they can be heard at the table. So an example would be when you're sitting in a meeting, make sure that you have closed captioning on so that the person that is hearing impaired can participate in the conversation. It's just that simple.

Yeah, that's an important point because, you know, everyone needs to have access to that. What are some other tips and tricks that you talk about low-tech, no-cost, and high-impact things that individuals with no extra cost can apply. And those are things like using correct font size and fonts that are readable. We try and aim for 12-point or higher. Our color contrast. When you put artifacts out there, you want to have dark colors on a light background and light colors on a dark background that helps not only people with low vision but also people that are colorblind keeping in mind that if we're going to put a graph we want to make sure to

always have a key and let's not try and just use red and green for the two colors that are out there the most common form of color blindness. Another really important one for people that are blind and who use screen readers is that all images or videos have an alt tag. And that's just a description of the image or the video so that when the screen reader, which is the device that helps read images on the screen, tells the individual who can't see what is being shown on the screen. You know, I'm, I'm not only do I have ADHD too, squirrel, the, I also, you know, I'm getting older now. So I have to blow up the font on just about everything nowadays. I'm like, old man eyes, got to blow up the font, got to make it bigger for the 57 year old in the room. And, uh, so, you know, I feel it in how, you know, you need to make things, you know, I use a lot of dark backgrounds cause you know, I spend a lot of time in computers, man.

And after a while, that blinding light of the background can affect you. So I use a lot of the dark themes. And, you know, I'm really I'm always frustrated with websites where I'm like, I can't get darkened on on this, you know. And, you know, so, you know, I'm probably a low impact need for some of the stuff that you talk about. But I'm just saying I can't get darkened on on this, you know? And, uh, you know, so, you know, I'm probably a low impact need for some of the stuff that you talk about, but I'm just saying I can feel it. Yes. Yeah. A lot of people can. And some of the things that I just mentioned are not even while I focus my book on individuals with visual impairedness and hearing impairedness, because there are so many disabilities to attend to. If I had tried to capture the accommodations or the inclusivity

that we could expand upon in this one book, it would have been 15 miles long. So I started in one area, but individuals that are neurodivergent also benefit from things like closed caption or presenting PowerPoint presentations in advance of meetings so that people that need a little bit longer to process can have that. There's all kinds of little things that we can do as individuals. I like to use the phrase, let's move random acts of kindness toward intentional acts of inclusion. It's really simple. And the teams benefit and companies benefit by doing so.

You talk about carrying out an accessibility audit. and the team's benefit and company's benefit by doing so. You talk about carrying out an accessibility audit. And so maybe is it HR that needs to oversee that sort of thing, or does the CEO need to lead that charge? How does that work? That would usually be a chief technology officer within an organization because it is very digitally based. I tend to discuss content in terms of artifacts, emails, Slack messages, spreadsheets, those kinds of things. But digital accessibility, its true form really

is about websites. So usually a technology team or IT team would lead that effort. So getting, make sure the digital things there, I suppose materials like printable materials, manual things of that nature to people make their employee manuals in braille. Maybe they should. Well, there, there, there, there is I'm sure a service that does that, but in today's tech age of technology, an individual that was blind would probably have a screen reader that would in fact read an accessible PDF. I have that now. I have a, I think it's, I don't know why I should plug them.

Should I plug them? I pay for it. It's, I think it's called Screenify or something like that, or Screechify or Speechify. I think it's called Speechify and it reads me stuff on the screen. I find that that's very helpful. So and it reads me stuff on the screen. I find that very helpful. So tell us a little bit about your upbringing. What got you into this space and writing books about this sort of stuff? Well, it wasn't my upbringing.

It was a meandering path of lots of different... It's a journey, not the destination, right? I did start in family businesses working in HR in high school. So I was involved in HR early on. Again, took a meandering path, owned my own small business with my husband for many years. I was in marketing, moved into government contracting, eventually made my way to a software development company that was all about digital accessibility. And so that's where I experienced this need in my other executive functions to communicate with individuals and was being exposed to this new knowledge that I had never been exposed to, this awareness that I didn't, I was just baffled that I had not had that awareness. And I think

many individuals who do not have a person in their life with a disability would not have awareness. You need to have that exposure to bring awareness. And I believe that when you know better, you can do better. And that's when I brought it forward to bring in a book. And as I said, I've always said, hey, here's a problem. I can solve it. And I chose to solve that problem because I do like to educate. I do help small businesses grow and exceed, but a big part of that is the people part of businesses and really helping HR folks become more informed. Definitely. I think there's always improvements that can be made. There's always ways for things to get better. Let's talk about your other book

that you have that's kind of a departure maybe from business to squirrels bullying on the roof. A silly story that sounds sensational. Tell us about that. You know, it's funny. A minute ago, you went squirrels when you're talking about ADHD. I am ADHD, but ironically, so it's funny to me now. I never thought about it until you said that squirrels are in the title of this, but I held this idea for this book in my head for 20 years until when i left my left my left organization i had some time off before i started my new consulting business and the concepts and the idea that i held on loosely for 20 years just flowed right out of my head i found an amazing illustrator and squirrels bowling on the roof again is another instance of me finding

seeing a gap and needing to fill it so my twins were um about two maybe three and we had a stormy night in our old cape cod and there was all this rumbling outside with the thunder and lightning you can imagine like the you know the the lightning and they were terrified and he jumped in my lap and he said, mommy, mommy, it's scary, blah, blah, blah. And I said, oh gosh, what do I do here? I don't know. You know, it's just a guessing game of how to be a good parent all the time. You hope you don't mess up.

I said, oh, um, I said, no, it's not scary. I don't hear thunder and lightning. I hear squirrels bowling on the roof. What do you hear? Because it sounded like bowling to me. And they thought that was the funniest thing in the world. And then just started playing and mimicking bowling and jumping around and acting like squirrels like little people do. And I was like, huh huh that was pretty amazing so again this concept of being able to

help children with scary noises and we're afraid of all different kinds of noises i couldn't find a book at that time they're now 23 um so there are other books out there now but i still had this dream of and this vision so clear in my head that i wanted to get it done and it's really about teaching children how to use their imagination to overcome their fears. Use your imagination to overcome your fears and stuff. You know, it's a scary world out there, especially when you're a kid, you don't understand what's going on in your life. I'm still scared by lightning and thunder. What is it? The man in the sky is angry at me again. What do I do now? Exactly. Exactly. So people can take advantage of that.

They can read the books and that. Let's get into your website. Some of the things you do over there, people can find. If you want to give me a plug on that website again, we'll get that in. Talk about some of the offerings you have there. Sure. On stephanieworlick.com, I offer my Five Foot View Consulting. Five Foot View Consulting, we serve as fractional chief

operating officers that's a part-time chief operating officer or other services might know of a part-time cfo or a part-time chief marketing officer it's really bringing 30 years of experience in a part-time capacity so that small businesses can really grow and exceed their expectations where they may not have been able to afford a 30-year professional otherwise. We also talk about the two books. I also speak. I speak mostly about dark and silent office and bringing inclusivity to the workplace and teaching people these low-tech, no-cost, low-effort concepts so that

there can be inclusivity in the workplace. But I also talk about stand in the gap. That's another speaking concept that I have. Stand in the gap. I also call on speaking owner mindset, because I think by standing in the gap and looking for challenges that need to be solved, that no one else is resolving the action and the drive of entrepreneurs, so I call it owner mindset, and I do believe that we can teach people how to be more driven in the workplace to be successful individually and to help the corporation be more successful. Well, that works out really well. And then you do the speaking, you do the consulting, coaching.

How do people work with you on the coaching side? On the coaching side, they come to me when they're stuck in the workplace. So I help them really learn how to keep their ear to the ground, to listen for gaps, how to read their leadership so that they can navigate the political channels as well as advocate for themselves to get promotions and raises. And I think that the way to get promotions and raises is to diversify your skills and abilities throughout the organizational silos so that you become indispensable to the organization. Become indispensable. It's hard to fire you when you're indispensable. That kind of helps as well. Now, I noticed something on your website there's a coming soon section for i think a book called owner mindset is that's right something we want to talk about or feature yeah well that's that's what i speak

about um when i'm called in by organizations that is the next book i am defining the criteria and the skills that make the owner mindset, that drive the entrepreneurial spirit. And by defining those characteristics, and I'm doing that through interviewing lots of professionals, people that are entrepreneurs, people that are raised by entrepreneurs, I'm really trying to discern, is entrepreneurial spirit innate or is it learned? And I've definitely found evidence of both. But I do think the end result, my hypothesis, is that you can train and teach people those skills and abilities so that they can be more successful in the workplace. Well, do you have an anticipated launch date for that book yet? I don't. I'll be honest.

It's overdue. I don't know what my website says right now, but I did expect it out by now. But my speaking before dark and silent office, as well as my consulting business have been doing really well. So it has waylaid me from my effort there. My book camp team at the Purpose Company would be disappointed that I'm off track. But anyway. Well, you did put two books out last year. So, you know, I've been doing a lot.

I have. But hopefully this year. Sometime this year. Watch for it, folks. Yes, thank you. There you go. Sign up for our website so you stay tuned for all that. So as we go out, give us your final pitch to everyone to engage with you, get to know you better, and reach out to you on.coms, etc., etc.

You can reach me at stephanieworlick.com i can talk to you or your organizations about greater success optimizing each person's skills and abilities to make a well-rounded diverse team and achieve goals you know it's really important to have this sort of inclusion thing i was going to ask you actually um what do you think it seems like there's a bit of attack on dei and inclusion the scotus ruling senate help some of the things that are going on in the new administration, 2025 aren't helping. Well, what are some of your, I don't want to pull you into politics, but what are some of your thoughts on, you know, I think a lot of companies right now are evaluating DAEI and DEI effectiveness. I don't know if you have any thoughts on advice you give those companies.

I do. Thank you for asking. It really is a tough time right now for DEI and all the advocates out there that are trying to help be inclusive. I'm an HR person and I'm a business owner, right? So I've always believed that we should hire and promote based on merit. I want to be very clear about that. I do not believe in bringing someone into a position because they have a special need or of a certain color or certain religion, and we want to add diversity that way. I think inherently, we have diversity within our organizations when we bring in a well-rounded group of people. And when we have our doors open and invite and welcome and

don't close the door to diversity, we will automatically have a well-rounded team of merit based skills and abilities. So that's really important. And I think that DEI is getting backlash with the presumption that all DEI means is hire someone even if they're not qualified. That's not what DEI means. DEI means be open to the diversity. Don't just pick people that look like you. Don't turn away the ability for someone to apply that is blind or deaf because you think they can't do the job. It means just be open to that and know that there's brilliance out there and it looks different ways and it comes in different shapes and sizes, colors. And I hope that people continue to understand the value that diversity and inclusion bring to a workplace. Our next

generation says that inclusion and diversity are one of the top reasons why they choose to work for a place or will not accept an offer. Yeah. Well, you know, I think they recognize, like we mentioned before, that there's no one person that has all the great ideas in the world. And certainly everyone has a contribution they can make. Certainly everyone has value they can provide if they want. I mean, if they want to provide it, you know, you just never know.

I mean, we always tried to have a Peter Senge sort of learning organization. We always tried to have in our organizations. We used to always say the unasked question. The only dumb question here is the unasked question because usually the person who needed to ask that question needed information to keep from breaking a $30,000 machine or something. So we're like, please ask, because if you didn't learn how to operate the machine in the initial meeting or video or whatever, we need you to know. And so having an organization that isn't afraid to ask questions, because there's some organizations, they're like high school, they make you look dumb if you say you don't understand something or

maybe you just need a little bit more information to, you know, um, understand what's going on. And so they'll hit you like really hard. They'll be like, Oh, you're, you must be dumb or you weren't paying attention. It's like, no, I just maybe want to make sure that I have a full understanding of what I was told. And I mean, I have some questions that maybe needs to ask. And so, yeah, having that ability, I think makes all the difference. And it's kind of interesting what's going on with DEI right now and all of it. I mean, I do believe in a merit-based system. No one should be hired based upon some sort of, you know, quotas or aspect from that nature. But certainly people should be given the opportunity to rise if they can show that they have great ideas,

they work hard and do the job well. Yeah, definitely. Well, this has been very insightful to have you on. Give us your dot coms as we go out and we'll wrap up the show. Thank you. It's stephaniewarlick.com. Well, thank you very much, Stephanie, for coming on the show. Thank you. It's Stephanie warlock.com. Well, thank you very much, Stephanie, for coming on the show. Thanks for tuning in order of the book, wherever fine books are sold.

It's called dark and silent office, a digital accessibility guidebook for inclusive communication in the workplace. Check out her other books that are coming as well. And out, uh, the squirrel one is always fun. Uh, thanks so much for tuning in and go to goodreads.com squirrel go to goodreads.com of course that's chris fos linkedin.com for his boss one the tick tock and all those crazy places in the internet be good to each other stay safe we'll see you guys next time