Our partners at Recite Me have published their 2024 Accessibility report and it's chock-full of fascinating insights that we think you need to know. But just in case you don't have time to download the full thing, here are the top 7 things we've learned, and why they'll help recruiters hire efficiently and conscientously.
Download our latest Candidate Insights Report here
Sites using a Recite Me toolbar have increased
Between 2022 and 2023 the number of pages viewed on careers and recruitment websites using the Recite Me Assistive Toolbar increased by 190%! Is this a sign that more people are using Recite Me toolbars so there's simply more exposure? Perhaps! But it's clear to see that if you don't have an accessibility toolbar of some kind on your careers site, you're falling behind the competition.
75% of candidates claimed that a disability had an impact while job-hunting. Your next star employee could be in that 75% - so consider how this could benefit you.
Increased diversity equals increased revenue
This has been the case for a few years now, but companies with diverse management teams see a 19% increase in innovation revenue compared to their less diverse counterparts, and diverse companies enjoy 2.3 times higher cash flow per employee. Alongside an accessibility toolbar, consider your end-to-end candidate experience. Do you have practices in place to help with unconscious bias?
It’s worth noting that our applicant tracking system offers anonymous shortlisting as part of the standard package, but we understand that organisations who are looking to pro-actively diversify their recruitment campaigns might want to see the full demographic make-up of any applications they get. That’s why we make it configurable! It can toggled on or off depending on your approach.
These toolbars assist with language too
Over 4.2 million UK residents speak a language other than English at home. Recite Me facilitated the translation of 80 million pieces of content into over 100 languages, with Spanish, French, and Italian being the most popular. This underscores the need for digital inclusion efforts to accommodate linguistic diversity. In other words – these toolbars can be used to translate English into a candidate’s native tongue so they feel more comfortable answering questions or reading any corporate jargon you’ve included in your job advert!
Candidates might be put off by overly-challenging assessments
28% of jobseekers find online assessments challenging. In a vacuum, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – assessments by their very nature are challenging – but you don’t want them to be unnecessarily challenged to the point that they’re frustrated and move on to someone else’s job advert. If there are any accessibility barriers that you aren’t accounting for, it’s likely you’ll make a bad first impression on a prospective new hire. Worse, you might just lose a candidate’s attention altogether!
Our partnership with Recite Me means their accessibility toolbar can plug into our ATS quickly and easily when we implement Jobtrain for our clients. It might explain why 91% of candidates have said they’re happy with the content in our clients’ application forms!
An accessibility toolbar will increase the time someone spends on your site
The longer someone spends on your website, the more user-friendly Google things it is. The more user-friendly Google thinks it is, the more likely it is to boost up your search rankings! Using the Recite Me toolbar, people viewed on average 7.68 pages per session, higher than the internet average of 2.8. We love it when we can trace a correlation between inclusivity and hard benefits for your online presence.
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Accessibility is good but customisation is better
On average, each month, over 3,500 individuals customised their online experience to view content in a manner that best suited them, highlighting the importance of personalisation in digital accessibility. Following governmental guidelines to make your candidate experience or website accessible is all good and well, but it seems like those candidates who are looking for increased accessibility want to have control over how that accessibility is presented to them. It’s why we love Recite Me’s toolbar – it puts the power in the hands of jobseekers so they can take full ownership of their candidate journey.
More people are neurodivergent than you might think
In the words of Charlie Cruickshanks, Talent Acquisition Partner and Co-Lead of SEEN, KFC:
“Recite Me is a great tool to help candidates who are neurodiverse. 1 in 7 of us in the UK is understood to be neurodivergent.”
One person in your average coffee queue will be neurodivergent and might need an accessibility toolbar to apply for work, and that number is likely to be statistically higher in the food and beverage industry. Truthfully, this stat ties back into the first part of this article, but we thought it was worth sharing because a) it’s fascinating to drill down a little deeper and b) it just reinforces how important it is to consider the candidates you might be missing out on!
If you're looking for some more candidate insights and data, download our latest free Candidate Insights Report here!