Valuable launches disability inclusion campaign at WEF

The Valuable 500 campaign, launched at the World Economic Forum’s annual summit in Davos, Switzerland, will seek a commitment from 500 businesses to put diversity inclusion on their boards’ agendas for 2019. The campaign aims to challenge businesses that claim to be diverse, yet exclude workers with disability from their definition of diversity. The event marked the first time the forum included the topic of disability on its main stage. According to #valuable, more than one billion people — 15% of the world’s population — have some form of disability, but businesses regularly ignore their value. The number of people with a disability has a potential market equivalent the size of the U.S., Pakistan, Indonesia and Brazil combined, but the global employment rate for individuals with disabilities is half that of those without disabilities. Statistics from the World Health Organization showed that nearly half of businesses in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries would rather pay fines for violating disability laws than achieve disability quotas. "It’s no longer good enough for companies to say 'disability doesn’t fit with our brand' or 'it’s a good idea to explore next year.' Businesses cannot be truly inclusive if disability is continuingly [sic] ignored on leadership agendas," Caroline Casey, founder of #valuable, said in a statement. The first six companies to sign up for the Valuable 500 were Accenture, Microsoft, Fujitsu, Unilever, Barclays and Cinepolis.