Inclusion works better when it’s built in

National Inclusion Week is a chance to celebrate progress, share ideas and put inclusion firmly on the agenda. It’s also a good moment to ask a much more practical question: what are we actually changing?

At Ecommpay, we don’t want inclusion to be something we talk about for one week of the year, or something that sits apart from the way we work. It should shape the experiences we create, the choices we make and the barriers we work to remove.

This year’s National Inclusion Week runs from 14–20 September under the theme “Build Trust. Navigate Change.” Trust, particularly when it comes to inclusion, is built through action. Can someone comfortably use your website? Does a recruitment process work for people with different needs? Do good intentions turn into changes people can actually benefit from?

One change we’ve made this year is the addition of Recite Me to ecommpay.com.

We launched the accessibility toolbar on our website in May, giving visitors more choice over how they experience our content. They can have text read aloud, translate pages into different languages, change fonts and colours, use screen masking and access a range of other reading tools.

For many visitors, it will simply remain a small button in the corner of the page. For others, those options can make a real difference to how easily they can access information.

Our website already meets standards set by the Digital Accessibility Centre and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), giving us the technical foundations for an accessible experience. Recite Me builds on those foundations by giving people more control over how content is presented, so they can use the site in a way that works better for them.

Accessibility isn’t only about meeting a standard. The experience of actually using a website matters too.

National Inclusion Week also coincides with another important milestone for us: the launch of the latest Unlocking Disability Confidence™ cohort, led by disability inclusion specialist Cressida Stephenson, CEO and Founder of EdenChase Associates, alongside Project Nemo.

This is the eighth cohort Cressida has delivered, and the focus is deliberately practical. Over seven weeks, participants explore areas including the UK Government’s Disability Confident Scheme, neurodiversity, inclusive interviews and assessments. They then use the Disability Confidence Diagnostic™ to take a closer look at their own organisation.

The aim is to go beyond awareness. Participants identify where barriers exist in their own processes and, crucially, what they can do about them.

It’s an approach we strongly believe in. Businesses are rarely short of statements about inclusion. The harder, and more useful, work is turning those intentions into better everyday experiences.

No single initiative suddenly makes a business inclusive. Nor should it. Progress is more likely to come from thoughtful decisions made consistently. Like giving someone another way to access information, reconsidering how an interview is structured, challenging a process that unintentionally excludes people, or making a digital experience easier to use.

That thinking sits behind Ecommpay for Good and the work we continue to do around accessibility and inclusion. There will always be more to learn and improve, but that shouldn’t stop businesses from making useful changes now.

National Inclusion Week gives us an opportunity to talk about that work. More importantly, it’s a reminder to keep doing it once the week is over.