Accessibility

Our strategy for digital accessibility is rooted in our commitment to inclusivity. By embedding ease of access for people of all abilities into our products, websites, and documentation, we drive connection, inclusion, and collaboration and break down the barriers that create division. Creating digital accessibility is a collective responsibility across the organization.

Office of Accessibility

In fiscal 2024, Cisco created the Office of Accessibility to bring greater focus, coordination, and collaboration to our efforts to increase digital accessibility. The Office of Accessibility will accelerate our progress on delivering products and experiences that users and participants of all abilities can engage in. We do this by leading Cisco’s digital accessibility strategy, as well as by offering a comprehensive range of expertise, best practices, training, and development.

Webex

In Webex, we strive to empower businesses to deliver exceptional experiences in every interaction—where everyone can be heard, seen, and engaged, and feel included.

Our Real-Time Media Model is an industry-first generative artificial intelligence (AI) model for audio, video, gestures, tones, and more, and is designed to drive inclusion in meetings and communications.

Webex already includes AI-based features that drive inclusion in small and large ways:

• Background noise removal that helps people to stay engaged and reduces noise fatigue for all users
• Closed captioning with transcription and language translation that helps users participate in meetings and events

Cisco AI Assistant

Introduced into our Collaboration products in 2024, Cisco AI Assistant provides a host of capabilities that drive digital inclusion in many new ways:

• Meeting summarization with note taking, action item highlighting, and creating chapters for meeting segments
• A catch-me-up feature that quickly summarizes what a person missed and if they were mentioned, should they step away from or arrive late to a meeting
• An auto “Be Right Back” feature that indicates if a participant has stepped away from the camera while in a meeting, muting the microphone and blurring the video with a “BRB” icon

Role-based accessibility training

Education is a key element in our approach to digital accessibility. We recently deployed role-based accessibility training, which is available to all employees and contingent workers. The training includes 12 different tracks covering everything from general accessibility concepts, laws, and regulations to specific technical material for designers, training and instructional content, and technical proven practice for software engineers and User Experience/User Interface (UX/UI) experts.

Our message is clear: accessibility is about creating an inclusive environment where everyone can be successful.

This suite of training will help Cisco workers incorporate best practices into products and relationships, enabling our solutions, workspaces, and tools to better serve people of all abilities.

Valuable 500

We made a public commitment to the disability and neurodivergent communities as a signatory to the Valuable 500 commitment, a global partnership of 500 companies, representing 22 million employees, working together to end disability exclusion in the workplace.

As a part of our Valuable 500 commitment, Cisco pledged to take action in four areas:

• Design with human rights in mind
• Increase economic opportunities for people with disabilities
• Invest in training to support the recruiting, hiring, retention, and promotion of employees with disabilities
• Establish a permanent, dedicated accessibility infrastructure that is both resourced and accountable