By Kieron JH
Published on The Reasonable Adjustment
Modern corporate culture loves a good story. Especially one that fits neatly into a LinkedIn post, wrapped in a moral about inclusion and empathy.
Recently, a post about an Apple technician using a sign language interpreter went viral for all the right reasons, or so it seemed. It celebrated accessibility, empathy, and what leadership should look like. The problem is that it completely missed reality.
Apple can afford interpreters. Most businesses cannot. That is not cynicism, it is economics.
When people romanticise accessibility through the lens of one of the wealthiest companies in history, they create a dangerous illusion. It suggests that inclusion is just a matter of willpower and that any small or medium-sized business could “just do the same” if they cared enough. It is a comforting story, but it is fiction.
Accessibility is not free, and pretending it is does not help anyone.
The thread that exposed it
When I challenged that narrative on LinkedIn, what followed was a textbook example of how modern corporate discourse operates. People want to look progressive without being forced to think critically.
I made a simple point: accessibility that depends on constant one-to-one assistance is not equality, it is fragility. If every accommodation requires a bespoke intervention, it is not scalable and therefore not sustainable. The real innovation lies in design that reduces dependency entirely through technology, systems, and workflow redesign that allow disabled professionals to thrive without constant mediation.
A few agreed. Some deflected. Others got defensive. One contributor insisted his personal experience disproved structural analysis. When evidence and reasoning entered the room, personal anecdotes took the wheel.
That is the thing about corporate virtue signalling: it thrives on vibes, not verification. It rewards sentiment over substance, empathy over evidence.
The culture of feel-good compliance
Every corporate DEI post follows the same formula:
- A story of inspiration
- A moral about empathy
- A complete absence of operational reality
You will notice what is always missing: data, budgets, scalability, and the lived messiness of accessibility when money is not infinite.
The modern workplace has mastered performative empathy. It feels good about doing the bare minimum, posts about it, and uses applause as proof of progress. Inclusion becomes theatre. The audience claps, the company collects virtue points, and nothing actually changes.
What true inclusion requires
Real inclusion is not glamorous. It is technical. It is infrastructure. It is policy design and procurement processes and HR systems that do not collapse under nuance. It is software that is accessible by default, not as an afterthought.
Most importantly, it is scalable. If a system only works when a trillion-dollar corporation funds it, it is not a model, it is a mirage.
If we want accessibility to be universal, we have to design it to be affordable, repeatable, and independent. That means empowering people to work without being defined by the support they need. That is dignity.
Why I engaged publicly
Because LinkedIn has become a self-congratulating echo chamber where executives trade applause for substance. Every “leadership insight” gets showered with praise from the same small circle of peers while dissent is treated as disruption. It is a feedback loop of validation that mistakes noise for progress.
I do not debate on LinkedIn for sport. I do it because these discussions reveal the cracks that polite society papers over. When someone says “it should be standard,” what they usually mean is “it should be someone else’s problem.”
Accessibility will not become universal through applause or corporate storytelling. It will happen when we stop treating it as charity and start treating it as design.
Until then, the loudest voices will keep praising symbols of progress built on systems most people will never be able to afford. That is not equality. That is PR.
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