London, 4th September, 17:37 pm: Leading CEOs, from some of the world’s largest businesses, have signed an open letter calling for disability inclusion to be addressed more than once every four years.

The Paralympics bring great hope and visibility to the 1.3 billion people living with some form of disability globally – 15% of the world’s population. The games also provide businesses a valuable opportunity to proudly display a strong message of support to people with disabilities, elite athletes or not, through sponsorships and partnerships.

After the last medal is awarded, people with disabilities are still being excluded. While 90% of companies claim to prioritise diversity, only 4% focus on making offerings that are disability-inclusive. Recent findings show only 8% of companies feature people with disabilities in their marketing and advertising collateral on a regular basis.

It is not enough for the business community to only make a visible display of solidarity and representation when disability inclusion is trending internationally due to the Paralympics. Businesses need to commit to disability inclusion when the world stops watching, all year round, every year.

Business leaders who have signed this letter include;

All businesses signing the letter are official partners of the Tokyo Paralympics, and members of the global disability inclusion movement The Valuable 500 – which is working to get 500 of the world’s largest businesses to commit to placing disability inclusion on their business leadership agenda.