Megan Smith knows a thing or two about accessibility. She has spent more than a decade focused on accessibility for all and grew up with a disability herself. She recently spoke to HR Brew about her journey to Amazon’s people accessibility team, and how HR leaders can keep accessibility top-of-mind.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you tell me a little bit about how you got interested in accessibility, from a workplace standpoint?

My career has woven in and out of accessibility from the beginning. I was working full-time at a hospital and was a guide-dog user. I was putting myself in this position of giving my thoughts as to how we could make the hospital environment and workplace for me more accessible. I started to realize I have a point of view about this, but found myself really relying on my own experiences. Around that time, I started to pursue a graduate degree in disability services.

I got that degree and was working for a health insurance company in the diversity office, and brought forward this plan to them that said, we have gaps in our customer experience for people with disabilities. We could be doing more as a health insurance company. I didn’t quite know what I was talking about, but dug deeper into how to make our workplace more inclusive of people with disabilities, and walked into a role that I created.

How would you explain what the “people accessibility” team is?

We talk about accessibility at Amazon as the intentional practice of ensuring that an experience works for people with disabilities. It’s something you’re constantly doing. It’s often technology, the physical environment, a process, or more broadly, the culture, and all of those things have to come together to enable an equitable and inclusive experience.

What is the job the employee is trying to do? Whether that’s filling out a job application or [having an] interview at Amazon, whether that’s a big product in our operations environment. We think about how to make that holistic experience work for the broadest range of people, people with disabilities.

Keep reading.—KP

Ready to land your dream job? It all starts with a killer resume. But crafting one that truly stands out can be a daunting task. That’s why we’ve created the ultimate guide to building a strong and effective resume.

This guide is jam-packed with practical tips and real-world examples to help you craft a resume that will impress even the toughest hiring managers. We’ll show you how to highlight your skills and experience in a way that makes you stand out from the crowd. So if you’re ready to take your career to the next level, download your copy today.

Welcome to our regular HR advice column, Ask a Resourceful Human. Here to answer all of your burning questions is Massella Dukuly, the head of workplace strategy and innovation at Charter, a media services company that aims to transform the workplace. Dukuly has trained over 10,000 leaders at startups and global enterprises, including Squarespace and the New York Times. Sign up for Charter’s free salary transparency playbook here.

Got a question for us? Use this form to submit it.

I have too much PTO (seven weeks!), but it’s a hassle to get approval to use it. I don’t want the hassle or I want to be paid if I can’t use it. Am I being unreasonable? The firm hires a contract person to sit at my desk when I’m away.

It doesn’t matter if you’re not using your PTO voluntarily or involuntarily. You’re being short-changed. Still, it’s important to understand what you can control in this scenario.

Just recently, and for the first time ever, a US court ruled that paid time off is not part of a worker’s salary. Additionally, there may be state or local paid-leave laws at play. Nonetheless, PTO is still a benefit that’s offered as part of your larger compensation package.

First, if there isn’t a clear policy around how you request time off, ask for one. A good PTO policy states:

• Whether or not PTO approval requires that there is team coverage.
• How much notice employees must give.
• Whether PTO can’t fall during certain times, such as your company’s busy season.

Keep reading.—MD

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: 52% of workers think empathy efforts made by employers are inauthentic. (EY)

Quote: “Culture matters. To reduce male preferences in high wage and leadership positions requires fundamentally changing organizational routines.”—Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, director of the Center for Employment Equity at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, on gender discrimination in pay and workplace leadership (USA Today)

Read: Some people are using LinkedIn to mock the platform’s careerist reputation with fake posts and satire. (Vice)

$2m+ in recruiting costs: That’s how much GM saved last year—in less than 6 months—with the help of Paradox. See how conversational recruiting software pulled it off in this free webinar.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}