Global Conference 2026: Delivering disability-inclusive change in global organisations

7 July | 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

Our Global Conference, kindly sponsored by HSBC, will be held online on Tuesday 7 July 2026 between 10 am – 4 pm BST.

About the conference

Wherever in the world you are operating, harnessing the talent of disabled employees and reaching disabled customers is good for business. To make the most of these opportunities, businesses are striving to achieve change in systems, processes and culture across their global operations. Delivering disability-inclusive changes on a global scale can be a challenge, particularly if this needs to happen at pace, but by taking the right steps businesses can succeed.

Business Disability Forum’s Global Conference 2026, kindly sponsored by HSBC, will consider how to achieve meaningful and practical change and what that means for leaders and practitioners.

For this year’s keynote, our CEO Diane Lightfoot will be joined by Lyn Lee, DEI strategist and author of Tiny Rice Grains, a Straits Times non-fiction bestseller. Diane and Lyn will talk about why organizations struggle to implement and embed DEI in the workplace and how small actions can help deliver meaningful change.

Programme information

Knowing where you’re starting from: understanding inclusion on a global scale

It’s one thing to aspire to be more inclusive of disabled people, but when you’re working across a multinational organisation, where do you begin? Developing a strategy that spans multiple markets, each with its own legal frameworks and cultural contexts, can quickly become complex.

In this session, experts from HSBC in discussion with BDF’s Adrian Ward, will consider how global organisations can evaluate their current situation for disability inclusion. They will reflect on the challenges they encountered during their most recent global assessment, and how they navigated these across diverse cultural contexts.

Attendees will gain practical insights into how to evaluate their current position and why understanding where you are is an essential first step toward defining where to go next.

Adrian Ward, Operations Director, Business Disability Forum (Chair)
Joanne Austin, Global Inclusion Delivery Support Manager, HSBC (UK)
Sweety Kandekar, VP – HR Consulting, HSBC (India)

How organisational change is happening around the world

A great deal of progress has been made on disability inclusion in recent years but there remains more work to do both in the UK and globally.

This panel brings together Business Disability Forum with some of our peer organisations from around the world to consider how disability-inclusive change is happening in our various countries, and what more we can do to support businesses in making that change.

Diane Lightfoot, CEO, Business Disability Forum (Chair)
Murteza Khan, CEO, Bangladesh Business and Disability Network (Bangladesh)
Agata Robińska, President & Founder, YES to Disability Foundation (Poland)
Max Simpson, CEO, Steps Social Enterprise (Thailand)

Stories of change for disability inclusion

In this session we will hear stories from organisations which have worked to implement disability-inclusive change across their global operations, whether that be intended to benefit their disabled employees or customers.

Our speakers will share how they sought to overcome the challenges of enacting change and how that change is making a positive impact for their business. The discussion panel after the break will bring together all the speakers from this session to take your questions.

Dan Cadey, Senior Disability Business Partner, Business Disability Forum (Co-chair)
Brooke Mauro, Senior Disability Business Partner, Business Disability Forum (Co-chair)
Anahi Lafon, Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Impact Director, L’oreal (France)
Heidi Small, Global Disability Advisory Regional Lead, JPMorganChase (UK)
Julie Thomas, Director – Inclusion, Diversity & Equity, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (UK)