Diversity, inclusion, and accessibility are critical to the success of our mission. We cannot achieve improved speech skills for all children if we do not acknowledge the role of race and socioeconomic backgrounds in the availability of speech services and access to care. We cannot create quality speech products that are effective for all children without the inclusion of traditionally underrepresented groups.

Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility within Products
Our products and messaging will strive to include representation of all races, sexes, gender identities and orientations as well as individuals of all ability levels. We will refrain from judgment statements regarding race, sex, gender identity, orientation, socioeconomic status or ability level. We will exercise consideration in our development of automatic feedback to acknowledge distinctions between dialect differences and disordered speech and language.

We will strive to ensure that our products are accessible to all persons regardless of socioeconomic background or ability level. As a team, we understand there is a gap in access to technology, which in turn reduces access to speech therapy services and other critical resources in today’s educational and employment systems. Our team will develop programs to address this gap. As a first step, our team has written to our elected officials in our states to encourage support for programs that provide funding for children in under-served communities to receive access to the internet and computers/tablets for home use. We encourage others to do the same and have provided a form letter individuals can use here. You can also find contact info for your local official by visiting https://www.asha.org/advocacy/state/ and clicking on your respective state or using https://www.commoncause.org/find-your-representative/.

Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Within our Team
We will strive to ensure our workplace is diverse and supportive of individuals of all backgrounds and ability levels.

Minority groups are underrepresented in the fields of engineering and speech-language pathology. The diversity of our team depends upon the enhanced diversity of these fields, which requires a pipeline of students from all backgrounds enrolling in majors that lead to careers in these fields. We acknowledge the gaps in educational attainment are systematic and stem from racism, prejudice, lack of equal opportunities, and complacency by those unaffected. To this end, we pledge to make volunteerism a company priority, specifically with respect to addressing the educational needs of the youth considering careers in the fields of engineering and speech-language pathology. We will encourage and support members of the Verboso team to share their skill sets with underprivileged youth through tutoring and mentoring programs. Specific areas of need include, but are not limited to:

Tutoring youth from underrepresented groups to help them achieve basic computer programming literacy; and
mentoring and supporting youth from underrepresented groups to aid in preparation of applications to speech-language pathology higher education programs.

​ Finally, we will publish an annual impact report regarding the actionable steps we have taken as a company in furtherance of this statement. This impact report will be publicly available on our website. Verboso is committed to diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. We will continue to do our part to drive change and we will continually review and edit this policy as appropriate to ensure we have the greatest impact we can as a company.​