Today, more job seekers with disabilities are entering the workforce. For
persons with disabilities, finding and keeping work is usually no different
than for those without disabilities. However, there may be additional things
to consider, such as disclosure if, when and how to tell people about your
disability.
Disclosure is an important and complex decision that is entirely yours to
make. What’s right for one person may not be right for another, and what
works in one situation may not be successful in another.
Whether you mention your disability in your cover letter or resumé, during
the interview or at the time of the job offer depends on you and the
situation. If you’re dealing with a service provider or agency that works
specifically with persons with disabilities, you will still have some say in
how much is disclosed. Disclosure is entirely your choice.
Before deciding if, when and how to disclose your disability, think about
the following questions:
Is your disability visible?
How do most people react when they learn about your disability? How do you
deal with their reactions?
When do you feel most comfortable and confident disclosing your disability?
Does not disclosing put your safety or the safety of others at risk?
Will the employer think you’re dishonest? How would you deal with that
reaction?
What misconceptions might the employer have about your disability?
If you disclose, will you be able to reassure your employer that your
disability will not affect your ability to do the work?
What do you know about this employer's policies and experiences regarding
people with disabilities?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Shireen Irani" <[email protected]>
To: "AccessIndia: a list for discussing accessibility and issues
concerningthe disabled." <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2013 8:58 PM
Subject: Re: [AI] Quandary of Hidden Disabilities: Conceal or Reveal?
a very serious post indeed.
if i'm not mistaken this issue of whether 1 should disclose one's
blindness in the cv was discussed sometime ago on the list. and many
people did contribute to the discussion.
still, these r issues that need to be brought up from time to time as
new members keep joining the list.
because i'm still a bit unsure whether its a good idea to leav it out
of the cv till the interview stage.
On 9/22/13, avinash shahi <[email protected]> wrote:
By KATHERINE BOUTON
New York Times
Published: September 21, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/business/quandary-of-hidden-disabilities-conceal-or-reveal.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
A YOUNG woman with hearing loss wrote to me recently about being
interviewed for a senior position in a major library system. She was
well qualified for the job, and as her interviews progressed through
the day, she sensed that she was about to be offered the job.
Enlarge This Image
Julia Yellow
Then the top executives invited her to continue the discussion over
drinks. The bar was noisy and she couldn’t keep up with the
conversation. She didn’t get the job.
The woman, who asked me not to use her name, is among those whom the
Americans With Disabilities Act can have a hard time protecting:
people with hidden disabilities.
What should she have done? During the interview process she might have
disclosed her hearing loss in a way that showed how effectively and
creatively she compensated for it. When the drinks suggestion was
made, she might have said: “I’d prefer we met in a quiet place so I
could respond more easily. Would that be O.K.?”
But the woman’s choice not to disclose her disability was
understandable. In fact, Joyce Bender, who owns a search firm in
Pittsburgh that helps place people with disabilities, says that
revealing a disability in an interview should be avoided if possible.
And it should not be mentioned on a résumé, she says, as doing so may
mean never reaching the interview stage.
Ms. Bender herself has epilepsy, a factor in her decision to focus the
work of Bender Consulting Services on people with disabilities.
“People with epilepsy have been viewed as mentally insane, degenerate,
demonic or intellectually diminished,” she said. “Today the stigma for
people with epilepsy is that you are strange, dangerous, weird and
someone to avoid.”
An employee is not required to disclose a disability after being
hired, but may choose to do so. Someone with epilepsy may want to
ensure that the employer will know how to deal with a seizure. A
diabetic might need to be away from work for insulin shots. Someone
with mental illness may need a flexible schedule to allow for
psychiatrist visits. A recovering alcoholic or drug abuser might need
time off to meet with a substance abuse support group.
But it’s a hard decision to make: If you announce your condition, you
risk being stigmatized; if you keep it a secret, you risk poor
performance reviews or even being fired.
AS someone who suffers from hearing loss, I understand this quandary
all too well. When I was an editor at The New York Times, I was
hesitant to discuss my condition. I told a few close colleagues about
my disability, but I never explained how serious it was. Nor did I
admit to myself how much it affected me professionally.
Former colleagues have since told me that they sometimes thought I was
aloof, or bored, or maybe burned out. The fault was mine, in not
disclosing the disability and asking for accommodations. I could have
asked for a captioned phone, for instance, which would have made my
job much easier and reduced a lot of the stress. I could have used a
hearing assistive device, a small FM receiver, to pick up voices at
staff meetings.
So why didn’t I say anything? I feared being perceived as old. For
nearly three decades I tried to fake it, as my hearing loss worsened
to the extent that I could barely manage in the workplace even with a
hearing aid and a cochlear implant.
My experience, and that of others, shows that invisible disabilities
in the workplace may lead managers and colleagues to view employees as
difficult, lazy or not team players.
Most companies are in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities
Act, and many seek out employees with disabilities. But there are
subtler, gray areas of discrimination, usually unintentional. These
can start with the application process.
Some big retail companies use prescreening tests with job applications
that can exclude certain employees, said Jan Johnston-Tyler, founder
and chief executive officer of EvoLibri, a company in Santa Clara,
Calif., whose services include job placement for people with
disabilities.
One of Ms. Johnston-Tyler’s clients, a 25-year-old with Asperger’s
syndrome, applied for a position at Subway. While most of the online
application was routine, the last step was a multiple choice
questionnaire. One of the 60 questions was, “Sometimes I have a hard
time figuring out how I am supposed to behave around others.”
Most of us would check off the “disagree” option, but as Ms.
Johnston-Tyler pointed out, many people with Asperger’s “are generally
honest to a fault.” She contacted Subway’s corporate parent and was
told that her client could fill out a different application without
social suitability questions.
The interview process can be another minefield, as the woman who wrote
to me about the library position found. And once people with hidden
disabilities start their jobs, they face more risks.
Ms. Johnston-Tyler sees a lot of inadvertent discrimination. She told
me about a client with Asperger’s who was working for a community
college as an accountant and was having a very difficult time
interacting with others because of his poor social skills and
boundaries. He was lonely and wanted social time with others, and got
in trouble for asking too many questions.
She also had a client who lost his job as a line cook because he could
not keep up with the food orders being called out. He had a condition
called central auditory processing disorder, “which made it virtually
impossible for him to interpret the orders when he was not looking at
the waiter’s face — he was facing the stove,” she said. “We helped him
get a job in catering, where he could read the orders needed.”
About half of Ms. Johnston-Tyler’s clients are referred by mental
health practitioners. People with mental illness have a particularly
hard time finding and keeping jobs, in part because of isolated cases
of violence that lead to negative — and out of proportion — publicity
about mental illness, Ms. Johnston-Tyler says. For this reason,
employees rarely disclose a psychiatric disability, either before or
after they are hired. This leaves them open to misunderstanding.
Ms. Johnston-Tyler recalled placing a bipolar client in an internship
for dog grooming. Her internship was terminated because the client
“didn’t seem that interested” in the training, Ms. Johnston-Tyler
said, “when in fact, it was her mood disorder that made her appear
apathetic.”
Hidden disabilities can come into play with veterans. Ms. Bender says:
“I hear so many employers say, ‘I would love to hire a veteran with a
disability; they will get top priority when I hire new associates.’ ”
What they really mean, she says, is, “Send me a veteran with a visible
disability,” and yet “many servicemen and women return from the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan with traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic
stress disorder.” Employers tell her, “I don’t know how to accommodate
something like PTSD; the veteran may not be able to handle my
stressful work environment.” Very few companies, Ms. Bender points
out, have a stress level like the one that caused the PTSD.
Ms. Johnston-Tyler estimates that 75 percent of the employees she
places choose not to disclose their disabilities. Even after
placement, both her company and Ms. Bender’s continue to be involved
with the applicant.
Ms. Johnston-Tyler does advise disclosing a disability “if an employee
receives a very poor review, or is placed on a performance improvement
plan.” It may not help, but “if nothing else, this slows the
termination process down a bit and allows us to see if we can resolve
the situation for everyone.”
Why don’t more employees open up about their disabilities? As Ms.
Johnston-Tyler put it: “Think about someone going on public record
that they were gay in the ’70s or transgender in the ’90s, and you
pretty much have it. Society is simply not there yet for this to be a
safe conversation for most people.”
TO help employers avoid inadvertent discrimination, Ms. Johnston-Tyler
wrote a paper in 2007 that offers sample human resource training
programs, and contains references to others. She explains the
employer’s rights as well as the employee’s. For example, if an
employee comes to a manager with a disability that cannot be seen and
asks for accommodation, it’s fair for the employer to ask for
verification. In an interview, Ms. Johnston-Tyler added that it’s also
important for the employer to communicate to all employees the general
information that workers may need to take time off for medical care,
without naming employees.
But therein lies another problem. As Lynne Soraya, the pseudonym of a
blogger who writes about her Asperger’s, puts it: “In today’s world,
we require people to be labeled in order to give them help and
coaching in the areas they need.” Even though disclosing her condition
in her personal life has been a “godsend,” she writes, “in the area of
work, I still have grave misgivings.” Many people with hidden
disabilities share those doubts.
John Waldo is the founder, advocacy director and counsel to the
nonprofit Washington State Communication Access Project, which aims to
reduce barriers that prevent people with hearing loss from
participating in public life. He sees a lot of unintentional
discrimination.
Mr. Waldo, like many I talked to in the field of employment practices,
is willing to give employers a break.
“When Congress passed the A.D.A., it recognized the important and
fundamental reality that discrimination is seldom intended,” he said
in a speech recently. “Rather, discrimination against the disabled is
most often an unintended effect of acts or omissions undertaken
without considering the impact on people with disabilities. Put
bluntly, the problem is not so much that people are mean, but rather,
that people are clueless.”
Katherine Bouton is the author of “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50
Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You.”
A version of this article appears in print on September 22, 2013, on
page BU8 of the New York edition with the headline: Quandary of Hidden
Disabilities: Conceal or Reveal?..
--
Avinash Shahi
M.Phil Research Scholar
Centre for The Study of Law and Governance
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi India
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