Interesting fact

In an AHEAD/TNS MRBI survey 2 years ago 73% of employers said that graduates with disabilities should disclose.

Disclosure comes up frequently for graduates with disabilities when we’re talking to them and is a session in the Get Ready for Work seminars, especially in relation to invisible disabilities.

BUT

Irish legislation* makes no reference to disclosure of disability*. Nothing says you do or don’t have to disclose your disability.

I find this rather frustrating but also rather interesting.

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*I am referring to the Disability Act 2005, the Equality Act 2004, the Equal Status Act 2000, the Employment Equality Act 1998 and the Health, Safety & Welfare at Work Act 2005

*The Employement Equality Act and the Equal Status Act both refer to the disclosure of information in the context of the equality tribunal or the labour court, but make no reference to disability

 

Telling…

I was reading a few posts on Tommy’s site recently where he was talking about his cane and the posts resonated with me.

Every time I talk to a group of people about disclosure (of disability) their reactions are very different. And I got to thinking about my reactions. I get tired telling people. I have a spiel that I think makes me even sound tired talking about it. My disabilities are mostly invisible (if you’re not looking hard, or don’t know what to look for at least). I don’t hide them, but they are definitely more invisible. I do have a choice – I don’t have to tell. I could pass for able bodied. My disability is not revealed not by my body, there’s no ‘giveaways’ But because of the way this world is, for me to operate in it, I have to tell. And telling can be difficult or tiring, you are revealing personal information that people sometimes don’t know what to do with. Which can be awkward. But then so is a halfway existence. Sometimes, I wish it was it was told for me – that I had a cane. Or the hearing aids I had as a small kid which I wore in a little harness on my chest – 2 little pouches,  with 2 boxes, and long wires dangling out of them. But that’s only sometimes. More often, I wish it wasn’t necessary to make it obvious. That the way this world is, includes people like me a little more. I also wish that having been this person all my life, that I could talk about that one part of me more easily, so that we can get back to a conversation which all of me is in, not just my disability.*

So when disclosure comes up, I’m very concious of all the emotions and the difficulties that people may have. I also think that those who look for that information should think about what telling is, and how it would be to have to do it. All the time.

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*I don’t mean this as a ‘poor me’ piece, more as a reflective piece, based on my thoughts and feelings after reading Tommy’s posts.

 

Barriers

Following on from my last post, I’d like to talk a little bit about some of the other barriers to employment for graduates with disabilities. While access (and by this I mean physical infrastructure) is probably the biggest barrier, its also the hardest to tackle. It’s not complication that makes it hard to tackle, but simply the scale of the task. It is pervasive. And talking about access will probably make up several posts all on its own – in a constructive manner I hope (no pun intended!)

But what of the other barriers? Another project of AHEAD (the WAM Project) has done a lot of work with employers and graduates trying to identify where some of the barriers lie. And unfortunately, it’s not one giant wall in the way, but rather an obstacle course or minefield of smaller issues. The report from the last round of that project can be found here. Barriers identified included perceptions, recruitment & selection processes, support mechanisms (or lack of), welfare rights, disclosure, accomodations, and grants. I plan to look at each of these over the forthcoming months, but in the meantime I’d like to know if anyone thinks I’ve missed any in my list?