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“Working With a Disability” —Know Your Rights

Filed under Diversity and Careers, Job Search Process, On the Job
Posted by Libraries, September 05, 2007
View all posts for September 2007

Dawn Rosenberg McKay, About.com Career Planning, 8/23/07
http://careerplanning.about.com/b/a/257287.htm

Everyday, people in the workforce who have physical or mental disabilities prove that they are strong assets to the people they serve and to those who hire them. Yet in the past, many of the people in these categories were discriminated against. Thankfully, since 1994 the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) protects many workers with disabilities from discrimination. Whether you are a jobseeker with a disability, an employer, or simply someone who wants to ensure that co-workers with disabilities are treated fairly, this article is a “must-read.”

While physical disabilities are often clearly visible or readily volunteered by prospective hirees and the corresponding “reasonable accomodations” that employers are required to make have become fairly well-documented and concrete, there are many “invisible disabilities,” which may pose greater challenges where accomodations are concerned. Some examples given in the article are psychiatric conditions (e.g. chronic depression) and severe arthritis. Because such conditions are very often not visibly detectable and also because a stigma is still sometimes attached to people with mental illness, people who fall into this category are often afraid to disclose their medical issue to a prospective employer. In the article, the author addresses this issue and indicates that disclosure of one’s disability may be advantageous in some cases.

The article also links to more in-depth information regarding the definition of a mental disability as stated in the ADA, a sample list of specific job accomodations pertaining to people with mental disabilities, the advantages and disadvantages of disclosing a disability, anti-discrimination legal information, and much more. Hopefully, the information you will learn from the article will make you feel more empowered during your job search and/or better equipped to educate an uniformed yet well-intentioned future employer.

—Peter Simm