Insightful article: Invisible disability in the workplace
An insightful article from about the hidden difficulties of invisible disabilities at work. See the full article here: Invisible disability in the workplace
Key points from the article
- The main challenge for her is having to remind employers of her disability once employed. “My experience is that people forget constantly…because they don’t see it…and I don’t want to be the one to bring it up all the time.”
- “Given the attitudes I see when I do education, I think many employers will just fire people [in situations like these], and then it’s up to the employee to decide if they want to sue, find a different job, or give up.”
- “There’s this idea that accommodation means building a new ramp or escalator, but 70 per cent of accommodation is about the attitude of the employer and peers. That takes no money, but time and communicating with honesty.”
- More generally, Glazer points to the fact that many invisible disabilities or health conditions, by their nature, are prone to fluctuation. “Some days you’re better or worse—that’s hard to understand from the outside.”
- The Road to Inclusion stresses the business case for recruiting and retaining people with disabilities, finding that roughly 14 per cent of Canadians have a disability—invisible or visible—and that this cohort is significantly underrepresented in the Canadian workforce. It includes a section of visible versus invisible disability, and notes that the latter may have a greater stigma attached to it, despite the fact Deloitte’s studies show people with disabilities are often more productive and loyal than other workers. Education is cited as a key way to counteract misperceptions and negative attitudes.