How Common Misperceptions Create Two Big Workplace Hurdles for People With Disabilities
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Today marks the start of National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), which is observed every October to recognize the many workplace contributions of people with disabilities.
This annual event also seeks to raise awareness of best practices for inclusive hiring, employment, and retention among workers who identify as having a disability. In keeping with these aims, we will continue our series on employment “hurdles” by focusing on two key barriers for people with disabilities.
CALL TO ACTION: Throughout this article series, we want to engage with you, our community, to learn more about organizations that are tackling these hurdles. Our goal is to amplify the good work they are doing to dismantle major employment obstacles and increase diversity and retention.
About 13% of the US population identifies as having a disability, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This includes physical, mental, sensory, and all other disabilities. The self-identified disability can be either visible or invisible, also referred to as apparent and non-apparent disabilities.
Official statistics such as the employment–population ratio and labor force participation rate remain far below the national average for persons with disabilities, symptomatic of significant inequities that have persisted for many years.
I highlighted four notable areas of inequality in a previous post, and today, I would like to share the findings from our latest research here at Team JTC.
We discovered many conversations surrounding two recurrent barriers to employment that continue to deny equitable opportunities for advancement to people with disabilities. Let’s look at each of them in turn before considering our response.
Hurdle #1: Faulty Assumptions Regarding Disabilities
Academic studies have repeatedly found that employers presume people with disabilities will be unproductive in their jobs. These ideas have been summed up as “sincere yet ill-founded views about the work-related abilities of people with disabilities,” and they can be a major obstacle to securing employment.
In other words, many employers seem to hold “negative beliefs and misperceptions that disabled people cannot work in regular jobs.” Common assumptions include low productivity, taking longer to learn tasks, or a lack of competence to do the job. Employers are sometimes concerned that “workers with disabilities won’t be able to keep up.”
These ideas are all expressions of ableism, which can manifest as either explicit or implicit bias. In reviewing the scholarly literature, one group of academics found that people with disabilities tend to be “implicitly stereotyped as incompetent, cold, and ‘child-like.’”
However, these kinds of assumptions run contrary to the evidence.
A notable study by Accenture found that employers ranked as “Disability Inclusion Champions” achieved 28% higher revenue compared with counterpart companies. Elsewhere, reports from Forbes and Gartner lend further support to the business case for equitable representation and inclusion of people with disabilities, suggesting several other benefits beyond better profitability (such as increased innovation).
In sum, common assumptions or stereotypes often deter companies from hiring people living with disabilities. Not only is this based on implicit bias that should be eliminated, it also creates harm for job seekers and employers alike.
Hurdle #2: Reluctance to Offer Reasonable Accommodations
As well as negative assumptions on productivity and competence, many employers are concerned that people with disabilities will require costly accommodations in the workplace.
Put simply, an accommodation is “a modification to the work environment or the way a job is customarily done to enable a qualified individual with a disability to enjoy equal employment opportunities.”
The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities, including during the recruitment and hiring process. However, employers tend to assume that hiring people with disabilities will be too expensive due to the cost of accommodations.
This is another frequently encountered misperception, and as before, it isn’t supported by the evidence.
When the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) ran a survey of employers, they found that over half of accommodations actually cost nothing (reported by 56% of respondents). Most other accommodations required a one-time cost of just $300, on average. Only 7% of employers reported ongoing costs for accommodations, typically amounting to around $2,000 per year.
Some real-world examples highlighted by JAN include:
Assistive technology, such as equipment to allow dictation rather than typing of reports, for a health care worker who needed to reduce screen time due to eye strain and headaches. Cost: $600.
Noise-canceling headsets, for a worker with ADHD who was distracted by background noise from coworkers and patients. Cost: $250.
Allowing an employee to bring a service animal to work, at no cost to the employer.
We can see that in the vast majority of cases, it costs very little (if anything) to make reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities.
It’s also worth pointing out how these two hurdles can be interlinked. Research by the Society for Human Resource Management found that around half of employees with a non-apparent disability, such as Autism, do not disclose their condition at work.
This is understandable, given the stereotypes and assumptions we have just encountered. But it also means that employees with non-apparent disabilities aren’t getting the workplace accommodations they need to enable them to do their jobs better. Eric Ascher of RespectAbility, a nonprofit that represents people with disabilities, argues that employers should “create a culture in which disclosing a disability and requesting accommodations is celebrated.” And if they do so, it will benefit everyone.
How To Overcome Disability Barriers in the Workplace
First and foremost, we should use NDEAM as an opportunity to actively discuss and reassess inclusion for people with disabilities where we work, while emphasizing that such conversations should always be part of our efforts to build more inclusive workplaces.
For instance, in a previous article looking at hiring practices, I suggested being proactive in offering accommodations as one possible action point. You could ask all candidates as standard whether they require accommodations at the interview. This demonstrates your inclusive culture to prospective employees and will help people with disabilities feel more comfortable when applying to or working at your organization.
Nevertheless, given the systemic or deeply embedded roots of many sources of inequality, the role of wider advocacy organizations is vital. From high-profile national examples such as the National Disability Institute (NDI), RespectAbility and JAN to smaller, local organizations working across the country, every contribution matters.
Part of the purpose of this series is to learn about the great work these organizations are doing to tackle employment barriers, including those faced by people with disabilities. We encourage you to share the details of any you are aware of or have worked with directly so we can make this information available to our wider community.
In closing, we should remember that as one author has put it, people with disabilities “want to work – but it’s complicated.” That may be true, but it shouldn’t be compounded by unnecessary employment obstacles. Dismantling the two hurdles we’ve seen today would be a big step toward that, and it’s something we encourage you to consider closely during the rest of this month and beyond.
JOIN US IN THE COMMENTS: Please let us know any organizations you are aware of, whether local or national, that work to create equitable employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Have you partnered successfully with such organizations to see an impact in your workplace?
