The Buzzz April, 2009

Should You Tell, or Not? How? And When? And, What If You Don't? Then What?

The title says it all. These are the questions that wake people with disabilities up in the middle of the night. I can remember the what-ifs going round and round inside my head while I wondered if I would ever find a job, and just about every person with a disability I've ever known has wrestled with the likely consequences of these decisions and wondered what to do.

It was the summer of 1968. The lady behind the desk at Snelling and Snelling was flustered. I could tell, she had never met a person who was blind before. She had never even thought about meeting a person who was blind, much less finding that person a job. She needed some eye contact, but I couldn't provide that, and I had already explained, as politely as I could, that she needed to talk to me, not my sister who had given me a ride to her office, because it was I who was looking for a job. My sister, a nurse, already had one.

Thinking about that meeting now, I feel kind of sorry for her. It was pretty unusual back then for a blind woman to come to Snelling and Snelling, looking for a full-time, permanent job, and if that blind woman arrived with a recently-acquired bachelor's degree in International Studies, well, I'm sure the career counselor found the challenge more than daunting.. Jobs had seemed to gravitate naturally toward my classmates. Some had even been recruited months before graduation, right after the Christmas holidays. But, although I had traveled to DC with a friend and we had walked around the Federal Triangle and visited the IRS, and the DOJ, and I can't remember now which other federal agencies we visited, and although I had followed their personnel departments' advice to fill out my FS-171 (the federal job application form back then), although I had some recent job experience (at a summer camp for children who were blind), and I had a decent GPA, and I was articulate, knowledgeable about the Communist bloc among other things, and eager to work, summer was winding down, and no one had come knocking on my door, or responded in any way to my job applications. My sister and her friends thought that Snelling and Snelling might be my ticket to work. They all had friends who had had good luck with the employment agency.

But, within a few seconds of being ushered into the career counselor's office, I knew that Snelling and Snelling was unlikely to find a way to help me find a job.

The only advice the career counselor could give me was, "Maybe if we don't mention your handicap, we'll be able to get you an interview..."

"Then again...," she was thinking out loud, "How would you read the application, or take the test, or follow the written instructions?"

It seemed like I needed to self identify my "handicap," and it was beginning to seem like my disability was much more of a handicap than I had ever imagined it would be when I applied for college, and worked hard during the next four years to keep my GPA up so I could keep my scholarships.  I had acquired lots of blindness skills over the preceding couple of years.  I felt safe traveling with my white mobility cane.  I could cook and clean and cope with the demands of daily life.  The one thing I knew for sure was that, since I couldn't drive,  I wanted to live and work in an urban environment. That's why I had begun my job search in Washington, DC, where government jobs were rumored to be plentiful.  "Blindness" (Actually, back then, I was more likely to call myself, "partially sighted.") was not among the top adjectives I used to describe myself, but after the Snelling and Snelling experience, I wondered:  Should I mention it at all?

Eventually, I did get a job.  In a federal agency in the small town of Gaithersburg, 45 minutes from the big city of Washington, DC.  And, in the typing pool!

Things worked out.  Scientists who worked at the National Bureau of Standards, many of whom spoke English as a second or third language,  soon realized that, if they sent their dictabelts to the typing pool and asked for me, I could turn what they said into readable prose.  A writing job came up within the next year, I applied for it, and got it!  I stayed at the federal job for just about five years, and when I left to have a baby, I fully intended to go back to work...eventually!

Eventually, after two decades as a stay-at-home-mom, I did go back to work, and by the time I was ready to join the hoards of other women returning to work in the early '90s, my blindness was called a "disability," instead of a handicap, and there was no hiding it!  In fact, knowing that people don't really like surprises, I never even tried!

Suppose, though, that my disability had been one of the "hidden" ones.  Suppose it had been epilepsy, or suppose I had a prosthetic leg, well hidden under the subtle folds of a long skirt or the trousers of a pantsuit.  Suppose my disability had been a mental or emotional illness, controlled with medications.  Or diabetes that required me to test my blood for accumulated sugar several times each day.  Would I, or should I have identified my disability?  And, if the answer is yes, when?  On the application, or the resume?  Before the interview, or toward the end (if I thought things were going okay)?  And, how?  Almost twenty years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and mere months after Congress reaffirmed its protections and safeguards with the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, people with disabilities wrestle with the same old questions when they go looking for jobs in an economy where jobs for able-bodied people are at a premium and the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is astronomical. 

My friend, Kathi, is legally blind, but she has a lot of useable vision.  In fact, in an earlier era, she would have identified herself as partially sighted, if she mentioned her disability at all. She can read a regular computer screen, and the print in most books.  She can sometimes even read what she or others have written by hand. Still, she is visually impaired, and she cannot see well enough to drive.

She told me that, if she makes it through the initial screening process, she refers, rather obliquely, to her disability when she's talking with an employer's scheduler, to set up the in-person interview.

"I'll say something like, Can you tell me where the nearest Metro Station is?  I don't drive because I am visually impaired," she told me.  "That gets the point across, but without beating them over the head with it!"

By then, the interview is already scheduled, and Kathi is such a fabulous writer, that she usually manages to get the offer of free-lance work she's after, despite her disability .

Here's the important thing you need to know when you're deciding whether, or how, to disclose your disability:  If, because of your disability, you're likely to need an accommodation, either during the interview process, or once you've accepted the job offer and you're about to go to work, then you have to disclose the disability, in order to get the accommodation you need.  The disclosure is not supposed to impact your ability to get the job, but, honestly, everyone knows that it very well may!  It's a fact of life, and most of us find ways to get the interview, and then the job, by encouraging our interviewer, or our supervisor, or our office colleagues to concentrate on our abilities, rather than the disabilities that necessitate our requests for reasonable accommodations.

Surprising a potential employer is not, I and most others have found, a good idea.  Suppose you use a wheel chair and you decide not to tell the employer in advance.  What happens then, when you arrive at the office building and find that, despite the laws that require buildings and sidewalks to be accessible, there's no ramp, and no elevator?  It's better to find out, in advance,  about the probable lay of the land, and to figure out how to negotiate the brick pavers in front of the building, and find out where the disabled parking places are located, or whether you'll really be able to work in the office inside the building with the entrance that requires visitors to climb 13 steps, or not!

I asked a friend who has 30 years of experience as a vocational rehabilitation counselor.  "What do you tell consumers with hidden disabilities?  Do you advise them to disclose their disabilities when they're looking for jobs?"

"It really doesn't matter what I tell them," she told me. "Most of them won't say anything anyway.  No one wants to be thought of as the person with the mental illness, or the lady who might have a seizure, or the person in the office who's different!  If you can get away with not saying anything, then you probably won't!"

Susan Parker, director of policy development at the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), explained the reticence that many people with hidden disabilities feel about disclosure.   At the recent annual meeting of the National Council on Disability (NCD) http://tinyurl.com/cjmped, Parker said, "People with disabilities do not necessarily identify themselves as disabled  Particularly with respect to the so-called hidden disabilities, "They do not want to report it out,  because [they know that]not all of the individuals in supervisory positions understand that they need to take that information and use it in a supportive way."

And, it's not just uncaring or narrow-minded supervisors who can ruin a perfectly good job for a person who fails to keep a disability hidden under a bushel of non-disclosure.  When Laura Yeager, a university-level teacher who has bipolar disorder, inadvertently let information about her disability slip out when she was teaching at a college in Pennsylvania a few years ago, the consequences were horrific. "I got harassed," she says in an article she wrote for the winter 2007 issue of "New York City Voices," http://tinyurl.com/cbrkmz "Particularly by students. My life was, frankly, a living hell."

After that experience, she kept the knowledge about her disability strictly to herself.  One day, she screwed up her courage and told her boss.  Yeager says, " My boss and I had a great relationship and I felt that I could confide in him. I told him, and it must not have mattered in a negative way because shortly afterward, I was promoted."

Later on, on the first day of a new teaching gig at another university, she actually disclosed her disability to a classroom of students, and possibly because she had become more comfortable with the reality of her bipolar disorder, or possibly because of the more accepting attitudes toward people with disabilities that emerged toward the end of the Twentieth Century and beyond, she found that sharing the knowledge with students made the whole class more comfortable, and several of her students whose disabilities had, heretofore been deep, dark secrets, felt empowered enough to disclose their own disabilities to her.

I talked to several people about this whole dilemma of whether or not to disclose a disability, especially one that is hidden, and two aspects of disclosing disabilities that I hadn't really thought about before emerged from our conversations.  One involves the disability of addiction.  ted chittenden, who belongs to one of the many disability-related list-servs I inhabit, said, "most large companies routinely investigate potential hires after the interview (to be sure they have no felony drug arrests), and those investigations usually turn up the hidden disabilities, like alcohol or drug addiction,  that may not be seen during the interview."

Ted, and others, advise, if you are recovering from an addiction, or if you have a criminal record for any reason, it's best to disclose these facts from the outset.

And, what about the costs of employer-paid health insurance? I have to admit, I hadn't thought about that particular aspect of disability either.  My friend who has a prosthetic leg told me, "I'll bring it up, straight out, during the interview, because I think it's only fair to let an employer know that the company's health policy may well have to cover the $10,000 for a new prosthesis that I'm likely to need at some point in the future.  If it's going to matter, then you have to self disclose."

And, if it isn't going to matter, then what?  Carl Jarvis, told me this story about how he didn't disclose the relatively well-hidden disability of partial vision, and, later on, the not-so-well hidden disability of total blindness, until he got to the interview and there was no faking it.  "My hidden disabilities are mine and mine alone," Carl told me.  "Besides, I'm never certain  which of my idiosyncrasies others would label as disabilities.
When I still had enough sight in one eye to "Pass" as sighted, I never mentioned the fact that I was blind in one eye and limited in the other.  I held several jobs without the boss ever knowing my limitations."

"As a fully blind person I have only interviewed for one job outside of the field of work for the blind.  This was as a Fuller  Brush Salesman.  I did not divulge my blindness until I arrived for the interview.  The fellow behind the desk was certainly taken aback.  He told me that their sales people needed to have a valid driver's license and a late model car.  I said that I understood that they did have some walk-in routes and no one had been in my area for at least two years. I went on to explain that I had done some door to door work as a blind man, and I found that it worked to my advantage.  He became interested to know how I would handle finding doors, showing product, and filling out order blanks.  I had answers for all his questions. After about a year on the job I was actually written up in their company magazine."

If yours is a disability that is far from hidden, e.g., if you're going to be bringing an American Sign Language interpreter with you to the interview, or if you're going to show up in a power chair, or with a guide dog, or a white mobility cane and need some sighted guidance to find the chair that's situated in front of the interviewer's desk, then it's best to let the employer know in advance and up front.  It's also best to anticipate an employer's probable misgivings about your disability and to formulate responses to the questions which, though he or she is not allowed to ask specifically about an interviewee's disabilities, will probably be the unspoken concerns that will make all the difference in whether or not you get the job.

Back when not all that many people had encountered talking computers, I brought my lap top to an interview for a graduate school internship that I had applied for.  I knew, as soon as I turned on the computer and the JAWS-guy started speaking, that I was going to get the internship!  My soon-to-be employer had, in fact, been worried about how I would be able to do the job, and when I demonstrated the effectiveness of my assistive technology, her worries evaporated, and I started the internship, which later evolved into a paying job,  the next week.

Sylvie  Kashdan, who teaches blindness skills to people for whom English is not a first language, told me that the most important thing a person with a disability can do is to put interviewers and potential employers at ease.  "Over my many years of work, I have done both, told in advance and not told in advance. In my opinion, if a person feels she or he is qualified for the job, and the job is not specifically related to knowledge of disabilities, she or he shouldn't identify as having a disability until the actual interview, or the interview may not even happen.  Many times when I disclosed beforehand, I did not get the interview. When I have had interviews, I have most often gotten the job. At the interview, the person should emphasize her or his qualifications and the positive things she or he can do on the job, and demonstrate her or his ability to put others at ease (a positive for any job seeker, disabled or not), while not shying away from disclosing the disability, and when necessary doing so in the context of noting the ways in which accommodations can be made to work on the job," Sylvie told me.  "I think it helps if the person can sort of casually bring into the  discussion examples of positive experiences at school or work and, when necessary of adaptations and accommodations that led to positive outcomes."

"If the potential employer or interviewer won't listen and ask relevant questions about the positive experiences, and give positive responses," she concluded,   "Then that working situation is probably not going to be easy for the disabled person anyway."

Miriam Vieni, who worked in the field of counseling and sociology for many years, agrees, as do many of the friends and colleagues whom I asked.  Here's what Miriam said, "A blind person should indicate that he or she is blind when making an appointment for an interview.  I think that this will help the interviewee feel less anxious
and it will help the interviewer be emotionally prepared to encounter the interviewee.  There is some risk in doing this because the interviewer may find a way to get out of the interview.  But probably, he or she would find a reason to reject the disabled applicant anyway."

So, should you tell an employer about your disability?  The general consensus is that (1) the decision is yours to make.  There's no right or wrong answer, but if you're likely to need accommodations either during the interviewing and screening processes, or on the job, then you'll have to disclose your disability in order to receive those accommodations.  (2) If your disability is likely to matter to an employer in a significant way, as in the case of my friend who will almost certainly need her employer-provided  health insurance to cover the cost of a replacement prosthesis, then it's probably only fair to inform a potential employer of that likelihood.  (Fairness is not synonymous with a legal requirement, however, and I believe deciding whether or not to divulge this information is an ethical, rather than a legal, consideration.)  (3) If your disability is unlikely to affect your ability to perform the essential duties of a job, and if you don't need any job-site accommodations, then there's no reason to disclose your disability in advance of an interview, during the interview process, or once you've gotten the job.

Even if your disability is one of the obvious ones, circumstances could permit you to avoid disclosing it altogether until you arrive at the job site, and for at least one person I asked,  that's exactly what happened.  Sharlyn Ayotte explained, "When I was first hired in the high technology sector, the initial communication and the job offer took place over the phone...Sight unseen, so to speak! We discussed technology and experience, and the issue of disability never emerged in the discussion. I felt that topic not relevant,
since they came to me and not visa versa I felt overwhelmingly that I was
qualified for the position and as I owned my adaptive technology, there was
no accommodation required."

"When I arrived at my new employer with technology, the company executives were very surprised, but were very open. On the second day, I received a call from the Executive Assistant to the CEO. My first thought was I was going to lose my dream job, but the reality was different. The CEO wanted to know whether or not I needed any technology to do my job."

"In the end, I was with that business for over eight years in a sales position, and was a good, loyal  and reliable employee who worked very hard to demonstrate capability."   

 If you have a criminal record, then it's wise to let your employer know about it, because he or she will probably find out anyway.

When should you disclose a disability?  Most people with whom I spoke believe that there's no need to disclose a disability on an application or a resume.  In fact, it's illegal to ask applicants questions about disabilities, age, marital status, religion, or ethnicity.  (It is not illegal to ask about citizenship, gender, or prior criminal records.  Many of the people I asked mentioned that they do include information on a resume that would imply to a potential employer that they have a disability.  For example, my resume lists the assistive technologies with which I have a familiarity, as well as the disability-related organizations of which I am a member. These listings have been advantageous to me, and others, when I have sought employment in jobs where knowledge about disabilities is important.

Charlie Crawford, who has worked as Commissioner for the Blind in Massachusetts, and also as Executive Director of the American Council of the Blind,  emphasized how important it is to list our accomplishments, awards, and relevant experiences when we construct our resumes or complete job applications, because one's experiences and accomplishments can say much more about a person than his or her disability ever does.  Charlie said, I have always disclosed my blindness to potential employer interviewers in advance.  By constructing my resume to demonstrate all the accomplishments I have been fortunate enough to be able to carry out, I have been able to  make the point  that the blindness is not my main definer."

Nearly everyone I asked advised applicants to disclose information about disabilities that are not hidden in advance of the first job interview. 

Many people suggested formulating in advance answers to unspoken concerns about how you will accomplish the essential job duties despite your disability.  I was happy that I brought my talking lap top computer to that internship interview.  Once when I applied for an itinerant teaching job, I was able to describe, on the spot,  how I would use para and public transit to get to and from my students' homes because I had thought about it in advance.  A person who uses a wheelchair might describe how easy it is to insert inexpensive risers underneath a standard desk so that he or she will be able to work on the desk top efficiently and effectively.  I usually spend at least a few minutes explaining to an interviewer what to expect from my guide dog, and I make sure my dog is well groomed and well behaved.  It is reasonable to expect that an employer who may know very little about your particular disability will wonder how that disability will affect your ability to do a job.  Anticipating his or her concerns will put both of you at ease and may go a long way toward assuring that you will get the job you are interviewing for. 

Joe harcz, a long-time friend from many e-mail lists and phone calls and correspondences, summed up the experiences and advice of many:  "If one needs accommodations then one should and, is obligated to identify. If people do not need accommodations and can effectively hide their  disabilities, than I suggest they do so. Frankly, I cannot hide mine, but would
do so if I could. The bottom line is the job market is so tight that we people with disabilities need to call upon every resource we have to present ourselves as capable and competent and willing and able to succeed."