A guest blogger on the Office of Disability Employment Policy website is urging businesses to promote a culture that would encourage employees with disabilities to voluntarily identify themselves as such, in an effort to promote workplace fairness and diversity, as well as encourage businesses to add even more individuals with disabilities to their payroll.
Mathew McCullough is the executive director of the District of Columbia Developmental Disabilities Council (DDC). He acknowledges that the title of his May 7 post, “From Awareness to Respect… And Paving the Way” on the Disability.gov blog is a conscious reference to a March 26 entry by Sharon Lewis, Commissioner of the Administration on Developmental Disabilities, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In that post, Lewis calls for discussions about inclusion of people with disabilities to move beyond the call for simple awareness to one that fosters a sense of “meaningful self-determination.” Acknowledging the accomplishments of these individuals and the contributions they make in our communities can shift the general perception from one of tolerance to one of acceptance, and instill confidence in other people with disabilities that they will also be treated in a fair and equal manner.
But all too often in the workplace, McCullough says, an individual with a disability still feels more tolerated than accepted. The feeling that a person may only have a position because of their condition rather than their abilities to perform the tasks at hand discourages people with disabilities to disclose their condition. McCullough identifies himself as a Filipino-American with cerebral palsy in the first sentence of his blog post, and suggests that the mindset should be to embrace the diversity of our co-workers both ethnically and otherwise:
… [A]pproximately 85 percent of all disabilities cannot be seen by the naked eye. These are known as hidden disabilities. Think about this for a moment. Based on this information, chances are that you already know an employee who may or may not disclose his or her disability in your office. But does it really matter? In the end, we’re one and the same; we’re all human.
McCullough says the onus is on the employer to create an environment that would make an individual with a disability comfortable to disclose their condition. The Americans with Disabilities Act prevents discrimination against individuals with disabilities by affirming their legal right to privacy, which has been at the crux of the current debate over the Labor Department’s proposal to institute a rule requiring government contractors to strive for 7% of their workforce to be comprised of people with disabilities. By creating a culture that encourages voluntary disclosure by employees, the entire workplace will be the better for it.
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Image by Jens Karlsson, used under its Creative Commons license.