Thursday, May 29, 2014

Job Discrimination: Still Looking For Feedback

Icon of a red question mark with white stick figure leaning on it
I haven’t had any responses yet to my questions about employment discrimination. There are three reasons I am asking for feedback on this:

1. I am helping my local Center for Independent Living develop some classes for disabled people looking for work, and one of the topics we want to deal with is disability-based employment discrimination.

2. I am looking for work myself, and in my previous work experience, disability was actually a plus, not a problem. So I am personally curious about what real-life disability discrimination looks like in the job-seeking arena.

3. I think we in the disability community mention job discrimination a lot, often without being specific about it. It is annoying when non-disabled people say, “But what about the ADA? Isn’t it against the law for employers to discriminate?” It’s annoying because it sounds naive, but the question remains, how and why does disability discrimination still operate, and is there any practical, immediate way to combat it?

So please, dive in! Any comments on these and related questions would be helpful.

No comments: