Disability awareness month
Did you know that October is "Disability Awareness Month"?
BitchPhD points to a post at Camera Obscura about how the Americans with Disabilities Act also protects people from discrimination based on their association with someone with disabilities. She wonders (and suggests that I might be able to answer):
"So, for example, you can’t be not hired because your employer is afraid you’ll take too much time off to care for your disabled child. How this would play out if you already had a job and needed, say, flex time to care for the same child, I don’t know, but it’s an interesting question."
The answer, according to the EEOC, is that you need to be treated the same as other employees. If they’re allowed to take unpaid leave, or juggle their hours, your boss needs to let you do the same. But if everyone else has to work 9-5.30, the ADA doesn’t require them to cut you a break. If you work for a big enough company and have been there for at least a year, and the person with a disability is an immediate family member, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) might help you take unpaid leave, but otherwise you’re out of luck.
While I’m on the topic, a friend forwarded me this list of Myths and Facts about People with Disabilities, from the Easter Seals. I was particularly struck by #8:
Myth 8: Curious children should never ask people about their disabilities.
Fact: Many children have a natural, uninhibited curiosity and may ask questions that some adults consider embarrassing. But scolding curious children may make them think having a disability is "wrong" or "bad." Most people with disabilities won’t mind answering a child’s question.
October 26th, 2005 at 10:29 pm
My sense, having had a mother in a wheelchair, as well as a fair amount of experience with people with disabilities in the course of my life, is that a lot of people with disabilities actually welcome those kinds of questions from children (provided they’re innocent and curious rather than mocking, of course). It kind of gets rid of the ‘elephant in the living room’ aspect of it.
October 26th, 2005 at 10:32 pm
My compromise on the whole “children asking questions” thing is that I try to answer the question in positive, neutral ways, e.g., “I don’t know why she has a wheelchair, but I imagine she might have trouble walking, so she can use the chair to help her get around and do all the things she needs and wants to do.” But I also kind of explain that it’s not really considered polite to talk about other people as if they aren’t there, which is generally true without making the disability per se a bad thing….
And thanks for the answer, that makes sense.
October 26th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
While it’s important to have the laws in place, I am sure that biases continue to play a significant role here, even if not on a conscious level. E.g. evaluating two candidates for a job, a single guy with no life vs a married woman who might go off and have a baby. I suspect there’s plenty of cases where people choose the non-complex person and then rationalize it away.
I’m about to leave my employer in the lurch for 12 weeks on leave. As an employee, I love that I have the opportunity,but as a manager, if one of my employees had to leave for 12 weeks or more, I know it would cause me significant pain. I’d like to think I wouldn’t ever take action on that, however, by say favoring a candidate who had fewer ‘risk factors’ in this area… but it’s so hard to say for sure.
October 27th, 2005 at 5:55 am
So I guess the way that Wal-Mart is celebrating Disability Awareness month is by trying to make their managers aware that they shouldn’t hire the disabled? That’s ironic.
Seriously, though, the legal protection is only half the battle. Actually informing people of their rights, and then enforcing those rights, is just as important as winning them. I’m worried that we are uniformly moving in the wrong direction on issues like this.
October 27th, 2005 at 12:10 pm
There’s a guy on our floor who uses a wheelchair, and my 2-year-old gets very excited (and possibly envious!) at the sight of such big wheels. The guy is really nice about it. So far, the question of “why?” hasn’t come up — my son is often in the stroller himself, and I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t just accept the wheelchair as another kind of stroller. I think kids take it as normal until someone’s reaction tells them differently.
October 27th, 2005 at 2:36 pm
I agree with Cynical Mom. As wrong as it is to refuse to hire a person because of their disability, (or the disability of someone in their family) it can put their employer in a tough position.
If we are saying that as a society we need to support folks with disabilities, we need to be realistic about the price tag of this effort. We can’t just insist that businesses behave as if there was no dollar cost. (I feel the same way about maternity leave, which should IMHO be funded much as unemployment is funded.)
Set up a system where there’s no profit motive to avoiding hiring people with disabilities or family members with disabilities, and I believe much of the discrimination will disappear.