Welcome back fellow challengers. Today we will be focusing on employment, specifically picking a job. To be honest having a visible disability can be the biggest hurdle to overcome when trying to get a job. According to a Canadian survey in 2017, those without a disability had an employment rate of 80%, while individuals with mild disabilities had an employment rate of 59%. If we look at those with severe disabilities it drops down to 31%. Those are some truly terrible statistics.
Defining Requirements:
There are many steps on the path to finding a job, so let’s start right at the beginning. Defining your job requirements. Not what the job needs from you but what you need from the job. I know this is a little strange, I have a disability and with the statistics for above, shouldn’t I try to go for whatever job I can get. The answer is no. You have to know how your disability affects you and what are your limitations. Without that information even if you land a job, you might not be able to keep it. I know a person who has severe mobility issues. There are days where walking is fine and other days where making it to the front door is not possible. Having a job where you can work remotely is part of her requirements. My brother has a learning disability so the work environment he requires needs to be a slow pace.
Research:
Next is to start learning what the requirements are of different types of jobs. Do research online as well as speak to people in the industry. Determine what are all the tasks required. Find out how your disability can affect you performance in complete all required tasks. Try to be as detailed as possible.
Get Creative:
If none of the tasks are affected by your disability, awesome lets get going on finding that job. If yes, don’t despair, it’s time to get creative. Try to come up with ways to either work around the issues or eliminate it entirely. If you have mobility issues, see if you can work from home. Also if see if an assistive device can help you conduct your job. If you live in Ontario, ODSP provides work benefits to help those with disabilities get resources in order to work, this can come in the form of training, assistive devices and safety equipment geared towards your disability.
Example:
Let’s take the example of if you have dyslexia and you are looking into being a cook for a restaurant.
Step 1 – Defining requirements:
Dyslexia also known as a reading disorder, affects a person’s ability to read. So let’s try to minimize the amount of reading you need to do for your job.
Step 2 – Research :
Go through online research. Check out job posting for chefs and see what are the requirements. Setup interviews and talk to a couple of different chefs. Based on that information we are able to create a task/requirement list below:
- Getting to work
- Duration of the job and availability of breaks
- Handling of food and tools (such as knives)
- Reading order tickets.
- Communicating to other cooks about what you need and what you are doing.
- Memorizing different meal recipes and cooking procedures.
Set 3 – Get Creative
So we have review task/requirement list and it looks like the only #4 is affected by our disability. Time to get creative. One way could be to work with your employer, so that ticket orders come with pictures beside the items. You could also apply for a device that turns text to speech from ODSP. This way you don’t need to read the ticket order but listen to it instead.
Challenge Time:
Finding a job can feel near impossible with a disability. The challenge this time is for those of you who were able to find jobs with your disability. Please post your story below and describe how you overcame your obstacles and what were your creative solutions.