Held every October, Disability Employment Awareness Month is a time to celebrate the numerous and diverse contributions of workers with disabilities while also providing an opportunity to educate the public, particularly employers, on issues surrounding disability employment.
Coincidently, October is also Blindness Awareness Month, a campaign close to the hearts of RISE™Robotics and team members Ken Gray, Chief Product Officer, and Rosa Henderson, Executive Assistant to the Chief Product Officer, who both live, work, and thrive with visual impairments.
Past episodes of the RISE™Inside podcast have shed light on and highlighted how RISE™Robotics and its team members have flourished as a result of inclusive practices, appropriate accommodations, and a mindset that looks beyond impairments or disabilities, shifts the focus to what people can do, and capitalizes on the inherent talent and value of every employee.
In the most recent episode of RISE™Inside, Molly Pasley, Assistant Professor of Special Education at Northern Illinois University in the Visual Disabilities Program, sat down with host Justin Starbird to discuss ways in which all employers can shift their mindset, recognize disability bias and discrimination, and create inclusive environments specifically surrounding visual impairments.
Through her teaching and research, Molly has recognized a common underlying fear of workplace discrimination surrounding "coming out blind."
"Right now," she begins, "I'm in the middle of a study where I'm interviewing people all across the country and in Canada with visual impairments about their experiences with discrimination. A number of people have said that they've either tried to hide or successfully hidden their visual impairment in the workplace because they were afraid they wouldn't be promoted or wouldn't be hired for a job if they disclosed their visual impairment."
The first step towards mitigating these fears and creating an inclusive environment is self-awareness, explains Molly. "Once a company recognizes a bias exists, they can actively fight against it."
To do so, Molly encourages a "strengths-based approach" when hiring and promoting. "Look at people for what they bring to the table," she explains, "not what they can't do or what you perceive they can't do.
"Ask first. Get to know the individual and if they tell you they can do something, believe them until they indicate to you that they've got to come up with an alternative. This will also help avoid the trap of assuming a person is incapable of doing something based on their disability, which I think a lot of people fall into if they haven't met or don't know a person who's blind or visually impaired."
"Another important thing," she adds, "would be to ask that person what they need to be successful in the workplace, and when they tell you, listen. Don't assume you know better just because you are sighted or just because you're able-bodied. They've been navigating the world with that disability and have figured out how they learn and work best."
She goes on to also encourage a foundation of inclusive practices. "For example," she explains, "when creating any training videos, promotional materials, or even paper documents, making sure that you're thinking, 'Okay, how is a person with low vision or blindness going to be able to access this? Do I need to put it in an electronic format where I don't have all these graphics? Or use alternative texts?' That way, every employee will get the full meaning from the materials and graphics. Also, with training videos, include descriptive audio and closed captions for scenes with a lot of visual information that a person can't detect with a visual impairment."
Molly believes that educating yourself is the best way to overcome biases and disability discrimination. "A great resource for employers who are looking to do the work on themselves and within their organization to change the culture of their organization into one that is more inclusive, specifically for people who are blind or visually impaired, is the Mississippi State University's National Technical Assistance Center on Blindness and Low Vision, or the NTAC-BVI."
"Their goal," explains Molly, "is to improve employment outcomes for people with blindness or low vision and provide free resources for employers, job seekers, and families. It's a really rich website. They include employee vignettes, stories of people across fields, across visual impairment, the entire spectrum, you name it. I feel like they have a great representation there."
The site addresses topics such as:
What are blindness and low vision
What types of jobs can people who are blind or have low vision do
Why hire workers who are blind or have low vision
How can we accommodate visual impairments in the workplace
What are the legal requirements for hiring someone who is blind or has low vision
How can I help a current employee who is experiencing blindness or low vision
How do blind workers perform job-relayed tasks
For more information on these topics, head to their website, ntac.blind.msstate.edu, or contact Molly through email at mpasley@niu.edu.
To hear more about Molly's work and ways you can address disability discrimination and promote inclusiveness in the workplace, listen to Episode 3 of Series 4, We RISE™ With Molly Pasley on the RISE™Inside podcast, live now!
