Finding a job can be difficult for anyone, but for students with disabilities, the process can be even harder. One Ottawa-based research project is looking to change that.
Launched in 2018, the David C. Onley Initiative (DCOI) was a two-year collaborative research project involving all post-secondary institutions in Ottawa. The project, which ended in April, aimed to shine light upon the barriers students with disabilities face when job-hunting and is set to produce its findings this September.
“We’re exploring the employment gap that exists for students with disabilities in Ottawa,” DCOI manager of operations Charlotte Evans said.
That gap affects students at Carleton University, as highlighted in the new Coordinated Accessibility Strategy released June 3.
While goals of inclusivity from Ottawa universities benefit students, the DCOI aims to provide further explanation of why the employment gap exists, and what can be done to bridge it.
Evans added community partners including employers and campus career and disability services were involved in the research process.
According to the 2017 Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD), one in five Canadians above 15 years old have a disability. Among people aged 25 to 64, 59 per cent of people with a disability were employed — about 21 per cent lower than those without a disability.
Many employers are unaware of the gap that exists for people with disabilities, according to Evans, so a major part of the two-year project was creating an awareness campaign and hosting accessible job fairs for students with disabilities.
“Employers are missing the access to students with disabilities,” she said. “It’s not clear where to find students with disabilities — especially now with the rise of non-visible disability, where it’s not immediately apparent whether somebody has a disability or not.”
Ingrid Argyle, managing director of the Ottawa Employment Hub, added that the gap between people employed with and without disabilities is hard to accurately quantify because not everyone discloses their disability.
“So many people with a disability don’t disclose, and so they don’t show up as being employed even though they are,” Argyle said. “… so there are persons with disabilities who are unemployed who are not disclosing, so that complicates things.”
Part of the reason why the disability job gap exists is that people with disabilities face many barriers when looking for a job that others do not.
“Some of the most common and consistent barriers that disabled people face when looking for jobs include stigma,” DCOI research and development assistant Courtney Weaver said in an email interview.
Stigma-related job barriers can include the belief that persons with disabilities will have higher absentee rates, their accommodations would be too expensive, and inaccessibility throughout the hiring process, Weaver said.
Self-identifying as an “Aspergirl, diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome at four years old,” Weaver explained that employers may not be familiar with disability or accessibility issues, which leads to inaccessible job locations for interviews and bad word choices.
The CSD found 37 per cent of employees with a disability required a workplace accommodation — the most common accommodation being flexible work arrangements. However, 21 per cent of those who need accommodations had none of their needs met.
A quarter of employees with at least one unmet workplace accommodation made a request to their employer, yet 40 per cent were refused their request. The report did not clarify why.
Weaver said employers should be willing to accommodate people with disabilities and listen to them, rather than dismissing them.
“I would like other people to know that disabled persons looking for jobs are ready to work well and hard,” she said.
Argyle added that the fear of being wrong is a barrier that is not talked about enough. She said many employers are not inclusive in their recruitment process because they “fear that it is going to be complicated.”
“Sometimes people who consider themselves very inclusive and sensitive to other cultures and inclusive of persons with disabilities … are so worried they’ll say something wrong, that they back away a bit,” she said. “They just decide to avoid the whole situation.”
Educating the workplace on being inclusive is a first step to reducing barriers for people with disabilities, Argyle said. It is not enough to have one person be inclusive, the whole team must be.
“If the hiring manager or the HR person is very inclusive and brings someone in and then their colleagues don’t treat them in an inclusive way, then it’s not really going to work,” she said.
Although she has had positive experiences in her workplaces, Weaver said others have not and that cultural and systemic changes need to happen so that the barriers people with disabilities face can be removed.
Weaver also said she would like to see a variety of neurodiversity, accessibility and disability awareness training to be commonplace in workspaces.
“What I would like to see changed about current hiring practices is… awareness training for all organizations in order to debunk myths as well as increase empathy and understanding for disabled — or as I prefer to say, differently-abled — persons,” she said.
Weaver added that employers who are open to being inclusive will benefit in the long term.
“Not only is workplace diversity and inclusivity increased and promoted, but the company is highly likely to perform better,” Weaver said. “That has consistently been the case for companies that have made it their mission to hire and retain differently-abled talent.”
According to Argyle, the low unemployment rate in Ottawa provides plenty of room for employers to be inclusive in their hiring.
“Now that it’s harder for them to find people, we can almost use that to our advantage and say, ‘Hey, you need to broaden your search for talent and you have to plug into these groups working with these different populations, more constantly and more purposefully,” Argyle said.
Jenna Lambert is the student advisor of the Accessible Career Transitions (ACT to Employ), program at Carleton which helps students with disabilities find jobs. She said in an email that there is still hope for students who require accommodation to work from home, even amid increased unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have seen an ever-increasing number of students find placements through ACT to Employ, and we are continuing to meet with students who will benefit from support,” she said.
Moving Forward
Although the project has ended, Evans said that the DCOI has started a conversation for students with disabilities that will further its mission.
“It’s not about us doing as much as it is us collaborating and connecting existing services in the community,” she said. “Because we are only a two-year initiative, it’s very important we have sustainability once we are no longer here.”
This project and conversation will hopefully make the process of finding a job for students with disabilities easier.
“The students that we’re talking about have degrees, have diplomas or [are] on their way to becoming highly educated members of the workforce,” she said. “That changes a little bit the conversation that typically exists around disabilities. By bringing this new topic to employers, we’re helping open doors for students.”
Featured image provided by the David C. Onley Initiative for Employment and Enterprise Development.
