Disability Employment Month Celebrates All Workers

Liz Fryseth kneeling on a paved path with her guide dog.

When Liz Fryseth started her new job as a housing navigator at the YWCA in La Crosse, she ran into an issue almost right away: Nearly all their documents were printed on paper and not available digitally. For someone who is low vision or blind like Liz, those documents were inaccessible. After bringing up this barrier to her manager, her employer quickly acknowledged the oversight and began digitizing all their documents in screen reader friendly formats. “My work had to be very adaptable, because they didn’t have things like a screen reader or a braille display,” Liz says. “It was a learning curve on both ends to get both our needs met.”

Liz says that, from the beginning, her employer was open and welcoming to her and asked her what she needed to do her job. They recognized that just because Liz had a disability, she could still do the job she was hired for and was a valuable member of the team.

Throughout October we have been celebrating National Disability Employment Awareness Month, a time to recognize the value and contributions of workers with disabilities. Designated each year by the U.S. Department of Labor, this year’s theme is “Access to Good Jobs for All,” highlighting the need to employ people with disabilities in fulfilling, high-paying jobs.

According to Vision Serve Alliance’s Big Data Report on working-age adults, less than 30% of Wisconsin adults 18 to 64 who are blind or low vision are employed for wages, compared to 65.6% of working age adults without vision loss. Over 72% earn less than $35,000 a year. The report also says that working age adults who are blind or low vision and do not have jobs are more likely to experience a variety of negative health outcomes, with higher rates of diabetes, depression, heart disease, cancer and other conditions.

Disability Employment Awareness Month is a great time for employers to review their own accessibility policies to ensure they are being inclusive toward workers with disabilities, and to talk with their employees about ways the entire workplace can be more welcoming for everyone. Spend some time identifying and addressing any unconscious biases that exist in your work culture.

Another way to make your workplace more welcoming to people with disabilities is to make sure they have all the reasonable accommodations they need to do their job, as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). For example, if you use training videos in orientation, make sure they are closed captioned for people with hearing loss and have descriptive audio for people with vision impairments. When a worker with disabilities is starting a new job, be sure to ask them what accommodations they need instead of assuming you already know what they need.

Employees with disabilities can also contribute by bringing new perspectives to their work. For example, if your company has a public-facing website, an employee with vision loss may be able to tell you if it is accessible to someone using a screen reader. Like other employees, workers with disabilities come from a diverse variety of backgrounds and are not defined by their disability.

For Liz, her needed accommodations at the YWCA ended up creating a positive impact throughout the organization. Because she needed the documents digitized, all of her coworkers were able to utilize those documents on their computers. “That ended up improving everyone’s workflow, because instead of having to fill out a paper form, they could quickly fill it out on their computer,” Liz says. From day one, her employer valued Liz’s contributions to her team, and recognized the new perspective she brought to the entire organization.

The Council is available to give presentations to your business or organization on disability employment. To inquire about having a Council member talk to your organization, contact Education and Outreach Coordinator Kathleen Callen at KCallen@WCBlind.org, or call 608-237-8120. You can also find more information on our website at WCBlind.org/Education.

Share this post

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Print
Email