{"id":8516,"date":"2016-02-21T22:20:37","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T03:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/?p=8516"},"modified":"2016-03-29T01:33:04","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T05:33:04","slug":"unconscious-discrimination-for-employment-for-people-with-disabilities-pacific-ada-center-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/2016\/02\/21\/unconscious-discrimination-for-employment-for-people-with-disabilities-pacific-ada-center-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Unconscious Discrimination for Employment for People with Disabilities ~Pacific ADA Center Part 2~"},"content":{"rendered":"

In part 1 of visiting Pacific ADA Center report<\/a>, I have shared issues regarding laws related to people with disabilities.<\/p>\n

In part 2, I focus more on employment for people with disabilities, which is my research topic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"From
From left: Mizuki, Lewis, Jan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jan, the Program Manager at the Pacific ADA Center, is an interesting example of a person with a disability seeking employment. <\/span><\/p>\n

Jan was born with her disability, which is the absence of her arms and legs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oklahoma City, her hometown was not really accessible and at the time ADA was not established, yet. <\/span><\/p>\n

Her parents, however, were very strong advocates. They let Jan go to a private school in order to receive good education. <\/span><\/p>\n

If she would have gone to a public school, she could have received only special education at that time. <\/span><\/p>\n

She went to college in California and studied international relations. <\/span><\/p>\n

What she surprised me was she even studied abroad in Paris, France for 1 year.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Paris was not really accessible either. <\/span><\/p>\n

After coming back to the U.S., she went to a law school back in Oklahoma and worked for a judge after graduation. <\/span><\/p>\n

She met her husband and moved to California again.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Since then, Jan has worked mostly for disability communities in the Bay Area.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jan, using her power wheelchair operated with her shoulder, herself had faced discriminations when she did job hunting after law school. <\/span><\/p>\n

It was right after ADA passed. <\/span><\/p>\n

She had different interviews with law firm. Many times, those interviews were short. <\/span><\/p>\n

She felt that interviewers didn\u2019t want to talk to her. <\/span><\/p>\n

In a worse case, interviewers started talking about a basketball game during interview and didn’t ask her any questions. <\/span><\/p>\n

Although she tried to change the topic to \u201cher\u201d interview, the interviewers didn\u2019t change the conversation. Eventually she asked them to end the interview.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Mizuki_ADA\"<\/p>\n

\u201cEqual opportunity\u201d is one of the phrases I often hear from people who advocate for disabilities rights in the US. <\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to employment, equal opportunity is considered important to all people, not only to people with disabilities. <\/span><\/p>\n

The concept of equal opportunity came from civil rights movement in 1964 which became a base of ADA which passed in 1990. <\/span><\/p>\n

It has been years since civil rights movement and ADA came out. <\/span><\/p>\n

But, still equal opportunities are not offered enough in the US employment market. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, nowadays many employers require all applicants to apply for a job via online. <\/span><\/p>\n

Some online forms are not accessible to some people with disability so that people with disabilities cannot apply from the beginning. <\/span><\/p>\n

Even if they could apply somehow, the online application form might not be well-written or well-organized because of inaccessibility of the online form. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, the employers would notice that the applicants have disabilities. <\/span><\/p>\n

Those applicants end up disclosing their disabilities to employers automatically even if they do not want to disclose.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although people with disabilities are working in various fields in the US, some employers have unconscious discrimination that they don\u2019t promote employees with disabilities after hiring. <\/span><\/p>\n

For instance, I have seen a person in wheelchair working at store and giving a basket to customers before. <\/span><\/p>\n

I was very surprised because I have never seen anyone in wheelchair working at stores in Japan.<\/span><\/p>\n

But in reality in the US, not all but some stores hire people with disabilities and position them in the front of the store and show, <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe hire people with disabilities!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

for corporate PR, and do not really promote employees with disabilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jan asked employers, <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHow many people with disabilities do you have in management<\/span>?<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I am a manager for many years, so I really want to know how many higher level people with disabilities do they have. <\/span><\/p>\n

I usually try, without being mean, to challenge them a little bit to think a little higher than mail room or the entry level position. <\/span><\/p>\n

In general, employment needs to be better. There needs to be more opportunities for people to move up.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"MR7_communication\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

<\/div>\n
\n
“How many people with disabilities do you have in management?” by Jan Garrett<\/a><\/div>\n

Click To Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Creating an equal opportunity for all people is very difficult, because each one has a different purpose or preference of career. <\/span><\/p>\n

In Japan, especially people with disabilities and without disabilities are often separated starting from education stage. <\/span><\/p>\n

So they barely know each other. What we need here is active communication, I think. <\/span><\/p>\n

Employers should communicate actively with applicants with disabilities. Don\u2019t judge that people with disabilities cannot do work without really knowing them. <\/span><\/p>\n

People with disabilities should communicate actively with employers. Keep showing your abilities and educating employers to make more equal opportunities. <\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want both employers and people with disabilities to give up communicating from the beginning. We can communicate if we try. <\/span><\/p>\n

And we all can make this situation a lot better. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continue on Pacific ADA Center in the Bay Area interview report: “Equal Opportunity” is one of the most important concepts in the US, however people with disabilities are facing unconscious discrimination when building their career paths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,135],"tags":[102,93,121,95,122,120,123,98],"class_list":["post-8516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-employment","category-research","tag-ability-development","tag-career-building","tag-diversity","tag-employment-of-people-with-disabilities","tag-inclusion","tag-issues","tag-law","tag-wheelchair"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8516"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8519,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8516\/revisions\/8519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}