Disabilities Part 1: What is Disclosure?

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My name is Lou Orslene and along with Ann Hursh I'm one of the directors of the US Department of Labor Office of Disability and Policies Job Accommodation Network. Disclosure is really letting and informing the employer know that you have a medical condition, chronic health condition, disability, impairment that's interfering with the performance of your essential functions of your job. That's really what disclosure is. If you need to disclose during the application process, then you're probably dealing with a recruiter or a hiring manager and you're going to need to disclose to them Otherwise, what you want to do is you want to seek out the accommodation process, the policies, as well as the practice within the organization and you really want to follow that process. So there may be a person who is a subject matter expert within the diversity and inclusion department at an organization, at a company and of course, then, that's who you want to target with the request for accommodation. So, when you're disclosing you probably don't want to talk about, you don't need to really talk about your diagnosis. Again, when we're disclosing, what is important for the employer to know in order to make an effective accommodation. They need to know the limitations, the challenges that you're facing because of the medical condition, and then what kind of accommodations can work. I would limit my conversation to that. If the employer needs to substantiate and wants additional information, then they can request that information. But at first I would really, just, whatever type of disability, whether it be physical or mental, I would really just talk more about, offer the medical impairment, the limitation that you have, and the challenge that you're having at work. I think that's really the way that you start the conversation about accommodations. You also say, for instance, you have a disability at your internship or during college you used a certain specific assistive technology and it made you more effective. If you're gonna need to request an accommodation and you know that straight away, even perhaps through the onboarding process. Say, for instance, you're blind and you use a screen reader and that's really how your information is read to you and you process the information from work. Then, perhaps, in the onboarding process, you know that you're going to have to have accessible documents that you can then use your screen reader in order to read that information to you to successfully do your onboarding process. Then, at that point, you really want to talk about, I already know how a screen reader works, I'm very effective, I've used it my whole life. I've been trained on it so I can save you those training costs. (upbeat music)