2.3 Accommodations in Hiring

Faculty do not just provide accommodations in classrooms.  They also may need to provide accommodations to students serving as teaching assistants, research assistants, or interns.  They may hire students or staff for grant projects, or need to know about disability and hiring while supervising field placements.  Faculty may also serve on hiring committees or as department chairs.  Many students with disabilities leave college without adequate work experience, and many people with disabilities face unemployment because of discrimination and ableism in hiring.  As this faculty training is being written, COVID-19 has also disproportionately affected people with disabilities.  The unemployment rate for people with disabilities is currently 12.3%, while the rate for nondisabled people is 6.4%.*

​"...[T]he fact is that, for many disabled scholars, the sorts of choices they face around disclosure and negotiating job market accommodations are deeply complex, fraught and, above all, risky.  And for none of them is the process easy, uniform, or predictable. . . . Almost every academic we know with a disability has a story about accommodations gone wrong, an inaccessible interview situation or a thoughtless ableist comment. 
But it doesn't have to be this way. 
​ 
- Jay Dolmage and Stephanie Kerschbaum
​"Wanted: Disabled Faculty Members," Inside Higher Ed 
Here are some considerations for accommodations and hiring:
  • Build accommodations into budgets for grants, if your university requires that.  Some universities will pay for accommodations required for staff, student workers, and other grant activities.  Other universities will not, and you'll need to build in an accommodations budget to be sure your grant activities (e.g., surveys) are accessible.  For more information, see the NCCSD Clearinghouse information for grant writers.
  • For job postings, consider what is truly essential for the job.  Requirements for lifting, walking, hearing, or seeing may be standard verbiage for job postings at your institution, but they automatically exclude many people with disabilities.  For more information, read Inside Higher Ed's article about job postings in higher education.
  • For interviews, you cannot ask about a person's disability or ask if they have a disability.  You also cannot ask how much a disability costs.  Be cautious about assuming a problem in the interview is related to a disability or not -- for example, a Deaf person may not respond well if their ASL interpreters are not skilled.  Also know that any costs of employee accommodations should not factor into the interview process.  In fact, the costs of accommodations are borne by the college or university as a whole, and should not be a burden for any department, unit, or college.  
  • Be sure new employee orientation includes information about where to request disability accommodations, whether or not the new hire has disclosed a disability.  It may also be helpful to give examples of what could qualify as a disability, including less visible disabilities like depression, PTSD, anxiety, dyslexia, ADHD, and chronic illnesses.  This could be presented as part of campus diversity initiatives, shared with information about equal opportunity hiring, diversity efforts on campus, and diversity resources like multicultural centers.
  • Provide a second contact for anything related to disability or problems with accommodations.  For example, students could go to the disability resources office or talk to their advisor.  Staff hires could talk to Human Resources, but also the campus Title IX coordinator or the Dean.  This gives employees an additional resource, but also implicitly addresses power dynamics between the employee and faculty supervisors if there are any problems with accommodations on the job or experiences of ableism and discrimination.
  • When in doubt, ask for campus policies.  Each institution has policies regarding discrimination or procedures for hiring.  Find out more through your institution's human resources and student employment offices.  Disability services professionals may also have tips or suggestions.​

For more information, take a look at the U.S. Department of Labor's information about hiring people with disabilities.  
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* The U.S. Department of Labor: "Disability Employment Statistics"