Pri­or to the In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, the work­place was in­for­mal, agrar­i­an, or ar­ti­sanal in na­ture. Fast-for­ward to the 18th and 19th cen­turies, when Great Britain led the charge of shift­ing to the cen­tralised, hi­er­ar­chi­cal fac­to­ries that brought about the age of new ma­chin­ery, the de­vel­op­ment of the fac­to­ry sys­tem and new pow­er sources like the steam en­gine. To­day, the smoke has cleared and the work­place is now flex­i­ble, hy­brid and tech-en­abled.

Tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment is a ma­jor rea­son for the evo­lu­tion of the work­place, as busi­ness can now be con­duct­ed on dig­i­tal plat­forms and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is used in a wide range of sec­tors. The cul­tur­al shift, how­ev­er, is even more sig­nif­i­cant as it re­lates to per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. This is be­cause the mod­ern work­place fo­cus­es on pur­pose-dri­ven work, em­ploy­ee well-be­ing, di­ver­si­ty, work-life bal­ance and in­clu­sion.

Per­sons who are dis­abled of­ten feel as though they are less pro­duc­tive and ef­fi­cient than oth­er em­ploy­ees. This leads to them be­ing over­worked and ex­ploit­ed, as some may try to over­com­pen­sate by tak­ing on ad­di­tion­al un­paid work in a bid to prove their worth. When they de­scribe them­selves as go­ing “above and be­yond” in their re­sume, they want to have the da­ta to sup­port that claim.

An em­ploy­ee who lives in this head­space sim­ply can­not thrive be­cause they are stuck in per­pet­u­al cor­po­rate sur­vival mode. There­fore, tak­ing dis­abled per­sons out of sur­vival mode and al­low­ing them to flour­ish should be the goal of or­gan­i­sa­tions. Mak­ing the work­place ac­ces­si­ble is a fan­tas­tic ap­proach to re­mov­ing feel­ings of in­ad­e­qua­cy.

There is a say­ing that goes, “If you judge a fish by its abil­i­ty to climb a tree, then it will spend its whole life be­liev­ing that it is stu­pid.” Sim­i­lar­ly, if a blind/vi­su­al­ly im­paired per­son is judged by their abil­i­ty to see rather than their ca­pa­bil­i­ty, then their val­ue is gross­ly un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

Dur­ing the in­ter­view process, some dis­abled per­sons choose to hide/down­play their dis­abil­i­ty and any nec­es­sary ac­com­mo­da­tions they might need. This isn’t done out of mal­ice but fear that their hard work, tal­ent and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty would be swept un­der the rug and their dis­abil­i­ty would be hy­per-fo­cused on. This fear is not un­found­ed or ir­ra­tional, as those of us who do de­cide to be up-front about our dis­abil­i­ty re­ceive few­er or no call­backs when ap­ply­ing for jobs.

If or­gan­i­sa­tions ed­u­cate them­selves on rea­son­able ac­com­mo­da­tions and show a will­ing­ness to im­ple­ment them, when nec­es­sary, per­haps the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty would have less fear of re­jec­tion when it comes to the job mar­ket. The UN Con­ven­tion on Rights of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties (UN­CR­PD) de­fines rea­son­able ac­com­mo­da­tions as “nec­es­sary and ap­pro­pri­ate mod­i­fi­ca­tions or ad­just­ments, not cre­at­ing a dis­pro­por­tion­ate or unique bur­den, to en­sure per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties can en­joy hu­man rights and fun­da­men­tal free­doms on an equal ba­sis with oth­ers.”

By de­f­i­n­i­tion, rea­son­able ac­com­mo­da­tions are meant to sup­port in­di­vid­u­als rather than bur­den an or­gan­i­sa­tion. For in­stance, a screen read­er or mag­ni­fi­er are af­ford­able mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the work­place that blind/vi­su­al­ly im­paired per­sons can ben­e­fit from.

Ableism sprin­kled with a hint of cap­i­tal­ism makes it tempt­ing to ques­tion the val­ue of dis­abled work­ers. Need­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions is not the same as hav­ing no val­ue. In fact, non-dis­abled per­sons al­so have cer­tain needs that are ac­com­mo­dat­ed in the work­place. Take, for ex­am­ple, the stu­dent bal­anc­ing work and school who may re­quire flex­i­ble work­ing hours and re­mote work or ad­just­ing work­loads and dead­lines so that em­ploy­ees do not feel over­whelmed. Their val­ue is not placed on a chop­ping block for need­ing those ad­just­ments, there­fore, nei­ther should a dis­abled per­son’s.

The fact of the mat­ter is, any healthy work­place needs to be com­pas­sion­ate and adapt­able so that the var­ied needs of all em­ploy­ees, whether they have a dis­abil­i­ty or not, are met. Think­ing of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s needs and prof­it mar­gin alone plays in­to the his­tor­i­cal­ly op­pres­sive sys­tems that are de­signed to de­val­ue in­di­vid­u­als based on their abil­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate in rig­or­ous paid labour.

The In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion proved that with knowl­edge, tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments and hu­man re­sources, the work­place is ca­pa­ble of evolv­ing from one stan­dard to an­oth­er. Fac­to­ries re­placed agrar­i­an so­ci­eties and now we have hy­brid, tech-dri­ven or­gan­i­sa­tions. How­ev­er, the evo­lu­tion of the mod­ern work­place is in­com­plete as long as it does not pro­mote an in­clu­sive and ac­ces­si­ble en­vi­ron­ment that sup­ports all staff to thrive, with the pro­vi­sion of rea­son­able ac­com­mo­da­tion for em­ploy­ees with dis­abil­i­ties where need­ed.

A blind/vi­su­al­ly im­paired em­ploy­ee must feel just as val­ued as oth­er em­ploy­ees. They must not feel the need to mask their dis­abil­i­ty in or­der to be viewed as com­pe­tent, and or­gan­i­sa­tions must re­gard mod­i­fy­ing the work­place to sup­port them as an in­vest­ment rather than a bur­den. On­ly through a cul­ture of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, in­clu­sion and sup­port can we tru­ly thrive to­geth­er.

This col­umn is sup­plied in con­junc­tion with the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion.

Head­quar­ters:

118 Duke Street,

Port-of-Spain, Trinidad

Email: ttb­wa1914@gmail.com

Phone: (868) 624-4675

What­sApp: (868) 395-3086