Should I disclose my disability in resume? – my prospective

One of the thread taling about if a candidate should or should not mention their disability while writing resume?. Thought I would put my prospective here so that it may be helpful to many more.

While I agree with my friend Sameer that it’s important to disclose disability to employer, my take is that it should not be done at the resume level. Because the fact is that even today, we have majority of companies who are not sensitized towards people with disabilities. Mostly, first filtering of resumes will happen at recruitment team and that too by Junior level analysts. We cannot expect them to have knowledge about diversity, disability etc., There would be more chances that they may think Oh, this candidate has disability and may not fit to our requirements. While there are also chances that they ignore the disability part.

But it’s also important that we disclose disability as early as possible and definately before in-person interview. Certainly there would be one or two telephonic conversations before a personal interview and during these conversations, candidate would also get an opportunity to understand level of how much the employer is sensitized; if employer is sensitized, remaining process would be easy and if not, we may need to have more conversation.

Reason it’s essential to inform before the interview to ensure employer does not get surprised (Yes, it’s true even today people get surprised to see a person with disability using a computer or a mobile device) and also enable employer to provide any reasonable accommodation during interview process itself. For instance, if there is a written test using paper and pencil, they may convert same into use of computer.

Further I would also recommend that it’s candidate’s job to inform employer as to what kind of reasonable accommodation is needed and at this point, it’s important to think from employer prospective and advice as affordable solution as possible. Else, there will be chances of delay as sometimes employer would not know what we may need and they may end up spending time on researching.

Good luck!