What is your advice about disclosing disability?
Under the DDA the choice of whether or not to disclose your disability is entirely up to you, it is also entirely up to you at what stage in the recruitment process you should choose to let your employer or prospective employer know you have a disability. You must think long and hard about this – you may decide you prefer to disclose at interview rather than application stage. This is your decision and it’s something that is worth discussing with a careers adviser.
There are benefits of being open about your disability status. It ensures that your employer will understand that they have a legal duty not to discriminate against you, and also to make reasonable adjustments to prevent you from being put at a disadvantage by the environment or arrangements used in the recruitment process and in the workplace. If you think you need some extra support for reasons related to your disability to get your true potential across at interview, I would urge you to disclose.
There are also advantages in that many employers have positive attitudes to disabled people: Employers who hold the Disability Symbol (Two Tick Symbol) guarantee an interview to disabled people who meet the essential core criteria of an advertised post, whilst others have designated work placement or promotional schemes targeted at boosting the number of disabled people in their workforce.
Do not assume that employers will regard your disability status as a negative attribute. Many employers are really keen to boost the number of disabled people, especially graduates within their workforce.
Here are some links to more detailed guidelines on disclosing disability:
For excellent discussion of all issues associated with disclosure produced by Interact disability mentoring
(pdf format, visit Adobe.com to download Acrobat Reader)
For more information on disclosure, Skill have produced an excellent handout on disclosing disability.
www.skill.org.uk/info/infosheets/emp_disclose.doc
