Transcript

Re-Thinking Disabilities in the Workplace | Chantel Buck | TEDxEustis

[Music] everyone please close your eyes for just a minute now with your eyes closed imagine you have a disability now with that disability imagine getting ready for work in the morning you have to do your personal grooming like shaving or putting on your makeup you have to pick out your clothes and make sure they match you have to prepare your breakfast and get your lunch packed and get ready for your day now go ahead and open your eyes thanks for playing along now when you were imagining yourself with this disability did you think in terms of a visual impairment were you blind did you have a hearing impairment where you deaf did you have a mobility impairment were you in a wheelchair or had difficulty moving maybe you went in a different direction and you had a speech impairment or trouble breathing trouble focusing you probably had difficulty with those daily activities when you envisioned yourself with a disability it's okay to admit it your daily life would be impacted if you had a disability now there are as many definitions of the word disability as there are impairments that cause it but what all of the definitions have in common is the word inability you probably had a difficult time in your imagination getting ready for work with a disability because we think in terms of disability by what someone can or can't do a blind person can't see a deaf person can't hear someone in a wheelchair can't walk we are programmed to think about all of the things someone with a disability can't do that's a really dangerous train of thought you and I wouldn't want someone making all of these misconceptions about us judging us based solely on what's happened to us we wouldn't want a conversation to start from a place of pity that's not fun that's not fun for you that's not fun for me and what's really dangerous about it is when we get to the workplace you're misconceptions shouldn't affect my ability to get a job be successful in that job and well be treated like a human but unfortunately it happens people with disabilities face an unemployment rate that is historically double double that of people without a disability now I'm sure we've all been in a situation where we've been out looking for work filling out applications doing our cold calls going on those awkward interviews we've all had that experience and it can be discouraging imagine facing the statistic that it's likely not gonna work out well for you how long before you just give up unfortunately that's what happens people with disabilities are far more likely to opt out of the workforce altogether that's so sad because people with disabilities have so much to offer but we can change that right here right now all of us we can change that we can rethink disabilities in the workplace and it's three simple steps I promise they're really simple how we start is we seek to understand that's step number one let's understand what it means to have a disability not all disabilities are visible and you can't just focus on what someone can or can't do you may not realize it but I have a disability observing me it may not be visible but I have an executive processing disorder commonly known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder okay I can already feel the judgment happening knock it off stop come back to me let's seek first to understand okay I have challenges with this diagnosis when I was younger my mother used to say that I didn't have enough sense to get out of the rain you know how you talk to a child and I think she meant that I was smart but I didn't have common sense once we discovered that there was a diagnosis for it I felt a little bit better but I am time blind we all have that friend who is late for everything always late I am that friend in my social circle you can always count on me to not be there when you want me to be and I promise you on behalf of all of the pathologically late people here with us now it's not that we don't respect your time I promise you that it's not out of disrespect it's that I really think that I can fit that 10 minute task into the three minutes I have left I really think I can I think it's possible and then I get excited about it and then there's something shiny and then I didn't account for traffic and then now I'm in the car and I'm banging on the steering wheel because now I'm thirty minutes late and I know you're gonna be mad at me and I'm just a mess and feeling like I suck at life so here we are I'm horribly forgetful what was I gonna say okay now I remember okay so there was this one time this one week was a really bad week I once locked my keys in my car three times in one week one of those times while the car was still running how do you even do that and while I'm sitting on the little parking curb next to my car waiting for triple-a to come bail me out by the way public service announcement you only get four bailouts before triple-a doesn't want you anymore as I'm sitting there waiting for triple-a to come unlock me again that week I'm thinking how is it possible for me to ever be successful I have absolutely no self esteem and I have nothing to offer that's that's not a fun feeling to have I have no filter I know I'm not alone in that one I have no filter and that's that's really bad in the workplace I have seen the inside of many an HR office just so you know it is not acceptable to call a co-worker a murderer for eating meat I didn't mean it I really didn't mean it and as soon as it came out I wanted to pull it back because I knew it was inappropriate and he was a really nice guy but I got in trouble for that one and that wasn't the only time but you get in trouble for things like that and if you just think about those deficits or those challenges you might miss out on other things I do have to offer in an employment setting in the workplace which brings us to step number two of how we can rethink disabilities in the workplace instead of just stopping at thinking about what people can't do because they have a disability let's think about what someone has to offer let's think about what people what things people can do despite their disability or because of their disability sure I may have absolutely no memory I'm like that fish in that movie who forgets everything but I'm also a member of Mensa I process information quickly I come up with new ideas I think that makes me an asset I may have no filter but I think that's where I can laugh off all of the annoying things that happen as a result of my ADHD and I'm told I'm told by my best friend did that's what makes me funny my best friend of course is my hero she also has a disability her disability is known as cystic fibrosis it's a lung condition that affects your ability to breathe causes diabetes arthritis a bunch of other stuff it's not fun she's 30-something years old and on her bad days she sounds like a chain smoker who has been smoking 10 packs a day the way she coughs it sounds and sometimes she gets winded walking from her office to the bathroom and it's not that long of a hike but because of her disability she has seen hardship she has overcome adversity to make sure she gets proper medical care she has fought with insurance companies she makes sure she gets her medicine she won't take you know what from anybody and that's the tenacity that you want in a friend in a co-worker in an employee you want that in the workplace she and I work with a man who has been totally blind nearly his entire adult life and his first job as the totally blind person was as a stay-at-home dad to three young boys now if you've ever had small children that you've had to take care of well that's a difficult task with full eyesight imagine changing the worst blow out diaper of a squirmy toddler without the benefit of your eyes let that sink in for just a second okay this man probably changed a few hundred of those as a stay-at-home dad this is a man who wanted to make sure his kids had a normal childhood despite not having quote-unquote normal parents and so he would pack up the diaper bag and he would pack up the pack and play and take his three small children on the bus to the park to make sure that they still got the same experience as other kids think of the time management and the planning and the organization skills that go into something like that those sound like skills you want in a person you work with right in addition he has fantastic people skills he runs circles around all of us on the computer but imagine if no one would give him a chance just because he's blind which brings us to step number three we know that there are challenges associated with disabilities and we know that there are benefits to having a disability because you learn to overcome now individuals with disabilities just need a chance so in your workplace in your employment setting whatever that looks like how can you be more inclusive for people with disabilities does that mean you're more friendly to customers who have a disability does that mean you make sure that the website of your company is more blind friendly do you have training for your employees to make sure that they can interact with people with disabilities a little bit more sensitively there are so many things that we can do to make sure that our workplaces are more inclusive you know disabilities advocates like myself we like to say that the disabled population is the one minority group that any one of us any one of us could join at any time if there were ever a time to start treating people the way you want to be treated this is it let's rethink disabilities in the workplace thank you [Applause]