To Disclose, or not to Disclose

That really is the question. And one lived by people with disabilities on a VERY regular basis when interviewing

Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC
Age of Awareness
Published in
7 min readFeb 4, 2020

--

Small fish that looks like sand camoflauged and hidden in the sand

Authors note: Because of Medium’s refusal to address its accessibility issues for both authors and readers, I’ve moved my last three years of blogs to Substack. Please sign up there for notices of all new articles. Also, I will be updating older articles (like this one) and the updates will only be published on Substack. Thank you for your continued readership and support.

This article is not legal advice. If you have questions about how disclosing a disability can impact you legally, ask your attorney, who is most definitely not me.

This question* showed up on my LinkedIn feed recently.

Do you tell a supervisor when you first start a job about a disability, or do you not say anything and hope they don’t find out?

The answers were split just about 50/50 with half saying “disclose” and half saying “don’t disclose”. Since the OPs contact group is not well-known to me, it is hard to say which answers belonged to people with disabilities, and which belonged to hiring managers. But there were a couple of responses that…

--

--

Age of Awareness
Age of Awareness

Published in Age of Awareness

Stories providing creative, innovative, and sustainable changes to the ways we learn | Tune in at aoapodcast.com | Connecting 500k+ monthly readers with 1,500+ authors

Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC
Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC

Written by Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC

LinkedIn Top Voice for Social Impact 2022. UX Collective Author of the Year 2020. Disability Inclusion SME. Sr Staff Accessibility Architect @ VMware.