Tuesday 11 September 2012

RT @christineburns: The lesson of the Paralympics is of what people can do if you redefine the rules to enable them, not about what they can't do if you don't

Life has a way of simplifying itself, doesn't it. I can imagine at schools up and down the country little girls and boys in wheelchairs will be seeing their career advisors about their career choices.



"Well, what do you like doing, Johnny/ Julie?"

"Well sir, I like maths/ English/ science and would like to be a banker/ journalist/ pharmacist."


"All very commendable but the only thing you are allowed to be is a Paralympian so spend the afternoon pushing your wheelchair round the playground for me."


OK, maybe a touch oversimplified but it seems to be the mood of the country? - "Look at all those Paralympian's doing amazing things. Why can't all the disabled benefit scroungers be like that?"


I'm just a run of the mill normal invisibly disabled person.After my accident I didn't consider Paralympic Sport because all I wanted to do was play normal sport again. My choice and I don't regret it.
Having tried and failed, I thought if I can't excel at sport I'll excel at work so over the next 17 years, by not highlighting my invisible disability and allowing people to think I was eccentric because I did things slightly differently, I ascended the tree to end up at Executive level.

I tend to think I ascended to the level where my disabilities matter because since then Nada, nothing, zip. It takes me time to develop relationships with people.When I'm thinking you can see it on my face. When I get angry no matter how I behave my face (through its involuntary twitches etc) makes it clear. I can control the way I consciously act but I am eccentric.

The world of sport is not equal. If it was Paralympian's and Olympians would at a minimum compete in the same games and ideally in the same events. As this isn't completely achievable the Paralympic Games is run in Parallel to the Olympics (hence the name!!) and the events are designed to allow the athletes to demonstrate their ability and high level of achievement.

Unfortunately, when you apply for a job their isn't a special category of jobs for the disabled to apply for. There are no "T34 CFO Jobs" advertised. In our dash for equality we forgot that we are different. That is not a bad thing, but if you put me up against a non-disabled person for a job I have to compete on his terms. No allowances. You can ask for reasonable adjustments but when you do they often get refused because they would give you an advantage over non-disabled candidates. All quite reasonable within the law.

But it's worse than that.

There is a wide ranging and rich diversification of disability out there. We are not all the same! Consider this scenario.

A company decides that it will recruit solely by telephone interview. There are 2 candidates, a candidate in a wheelchair and a head injured candidate. They know exactly the same things and are equally as qualified. They give exactly the same answers. Who gets the job?

Before you answer that be aware that under the stress of the interview the head injured person's speech became slightly slurred and he took longer to begin to answer the competency based based questions as his severe memory impairment impacted on his speed of recall of the exact circumstances surrounding the example but still gave exactly the same answers.

Now who gets the job? A lot of interviews are decided upon "soft" criteria and "Who is most like me?" You may think that is OK because the candidate in the wheelchair presented better at interview. Are you saying that an interview is the only way of selecting people for jobs? Does an interview itself not run the risk of being discriminatory purely because you are seeing how people perform in a situation which in the main bears little resemblance to the day to day job being interviewed for? What if there is a cognitive problem that causes problems at interviews but is rarely an issue in day to day life (don't laugh, they do exist - I have such a problem (spasticity caused by brain damage in my frontal lobe))!

So what do we do? Starting from the premise that the interview system will never be perfect what about instead of treating people equally make positive allowances to minimise the effects of any disability? But that will advantage the disabled over the non-disabled - NOT FAIR!


There is a current feeling of pride in our Paralympian's for their achievements. But haven't we made positive allowances by changing the events they compete in to minimise the effects of any disability. Doesn't this disadvantage the non-disabled as they are excluded from competing at the Paralympic's whereas the disabled can compete at the Olympics - Oscar Pistorius.

Why is Sport different from Work?

Celebrate diversity!

By the way, I do not rule out the possibility that I am not good enough to get the jobs I go for and I am unmanageable and thoroughly unpleasant but will leave it to others to Blog that!!

RT : The lesson of the Paralympics is of what people can do if you redefine the rules to enable them, not about what they can't do if you don't

2 comments:

  1. To break down why this is coming off as a reinforcement of cultural disabilist norms instead of against them.

    "I'll excel at work so over the next 17 years, by not highlighting my invisible disability and allowing people to think I was eccentric because I did things slightly differently"

    You treat this as normal and expected, as if all we have to do to excel is to hide our disability.

    "I tend to think I ascended to the level where my disabilities matter because since then Nada, nothing, zip."

    This is in direct contradiction to your earlier statement, if your disabilities did not matter in earlier levels, why hide them?

    "That is not a bad thing, but if you put me up against a non-disabled person for a job I have to compete on his terms. No allowances. You can ask for reasonable adjustments but when you do they often get refused because they would give you an advantage over non-disabled candidates. All quite reasonable within the law."

    Quite reasonable?
    A: You shouldn't have to compete on his terms because they are geared to him, just like he shouldn't have to compete it an environment that is only geared to you.
    Able bodied people do have support we don't get, it's invisible because it's built into society. Whether that be that everything is in their primary language and aimed at their typical skill set or that the interview process often heavily relies on skills that aren't necessarily indicators of being good at a job but which are considered important because they're skills most of the population have.
    So the playing field is already slanted their way, it's just the slant isn't visible because it's part of what they expect.
    2. Again, how do reasonable allowances give one an advantage over another candidate when you face the reality that non-disabled people already receive reasonable allowances.
    3. You describe what is basically discrimination as "reasonable" and "within the law". The disallowal of reasonable accommodations is not reasonable and it violates human rights acts. That is not within the law. By characterising it that way, you make a system that actively discriminates against people sound acceptable. You feed the myth.

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  2. "Starting from the premise that the interview system will never be perfect what about instead of treating people equally make positive allowances to minimise the effects of any disability? But that will advantage the disabled over the non-disabled - NOT FAIR!"

    Except it won't, remember their allowances are already built into the structure. To say it's not fair and to claim it advantages disabled over non-disabled people is to say that if everyone in one group gets five green sweets and a few people get five red sweets that taste the same because they're allergic to the green coloring, somehow the people with the red sweets have more sweets because we ignore that everyone got five sweets, they're just slightly different sweets for some people.


    "There is a current feeling of pride in our Paralympian's for their achievements. But haven't we made positive allowances by changing the events they compete in to minimise the effects of any disability. Doesn't this disadvantage the non-disabled as they are excluded from competing at the Paralympic's whereas the disabled can compete at the Olympics - Oscar Pistorius."

    Is this a quote or your own words asking if it disanvantages the non-disabled by excluding them from competing in the paralympics? Not to mention, I highly doubt disabled people are allowed to complete in the regular Olympics. Hell, it's hard enough for disabled people to compete in the paralympics, given the criteria requires one to have a stable measurable disability that the judges have seen and understand. I myself wouldn't even fit into most of the sections.

    In summary, your post comes off kind of muddled, one second you apparently treat discrimination as reasonable, the next you seem to think that the only way to get us in work is to create entirely separate jobs, then argue that it would discriminate against the able bodied. You might want to rewrite it cos all I get is muddled argument for the status quo from it.

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