What a ‘Human-Centered’ Approach Can Do for Workers With Disabilities
Summary
Ms. Macfarlane gave the school’s human resources department a note that her doctor had written about four years earlier, describing her decades-long history with rheumatoid arthritis and recommending ergonomic office equipment. Experts argue that in order to be more accommodating to workers with disabilities, employers need to lift antiquated barriers such as medical documentation requirements and long wait times. She has often successfully requested that her teams adopt tools such as noise-canceling headphones and note-taking plug-ins, without mentioning that she needs them for her autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. “I always try to make it a fun conversation for everyone, like, ‘I heard about this great thing or used it in a past job, maybe something the whole company can use,’” said Ms. Gong, who lives in a suburb near Los Angeles. But that is almost certainly a significant undercount of the total number: In a global survey of nearly 28,000 workers published in May by Boston Consulting Group, around 25 percent of employees reported having a disability or health condition, whether visible or invisible.