(upbeat music)
-: My name is Lou Orslene
and along with Ann Hursh
I'm one of the directors of the US Department of Labor
Office of Disability and Policies Job Accommodation Network.
Disclosure is really letting and informing the employer know
that you have a medical condition, chronic health condition,
disability, impairment that's interfering with
the performance of your essential functions of your job.
That's really what disclosure is.
If you need to disclose during the application process,
then you're probably dealing with a recruiter or a hiring
manager and you're going to need to disclose to them
Otherwise, what you want to do is you want to seek out
the accommodation process, the policies,
as well as the practice within the organization
and you really want to follow that process.
So there may be a person who is a subject matter expert
within the diversity and inclusion department
at an organization, at a company
and of course, then, that's who you want to target
with the request for accommodation.
So, when you're disclosing you probably don't
want to talk about, you don't need
to really talk about your diagnosis.
Again, when we're disclosing,
what is important for the employer to know
in order to make an effective accommodation.
They need to know the limitations, the challenges
that you're facing because of the medical condition,
and then what kind of accommodations can work.
I would limit my conversation to that.
If the employer needs to substantiate
and wants additional information,
then they can request that information.
But at first I would really, just,
whatever type of disability, whether it be physical
or mental, I would really just talk more about,
offer the medical impairment, the limitation that you have,
and the challenge that you're having at work.
I think that's really the way that you
start the conversation about accommodations.
You also say, for instance, you have a disability
at your internship or during college you used
a certain specific assistive technology
and it made you more effective.
If you're gonna need to request an accommodation
and you know that straight away,
even perhaps through the onboarding process.
Say, for instance, you're blind
and you use a screen reader
and that's really how your information is read to you
and you process the information from work.
Then, perhaps, in the onboarding process,
you know that you're going to have to have
accessible documents that you can then use your
screen reader in order to read that information to you
to successfully do your onboarding process.
Then, at that point, you really want to talk about,
I already know how a screen reader works,
I'm very effective, I've used it my whole life.
I've been trained on it so I can
save you those training costs.
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