As many people know, I had a lot of issues in finding a job in 2023. As someone who has to disclose my disability immediately, I don’t have the option to just slip my needs in later.
In 2025 there was a period I started looking for work again due to funding uncertainty. As usual, the disability stuff was a deal breaker. People love my resume, get terrified at me being housebound, and go quiet. As I said recently on social media, sometimes in employment circles when you say DISABLED it’s like a cartoon from my childhood where someone screams “G G G GHOST”.
I had a good conversation with one recruiter. Good is relative here – it means they weren’t immediately terrified of me being housebound. They were suggesting places I could work. One was the NDIS/NDIA. Ironically I’ve never been successful with them when applying despite relevant skillsets. And I’ve never heard many good things about working for them.
But… this is still a form of segregated employment (something I have tried to draft blog posts on: to cover “traditional” segregated employment, but I’m not happy with them so I haven’t published them).
I do currently work disability related and I’m not going to lie, some days it’s hard. I like a strong separation of work and personal and bringing SO MUCH of yourself and your knowledge and your community with you to work makes that really damn hard. I have my techniques that I use to manage it best I can, but sometimes I want to go back to IT or education project work so that I’m not obligated to bring so much of myself to work.
Other issues with the “Disabled? Work in disability!” approach:
- it implies my only worthwhile skills and knowledge are disability ones
- if I work for certain parts of government, even writing this blog post could breach codes of conduct in speaking up – I shouldn’t lose my rights to advocate for systemic change just because I am employed (neutrality doesn’t exist and codes of conduct that demand it have no place in a human rights approach to the world)
- it doesn’t let me have a good work life balance
- it lets employers off the hook in implementing adjustments or accomodations in non disability centric workplaces
- it requires a level of disclosure that non disabled people don’t have to experience at work
- you’re not paid enough because disability is under valued in society and so are work roles associated with disability
- it limits your career both through where you can work, how easy it is to find a job (underfunded work sector – not many jobs), and the tasks you want to do at work
What other issues do see in this area that I haven’t covered? I feel like I’ve forgotten a few that I had in mind when I started drafting this post.
Related reading: Being headhunted as a disabled person
None of this has raised itself as a problem in the two years I’ve been in my current and disability related job. I still do whatever I want and write whatever I want outside of work (spoon permitting, which is a different topic – expecting people to work when it might be healthier not to work – blog post coming on that too). But as with anything in employment, something not being an issue is often down to luck, not quality implementation of policy. (Which PS you can hire me to help you with.)
