Disability Awareness & Confidence

Posted by Dean Askin | Reading time 12:00 | Filed under Inclusive Hiring, Disability Awareness & Confidence Background photo courtesy Hilary Gauld / One for the Wall Photography and the Canadian Down Syndrome Society. Foreground photo: Adobe Stock. Making your business disability inclusive encompasses proactively, intentionally creating a work environment where all employees feel valued…

Posted by Dean Askin | Reading time 7:00 | Filed under Inclusive Hiring, Disability Awareness & Confidence Photo courtesy Hilary Gauld / One for the Wall Photography and the Canadian Down Syndrome Society There’s making your business disability inclusive. And there’s fostering disability inclusion in your business. One is not the same as the other….

Filed under Disability Awareness & Confidence, Inclusive Hiring, NDEAM Reading time:   6 min.  | Posted by Dean Askin  October’s a few days behind us now. There’s a winter chill in the air. National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) and our annual NDEAM campaign is over for another year.   Now it’s time to keep the conversation…

A Light It Up! For NDEAM National Disability Employment Awareness Month purple light banner shines on the sidewalks of Elgin Plaza at Red River College Polytechnic in Winnipeg on October 19, 2023. It's shining in front of a campus building.

Filed under Disability Awareness & Confidence, Inclusive Hiring  Reading time: 6 min. | Posted by Dean Askin | Part two in a two-part series  Making the disability inclusion connections to business and employment success is a three-stage process.   First, there’s grasping all the intertwined levels of connection. Second, there’s understanding the inter-related barriers to…

Five hands holding puzzle pieces, bringing them together.

Filed under Disability Awareness & Confidence Reading time: 5 min. | Guest post by Wayne Connell One of the most important things to grasp about disability, is that disability is diverse. Some disabilities are visible. But the most common ones are invisible.    So what exactly is an invisible disability?   Is it a specific illness or…

A man is sitting with his eyes closed and his elbows resting on a table. His arms are raised and his fingertips are pressing against his temples. There are swirls around his head, representing dizziness.

Filed under Disability Awareness & Confidence, Inclusive Hiring Reading time: 8 min.  |  Posted by Dean Askin  |  Part one in a two-part series There’s more conversation about disability inclusion in business and employment than ever. Although, the disability factor is mostly rolled into over-arching talk about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). And still too…

A man is in a power wheelchair at the base of stairs and escalators. He's looking up the escalator. There's no ramp, so the stairs and escalators aren't accessible.

Most DEI conversations tend to focus on gender and/or ethnicity. Disability is either left out altogether; or mentioned merely in passing as part of “other under-represented groups.” It’s essential to make sure disability is included in this dialogue — because disability inclusion is driving the future success of businesses; and driving change in the nature of work. 

To borrow from the famous Bob Dylan song, “The times they are changing.” In 2022, that change is, disability inclusion is driving the future of work more than ever before. 
Like “disability,” “work” is a broad term. Both of these things are diverse. Which makes how and why disability inclusion is driving the future of work a diverse, broad topic.  

There is, for example, the angle of how disability inclusion can make a business an employer of choice now and in the future. One can dedicate an entire post to this aspect alone. The same goes for technology and how businesses need to make sure the technology they’re using is accessible, so all employees can succeed in their work.  

When it comes to the future of work, what we’re talking about here — more specifically — is how and why disability is changing the nature of the workforce; and hence the nature of work. And why you need to embrace this change.  

young man working freelance in laptop at home with prosthetic arm

Dean Askin Filed under Disability Awareness & Confidence, Inclusive Hiring Youth of all abilities face several barriers and often lack a voice representing what it means to find meaningful employment. A project led by Re:Action4Inclusion is addressing these barriers. This Ontario-wide group has been in existence since 2008.  The movement “seeks to empower youth to…

The nature of work is rapidly changing and is creating opportunities for jobseekers who have a disability. But for the more than 600,000 employable Canadians who have a disability, many still face barriers to securing employment. 

Today, a majority of the job search happens online. The problem is mainstream job boards and recruitment sites take a one-size-fits-all approach. They’re not designed with accessibility and disability in mind.