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Support for Students and Graduates with Disabilities

Common Barriers to Securing Employment

Employer Barriers

Employer attitudes to disability remain the most important barriers to overcome for students and graduates with a disability. In a survey of university graduates with disabilities carried out in Western Australia 31% of respondents reported that employer attitudes were their biggest problem (Hynes et al, 1996).

Other barriers reported in the graduate survey were more disability specific:

• Transport was a particular barrier for people with vision impairment, although overall this group appears to be the least likely to experience barriers in seeking work.
• Equipment barriers typically affected people with hearing, muscular-skeletal, neurological and vision impairments.
• Personal factors (including age, experience and job interests) impacted on people with a visible disability or mental illness.
• Difficulties with interview requirements was a barrier reported by graduates with cognitive impairments.

Given that each person is affected by the disability in a unique way where performance may be limited in some settings, it would be beneficial for students/graduates to have a think about the barriers to be faced and face both generally and in specific work settings before beginning the job search process.

Once you have identified potential barriers, you should invest some time in thinking about:

• Workplace adjustments and accommodations you might require
• Types of work environment and working conditions that will minimise the impact of any barriers that may arise.

It is also important to recognise...
That some barriers that graduates and students face may also be more indirect, such as a lack of work experience. An analysis of information from the Graduate Destination Survey indicates, that from a national perspective, significantly more graduates without disabilities than graduates with disabilities worked during their final years of study. In Western Australia, this difference was even more marked with 78% of graduates without disabilities gaining work experience while only 55% of graduates with disabilities worked in their final year.