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Disabilities Beat: Autistic Self Advocacy Network's Zoe Gross on the neurodivergent employment gap

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For National Disability Employment Month, WBFO’s Freelance Reporter Mason Ald speaks with Autistic Self Advocacy Network Director Zoe Gross on employment barriers for neurodivergent adults. In this conversation, Gross dives into how neurodivergent people face barriers from employers and presents solutions to close the gap. While this segment has been edited for length and clarity, you can read the entire interview below. 

PLAIN LANGUAGE DESCRIPTION: This episode is part of WBFO’s Disabilities Beat. This week, Zoe Gross, Director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network joins WBFO for a conversation. Gross talks with WBFO freelance reporter Mason Ald about why many neurodivergent adults, like those with autism, face barriers in hiring and employment. Gross also provides solutions to these barriers. 

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript provided by a contractor and may be updated over time to be more accurate.

Emyle Watkins: Hi, I am Emyle Watkins, and this is the WBFO Disabilities Beat.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, a chance to highlight disabled workers rights and address barriers to employment. WBFO's Freelance Disability reporter Mason Ald recently spoke with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's Director of Advocacy Zoe Gross about the barriers neurodivergent people face in seeking employment. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network advocates for equity and inclusion for autistic people. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Zoe Gross: So for autistic adults and other neurodivergent adults, the rate of unemployment and under-employment is really huge, and the barriers begin before you start the job so they begin during the hiring and interview process. A lot of the time, interviews for jobs, they have to do more with whether you can make the interviewer feel good during the interview, then whether you can demonstrate the skills necessary to do the job. And if someone can't connect socially with the interviewer, the interviewer may choose not to advance them in the hiring process, may put them down as something called a bad cultural fit, which essentially just means I don't feel good socially with this person. Or may, for some other reason their bias may kick in and they may decide the fact that they don't click socially means the person isn't right for the job. And unfortunately, that being stopped at that step prevents a lot of autistic people from ever beginning a job.

Mason Ald: What causes some of these barriers that you were describing, and how do you think employers can tackle these barriers?

Zoe Gross: Sure. So I think there's several things that cause these barriers, and one is the idea of professionalism. The norms that make up what we think of as professionalism are really very based on, they're kind of for the comfort of people in power, right? So for example, like I said, someone working in retail may be viewed as unprofessional if they flap their hands. Someone working in an office job may be viewed as unprofessional if their shirt isn't tucked in. Another thing, of course, that underlies these barriers is prejudice against people with disabilities, so ableism. Ableism leads us to view showing the traits of a disability as wrong or morally wrong, that if you have a disability, it's an obligation on you to hide it. If you can't hide it, then you just don't deserve the same opportunities as not-disabled people get.

Mason Ald: What resources exist already for neurodivergent workers?

Zoe Gross: Some workplaces now have hiring programs specifically for neurodivergent workers. These interview processes that have been changed to be more friendly to neurodivergent applicants, they focus more on do you have the skills that are necessary to do the job? So you can demonstrate the skills in the interview. It may be more a longer process. There's more seeing what the person is able to do that matches the needs of the position. It being just about how slick is your answer to questions like what's your greatest weakness as an employee, or things like that. And then what we want to see in these places is not only is there that way to get neurodivergent workers in the door, but that's matched with a commitment to providing accommodations, a commitment to changing workplace culture, to making a workplace more accommodating and friendly to autistic workers and other neurodivergent disabilities.

Mason Ald: What do you still think could be improved in order to expand that job market and increase employment rates for neurodivergent adults as a whole?

Zoe Gross: So there's a lot of things. One thing I forgot to mention that's a significant barrier to employment for autistic people is requirements like having a bachelor's degree for certain jobs or even having a high school diploma for certain jobs. People who are in special education throughout high school sometimes don't receive a diploma. Sometimes they receive what's called a certificate of participation, and this is a discriminatory aspect of the school system. Everyone should receive a diploma if they go through, if they graduate high school, but sometimes this doesn't happen for special education students.

Similarly, there's a lot of barriers for autistic people accessing higher education, and we often can't complete a bachelor's degree, even if we try, or even if we have a lot of the relevant knowledge for reasons like lack of accommodations, for reasons like difficulty with independent living on college campuses, so things like that can present barriers as well.

So just like when people are talking about disability hiring, they talk about the fact that it's ubiquitous in job applications to have the requirement even for something like an office job, the person has to be able to lift 25 pounds, and there's no real reason why this person who's only job is to work on actuarial tables all day, have to be able to lift 25 pounds. But it does have the side effect of discriminating against disabled applicants. Similarly, requirements like what kind of degree do you need, that can discriminate against disabled applicant.

Emyle Watkins: You can listen to the Disabilities Beat segment on demand, view a transcript in plain language description for every episode on our website at WBFO.org. I'm Emyle Watkins. Thanks for listening.

Mason Ald is a freelance disability reporter for WBFO.