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Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2020 - 06 - 26 - ID#hgdyjh
8
Self-advocacy (self.Blind)
submitted by greens-s
Hi everyone, I am going to work with my students on the importance of self-advocacy in the workplace and want to reach out to this group. How has your self-advocacy skills helped you in the workplace? Or maybe not worked for you? Did it result to seeking legal action towards your employer? I would like to know real world examples so we can discuss about it. Thank you all for your time!
achromatic_03 2 points 3y ago
This is just my perspective, but I would agree with the other poster about self-accommodation where possible. While your workplace has legal obligations, there are also reality, politics, and biases that are not avoidable if you want to get and keep a job.

I would say that the first place i would go for assistance with any tech is the state, so that you can bring your own accommodations to the workplace and continue to own any devices if you change jobs. For instance, I brought the Magic program and my electronic magnifiers with me to my first office job, and so I really didn't need much from them, except a different desk. My current workplace was really open and happy to accommodate requests. I think the type of workplace you end up at makes a huge difference. It's about finding a culture that is accepting and values inclusivity, to feel comfortable. If your first experience is bad, you may be less confident, which is not something anyone wants! There are also so many consequences to the legal action path, that make me want to avoid it as much as possible!

An additional reality that makes self-accommodation my top pick is that the ADA and reasonable accommodations get a bad rep and are abused. Self-accommodation is a concrete way to show that you are not trying to take advantage, drain funds, or "get away" with anything. You establish yourself as someone who isn't interested in being the 20% of employees that take up 80% of a manager's time. When it comes to my own needs, I try to keep my head down and just do the work like anyone else.
DrillInstructorJan 2 points 3y ago
I'm not sure I ever heard the term self advocacy until a few years ago. Maybe I'm just out of the loop. It's not really a loop anyone should want to be in, I guess?

I prefer to call it sticking up for yourself which is a term that isn't loaded down with a pile of fashionable disability politics. This is opinion but I don't think anyone should ever be relying on someone else to quote advocate for them unquote. Almost all of what you need to do you can absolutely do yourself and the only exceptions should be if you just can't get in contact with the right person to deal with something. Usually that happens if you don't know who to talk to until someone else has some information, or something.

Even then, relying on other people just creates risks that things won't get done, or won't get done in the right way. There won't always be someone around to help, at least not someone you trust.

Yes occasionally you will need to accept help and you need to get past the point where that is like acid on your soul. I'm terrible at this. But the only way to get any sort of independence is to be the master of your own destiny and I think this should be the default approach for everyone.
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