>>Hello, my name is Susanne Bruyere and I am here to welcome you to today's Cornell University ILR School Employment and Disability Institute Webinar on Disability Disclosure in the Workplace; What Employers Should Know. We are very pleased to have you join us this afternoon and we have one hour together to share with you the results of the survey by Cornell University's ILR School Employment and Disability Institute working in partnership with The American Association of People with Disabilities in Washington, D.C. We would like to acknowledge that this research was conducted under a grant to Cornell University from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research for a rehabilitation and training center on employment policy and employment practices, policy I'm sorry, for persons with disabilities. And our Webinar today is going to be, we're going to sharing with you information from a study done by Cornell that will be led by Sarah von Schrader and you see pictures of both Sarah and I on this next slide. We'd like to also acknowledge our Webinar sponsors which is the currently funded RRTC on Employer Practices related to employment outcomes among individuals with disabilities. Also funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research and a project funded to Cornell from the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Disability Employment Policy and Employer Assistance and Resource Network. And we'll tell you a little bit more about the resources available to you from these Webinar sponsors later in the session today. We'd like to again acknowledge a little bit more about our survey. The report, and there's a full report, we're just going to give you a snapshot today in the short time that we have together is entitled Emerging Employment Issues with People with Disabilities, Disability Disclosure, Leave as a Reasonable Accommodation, Use of Job Applicant Screeners. And the participants from Cornell in this survey were Sarah von Schrader who's our lead presenter today, Valerie Malzer, Bill Erickson and myself, all from the Cornell University Employment and Disability Institute. If you'd like a full copy of this, the report publication, it is available free online at a Cornell Website which is shared here. It's digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu slash edicollect slash 1288 and we'll give you this information again at the end of the session. Again I want to acknowledge this was funded by NIDR under an employment policy RRTC and that the contents of our presentation and the report do not necessarily however represent the policy of the Department of Education or any other federal agency that is our sponsors here today. And so you therefore should not assume endorsement by the federal government of the views that we're presenting which are ours based on our research that we will share with you that we've conducted. And with that brief overview I'm going to turn this over to my colleague, Sarah von Schrader. Sarah, it's all yours. 

>>Great, thank you Susanne. So I'll start off by giving an overview of what we're going to be talking about today. So first a little bit of background, more generally on employment and disability and sort of why we decided to do this survey. I'll talk a little bit about the importance of disability disclosure to employers. I think some evidence of the importance of this topic is the number of people who've sort of registered for this Webinar. I think we had close to 1,200 people, 1,200 registrants with just about six days of advertising this Webinar. I think that sort of indicates that this is definitely a topic that employers are interested in as well as many others. We'll talk a little bit about our short survey methods and more about the findings which the findings really present a varied window into the varied perspectives of individuals with disabilities on the disclosure decision. And then I'm going to turn it back over to Susanne who's going to talk about, show the implications of this work particularly for employers around improving workplace culture, oops, just a moment, around improving workplace culture and inclusion for people with disabilities. Sorry about that. Okay, on to our next slide. So there are huge employment disparities between people with and without disability. The employment rate for people with disabilities is around 36% compared to 77% for people without disabilities. And this is a gap of over 40 percentage points. People with disabilities who are employed are also more likely to be working part time or part year or generally they are more under employed then people without disabilities. And this survey sort of came out of an interest both at EDI and the American Association of People with Disabilities, AAPD, in exploring some of the most current issues that may be impacting these employment disparities. So we chose to look at disability disclosure, leave as a reasonable accommodation and the use the job applicant screeners. And the latter two issues have been highlighted recently in EEOC public readings. And across all three issues we really wanted to delve into the perspective of individuals with disabilities and how they felt these issues impact the employment situation. As I said, we're going to primarily focus on the results from the section of the survey on disability disclosure today but, you know, as the other sections are relevant I'll bring those up as well. So the importance of disclosure for employers, so I've got about four bullets here and I don't think that this is an exhaustive list at all but I think they provide just kind of an overview of why this is an important topic particularly for employers. We know with disability disclosure there's an increased awareness of where accommodations may improve employee productivity. If an employer doesn't know about a disability it's difficult to make the adjustments that may increase productivity and satisfaction in the workplace. In the second bullet, disclosure can also be an indicator of employee comfort level with sharing personal information. This is really an indicator of the workplace climate for people with disabilities and sort of the climate for inclusiveness, when people feel comfortable disclosing a disability. And then these last two bullets focus on particular groups of employers, they're being faced with some new demands around the employment of people with disabilities in particular federal employers and federal contractors. So I've listed the federal executive order that was signed by President Obama in 2010 which calls for an additional 100,000 individuals with disabilities to be employed by the federal government over five years. And the last bullet there I'm listing the proposed revision to Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and this is really very current because right now we're in the comment period which I believe is February 7th so just in a couple of weeks here. But the proposed rule lays out considerably higher expectations for federal contractors related to the employment of people with disabilities suggesting that 7% of their workforce be people with disabilities. So under the proposed rule federal contractors would need to survey candidates as well as their employees annually to track their success in meeting this goal. But the ability to meet this goal to some extent of course hinges on individuals feeling comfortable enough with disclosing their disability in the workplace. So, this survey kind of looks at this disability disclosure decision and the responses that we got from this survey and it's really a complex decision. And often times disclosing a disability may not be in the best interest of an individual. So I think what these results will sort of show is that employers can have a better, will have a better understanding of barriers and motivations in this decision making process and knowing a little bit about, more about these barriers and motivations will be very helpful in trying to address them. I'm going to go on to the next slide here. And talk a bit about our, just a little bit about our survey, about development and distribution. The items on the survey were developed based on a review of the literature. We had the survey reviewed by a wide variety of individuals with varied expertise. Once the survey was developed and piloted, it was programmed by our Survey Research Institute and set out as an online survey. And the survey was disseminated primarily through two modes; through the American Association with People with Disabilities and through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. And we are fortunate enough to have announcements in the listservs and the newsletters as well as the social media outlets of the American Association of People with Disabilities. We, I think from there there were also the survey was even more broadly distributed to other networks which was fantastic. We were able to reach a total of, have a total 780 participants who actually completed the entire survey and about 101 additional participants who started but didn't complete it, about a third of our respondents through SAMHSA affiliates and the rest through AAPD. Let's see, so I guess what I should say here is that I don't think there's really no way that we can say that this or make inferences to any particular group of people with disabilities or say that this is representative of AAPD membership for example but we do believe that the experiences that we have collected through this survey form those who chose to respond are valid and really important to share. And I think the voices help us better understand the important issues by highlighting perspectives of people who really have experience with the disability disclosure decision. So in terms of data analysis basically in the report we presented with descriptive statistics as well as a lot of summary of the open ended responses. It was really interesting to me in that on the survey, I've done quite a bit of different survey research and organizational surveys, and I was shocked by the number of people who responded to the open ended items on the survey and I think it's reflective of how important people felt this issue was and they really wanted to share their stories which was great but it sort of, it's not easy to summarize all of these different voices. So, just an example of how great the response rate was I felt, so there was, for an item that we asked only of people who self identified as being people with a disability, there are about 600 people who could have responded and we had almost 400 actually enter a response, so it was really fantastic. So we conducted a thematic analysis of the qualitative data in order to, in order to sort of summarize on these open-ended items. So first you read through for each item all of the responses for all individuals and we developed a set of codes where we kind of identified different features of interest in the data and we grouped these coded responses into broader themes and we refined these themes and pulled out some quotations from the text responses that really represented these themes. And I'm going to be presenting some of these quotes later on in the presentation. And I'll just note that we wanted to, it was really important to us of course to protect the confidentiality of the respondents so we removed any identifying information from the quotes. And you'll see brackets or ellipses where we inserted or suppressed information. And we also, we also correct spelling errors mainly just to not distract a reader and I know that when I don't have a spell checker, my spelling is not perfect, so. We wanted to do that so it's not distracting, easier to read. Although we didn't correct grammar or make any other changes to the quotes. Just a little bit about the people who responded. These are just some of the characteristics. We collected a lot of demographic information on the individuals responding and these are just a few things that I'll share with you. And also the survey was open to both people with and without disabilities. Today I'm focusing the findings only on those people who self identified as a person with a disability. So, you can see more then half of the respondents identified themselves as a disability advocate, about a quarter were disability service providers. We had about 65%, 66% female and most were over 45 years old. Overall the respondents were highly educated with more then 2/3 with a college degree. A similar proportion of the respondents were employed so you can see here from the statistic that I presented earlier, we have a higher employment rate among the people who responded to this survey then the employment rate in general which is not too surprising. And then finally I just, respondents reported a variety of health conditions and disabilities. And I thought it was interesting that about half of the people with a disability reported having a mental or emotional health condition and this is probably not too surprising given that the survey was promoted through SAMHSA. Let's see. Okay, so the first section of the survey asked respondents to rate the importance of various factors in the decision to disclose or not to disclose. And so they rated these factors on a scale from one, not at all important to five, very important. And what I'm summarizing in this slide for each of these factors is the percent who indicated that this factor was very important. On the slide I sort of have shortened versions of the item and I'm actually going to try to read the entire item so that it's a little bit more clear. And these are ordered from sort of the highest to the lowest, the most people who felt that this was very important. And not surprisingly, about two thirds of the respondents and the most frequently sort of the highest percentage here was the need for accommodation to perform a job or to take care of a health condition during working hours. So about 68% of people felt that that was a very important factor and that makes sense I think. Next was an open and supportive relationship with one's supervisor. And about 63% rated that as being very important. The context of the workplace was also very important to individuals. We had higher rating for with about, with about 57% indicating it was very important to know the employer has made concerted efforts to create a disability inclusive or friendly environment. And about 50% noted that knowing that the employer was actively recruiting and hiring people with disabilities, about 50% thought that was very important. Nearly half said it was very important to know that other employees had disclosed their disability and were successful in the workplace. And about half felt that disability was important, that disability was included within the organization's diversity statement. And about 40% said that it was very important to believe that disclosure will lead to new opportunities for promotions and training. There were actually four more items that I didn't try to pack into this slide that were less frequently cited as being very important. And some of these are, you know, just more along the lines of employer policies that may not translate directly into creating an environment where somebody feels comfortable disclosing. For example, a statement in recruitment materials inviting applicants with disabilities or a message of disability inclusiveness on the company's Website or promotional materials. For example, having pictures of people with disabilities on their Website. Another one was the existence of a disability employee resource group, [inaudible] called [inaudible] groups and the last was an employee with a disability recruiting job fairs or campus recruitment events. So in addition to responding to how important these factors that we provided were individuals also had two spaces where they could enter additional factors they felt that we had not included but that were very, that were important to them and they could rate these factors as well. And I think some interesting ones came up. You'll see that some of these I've put quotations around and others do not. What I don't quotations around, that was sort of a summary, a summary of a lot of different voices that were sort of combined into one statement while the ones with quotations are actually an individual's, actually said this and I thought it did a better job of anything that I could come up with in terms of summarizing what people said. So I think the thing that popped a lot was knowing that the company offers flexible work opportunities. We saw people wanting to know that the company had part time opportunities, work from home opportunities, flexible schedules, flexible leave policy. So that was a really important factor in the disclosure decision to some individuals. And another one was that the company offers disability awareness or anti-stigma training to all employees and not just he managers or supervisors but that it's offered more broadly. Next was HR personnel who are familiar with disabilities accommodations and understand that it's a goal for the company or companies. Another one that came up was knowing that the employer has a fair system in place to resolve complaints. Another one was the access, an accessible workplace building and facilities so talking more about the physical accessibility of the workplace as an indicator of a place that's welcoming to people with disabilities. And then a few people noted that they were interested in whether the organization supports diversity more generally so beyond disability but also race, gender, sexual organization, is it really a mission of the organization and is it clear that that is true. I thought this one was interesting. Data presented on hiring or promotion of people with disabilities. People wanted to see some data and of course this some what hinges on the comfort level of employees in the organization to disclose that they have a disability. And then finally, does the organization participate and support community awareness events and activities. These were all factors that people would weigh when making the decision whether or not to disclose. So then sort of the other side of the coin in the next sort of section of questions, we looked at the very important factors when deciding not to disclose a disability to an employer. Sort of, what would keep people from being comfortable enough to disclose. And I've included, I've included sort of everything that was within there and hopefully the font is not too, too small. So, the number one, so again I should explain that this is the percent of people who said that the factor was very important. And about three quarters of people with disability rated concerned about being fired or not being hired as very important. We had just over 60% indicating that the following factors were very important including concern that the employer may focus more on the disability then on actual work performance and abilities, fear that opportunities for promotion will be more limited, concern about losing or not receiving health care benefits and concern that one's supervisor will not be supportive. So around 60% all indicated that was a very important factor. More then half said rated as very important in their decision that they were concerned about being treated differently by a supervisor or coworkers or concerned about being viewed differently by supervisors or coworkers. There was also an item on there where someone could indicate that they believe that the disability does not have an impact on the ability to perform the job therefore that was a very important factor when deciding not to disclose. And then the last one that's in this list is the desire for privacy, in the item, the item read a desire to keep the disability private. And I thought it was interesting that just more than, only just more than a quarter said that this was very important so people were more concerned about the implications from the outside of this disclosure. How is it going to, how were others going to feel about this end, how would these relationships change. So it wasn't so much about protecting at least for some people, about protecting their privacy so much as concern about what would happen if they did disclose. 

[ pause ] Okay, so the present, this is, this is a figure presenting the percent who disclosed in their current or most recent job. As I said, we asked these questions again of people who responds who self identified as an individual with a disability and whether or not they disclosed and you can see that most people did disclose their disability in their current or most recent job. And we broke this out into three groups. We looked at people with, we asked people to indicate how apparent their disability was to others and there were three groups, not apparent, somewhat apparent and very apparent. And as you might expect among the group that's not apparent there's less disclosure, about 74% disclosed their disability and it's somewhat more apparent among people who indicated that their disability was somewhat apparent, about 80% disclosed and among people with a very apparent disability, 88% disclosed. I think a lot of cases particularly with the group among very apparent, people with very apparent disabilities people mentioned in the open-ended responses that while they sort of had to disclose their more obvious disability they, any other disabilities unless they needed an accommodation they would not disclose until it was necessary. So I think this may be the reason that we see, you know, not a higher number for the percent who disclosed with a very apparent disability. Going on to the next slide, we found and we'll talk more about this later as well but the timing of the disclosure was something that was really critical for a lot of people. And I think that this figure shows we've combined the groups of not and somewhat apparent and we're comparing that to individuals with a very apparent disability. And we asked, when did they disclose their disability? And the options were during recruitment, during an interview or after being hired. So if we look at this first set of bars here under during recruitment you can see for those with less apparent disability is about 39% disclosed during recruitment. And we had about 50% of response, of those with a very apparent disability disclosing during recruitment. If we move over to during the interview, you can see that again those with less apparent disabilities were less likely to disclose during the interview then those with very apparent disabilities. So those with less apparent disabilities about 25% disclosed and among those with a very apparent disability about 34% disclosed. And if we move to the next set of bars this is the percentage who disclosed after being hired. About 30%, 36% of those that are not or somewhat apparent disability disclosed after being hired while only about 15% of those with a very apparent disability disclosed after being hired. And this sort of makes sense in that, you know, those with less apparent disabilities have more of a decision and in when they're going to disclose while an individual who's in a wheelchair may not have much option in terms of when they're able to disclose. And as I said, we're going to talk a little bit more about timing in just a moment. And I'm going to go on to this next slide which presents those who experience negative consequences of disclosure. And again, we're using these same two categories and comparing those so those with not or somewhat apparent disabilities and those with very apparent disabilities. And I think what's sort of interesting about this slide just on first glance is that the immediate consequences, you know, they're really, most people do not experience negative immediate consequences as well as most people didn't experience negative longer term consequences. But that, you know, more people experience negative longer term consequences then immediate consequences. And I'll go through the numbers here right now. But those with less apparent disabilities, this red bar here, about 10% experienced negative immediate consequences of their disability disclosure while only about 7% of those with very apparent disabilities. So for the most part we've got most people are having either neutral or positive experiences when they disclose their disability. As we turn over to longer term consequences of their disability disclosure you'll see that almost 27% of those with less apparent disability felt that they experienced some negative longer term consequences of that disclosure and this is compared to about 20% of those with very apparent disabilities. 

[ pause ] So we were interested in hearing a little bit more about the decision to disclose, their decision to disclose and so we have a question that was an open-ended question that if presented with a similar situation in the future, would you disclose? This was yes or no and then please explain why you would or would not disclose. And this where the description really led to I think a greater understanding of the factors that we had presented in those first few slides. In addition, a lot of people sort of spoke of their past experiences in a little more detail and how these past experiences impact their future decision to disclose. So there are kind of, I think I talked in the beginning a little bit about how we came up with themes from these responses and we found kind of going through these responses, six sort of general themes that occurred again and again in the data. As I said, timing of disclosure was a really big, was a really big issue and that came up frequently. Having a supportive workplace was really important. People noted again and again that they didn't really care what the organization policies were, they really wanted to see that people were succeeding in the workplace and that, you know, that it was a supportive environment before they would feel comfortable disclosing. The third is a statement that appeared in a lot of these responses. Disability is part of who I am, you know, maybe not said exactly that same way every time but within that there are three sort of sub themes that we identified which was a way to gauge I wanted to actually work for this employer. So, understanding whether the employer was going to accept me for who I am. Next was a desire for honesty, just wanting to have things out in the open. Another was educating others and basically showing that people with disabilities can be valued members of the workforce and I want to show people that. Sort of on the flip side, why people were not comfortable disclosing. There were three main themes and I think that we've talked a little bit about these already but the first would be a fear of not being hired or being fired. And this came up a lot. People had a lot of experiences around this that they shared. Second was working place harassment and bullying. And the sixth was losing promotion opportunities. And it said, you know, different people have sort of experienced many of these or spoke about many of these different, these issues. So I've sort of selected some quotes that I think that sort of represent each of these themes and we'll kind of go through those, I'll go through those right now. So the first again was timing of disclosure. So an individual may need an accommodation either in the hiring process, the interview process, however, what people were saying was that disclosing too early may impact an individuals chance to get a job. And we'll talk a little bit more about his in the section on hiring and firing. But they wanted to delay the disclosure until later in the process generally. So many respondents said they preferred to wait until they were actually hired to disclose. Here are a few voices, I waited until after being offered the position to disclose. I tended to let employers see my work before letting them know that I'm hard of hearing. I waited until after being offered the position to disclose. I was hired for my extensive abilities, not my disabilities. 

[ pause ] It was interesting even people with what you might call more obvious disabilities, you know, so your vision impairments or some of these others would note that if there was any way that they could have a phone interview or wait longer to allow before the person could see that they had a disability that that would be their choice because they really felt that that was limiting their opportunities to get in to the workforce. Next the supportive workplaces. Respondents as I said before noted that progressive policies are just not enough. They really want to know how employees with disabilities are treated. Here's a few quotes related to that. I would only disclose if there was clear evidence of being supportive of the disabled across the board at all levels. I would be wary of disclosing until I saw how the employer actually treated employees with mental health issues not just their stated policy. I typically disclose but if and when depends on my rapport with the interviewer or supervisor. This one actually makes it just as well into the timing of disclosure. So next is the kind of the three that I said, well I sort of felt like fit under this disability is part of who I am. And the first was, I will disclose to essentially gauge whether the employer will be accepting of me. And here are a couple of quotes, I prefer to disclose my disability, then I would be able to detect any body languages, reactions or type of vibe by the interviewers or supervisors. It gave me the idea of what kind of environment that I would be risking myself if I got hired. And next, I do not want to be viewed as a disabled person and then as an employee. I want to ensure that I'm viewed as a valued employee who happens to have a disability. Again, this is another one of the group that I was calling disability is who I am. It just felt that being honest was really important to them and not essentially could really reduce the stress of the workplace. I said that we had a couple of other topics within the survey and one was focused on leave, workplace leave. And the disclosure issue came up there again in that, you know, if someone has regular doctor's visits, it's hard to explain that without making, without disclosing the disability and it makes life so much easier. So that was another place where disclosure came up within the leave section. And then here are a few other, a couple other quotes not necessarily from the leave section but this question around disability disclosure. Disclosing makes life simpler. I am who I am, I'm a person with a disability. Trying to cover that up or pretend takes way too much energy. And second, it is certainly less stressful to have it out in the open then to be concerned about having to hide it, then to be concerned about having to hide it and not wanting anyone to find out. And the third of these was educating others. I want to show that employers, I want to show employers that people with disabilities are valued member, members of their workforce. And I think here are a couple quotes that reflect that. Because I'm not ashamed of my disability and I would hope that my disclosure would help someone else with a disability in seeking employment. Disclosing allows me to serve as an example of successful employment and promotions. And, I'm proud to show that people with disabilities are confident and valued employees. 

[ pause ] Next we're kind of turning the table a little bit more, people talking about why they don't disclose their disability in the workplace. So many individuals said that they would not disclose, said that they would not disclose, provided more detail around their concerns related to not being hired or being fired. As you remember from an earlier slide, about 25 or 27% of our respondents were disability service providers and a lot of these folks noted within these open-ended comments that they felt really comfortable disclosing in their current position which was, you know, working in a disability service provider agency of some kind. And so they felt okay there where as an accepting environment people understood and accepted people with disabilities but again and again they said that they would not disclose for a non disability related job, they wouldn't feel comfortable and they often noted that they advise their clients about the potential costs of disclosing in the workplace. So, not necessarily that they should not disclose always but they definitely would provide warnings about disclosing in a non disability friendly workplaces. And again the respondents noted that there was just too much, still too much discrimination in the workplace for individuals with disabilities to get a fair shake. That was coming out a lot in the responses. This is one quote that's sort of long so it's taking up the entire slide but I thought it was an interesting one. Company policies are worthless if discriminatory behaviors are not curbed and the disabled are seen as too unreliable or costly. There's enormous ignorance and fear by non disabled coworkers so denial and avoidance is rampant. Disability is still treated like an acute disease. Until this changes there's too high a risk of losing ones job if you disclose. Next again, something that came up a lot and we had a lot of very descriptive responses around experiences in workplace harassment and bullying. These are kind of more general responses. I mean, we have some very long responses and people really describing the situation and because this is a presentation I'm not going to be able to get into the level of detail that some people described in the workplace but I think these demonstrate generally how some people are experiencing the workplace after a disclosure. Disclosure makes it hard to get fair and equal treatment in the workplace and results in being bullied either by coworkers or by employers. In the beginning my employer was supportive but as the years went on I was bullied, harassed, belittled, written up and eventually fired. I was harassed daily, denied further training and eventually fired. And then sort of the last of this group, many people indicated a concern that opportunities for advancement might be limited if they disclosed. And they described their own experiences and perceptions related to being passed over for promotions. I was marginalized, alienated from the agency's mainstream development. I was deprived promotion and treated as levity by both supervisors and employees. And another is, once you disclose your disability it can effect your long term promotions. The employer will always be aware of this no matter how hard you work. So I think it's, I have to say kind of these last three slides really sort of present some negative, some negative experiences with disability disclosure. And I think we probably ended up hearing more of the negative thoughts, that is not to say that there weren't a lot of really positive experiences around or just neutral experiences. I disclosed my disability and it was fine. I work in a place where I have supportive coworkers, I have supportive supervisor. So I think that sort of ending on this point at least in presenting the data survey leaves a bad taste in ones mouth but I'm going to actually turn it over to Susanne who's going to talk a little bit more about conclusions and implications. But I think I just wanted to note that many people had very positive experiences in the disability disclosure experience as well. So Susanne, I'll turn it over to you. 

>>All right, thank you very much Sarah. And we would like to now talk a little bit about the conclusions and implications of this study. We are hoping that both from those items that people said, spoke positively about employer practices and coworker support as well as those things that they found challenging, that we all can learn a lot about how to create a more inclusive workplace which is really what this Webinar is all about. And I also want to mention that because we had such a short timeframe and so many people who had signed up for this seminar, well over 1,100, we didn't feel that we were in a place to take questions this time around but we are very happy to have you send us any questions you might have about the, this report and our presentation. And at the end again, we're going to give you Sarah's email so that you can follow up with us and let us know if you have specific questions about the information that we've shared with you today or the report as a whole. So moving on to some conclusions, summarizing conclusions and implications of the findings from our study. First of all I think this is very obvious but I think we really need to say, it is important for employers to understand more about issues around disability disclosure. With new initiatives in the federal sector and enhanced regulatory requirements for federal contractors, it's important for us to understand what makes people comfortable with sharing that they have a disability, that they need an accommodation and enabling employers to count them among those in their workforce who are people with disabilities particularly when employers are being held accountable for targeted recruitment and retention. And we hope that the findings that we shared with you today, confirms the fact that employers themselves play a very important role in creating an environment where individuals are made comfortable in disclosing. It is not just a function of the individuals level of comfort or the nature of the disability or whether it is obvious or not but the individuals who provided us feedback in this survey confirmed that employers and employees in the work environment contribute significantly to whether or not an individual feels comfortable in disclosing about their disability. And let's talk a little bit, let's probe a little bit more in our conclusions about what that means in terms of how employers can create an environment that encourages the individual to feel comfortable disclosing about their disability and asking for an accommodation when they need to maximize their productivity. An important part of that is demonstrating disability inclusiveness. Our study participants were very good about articulating what were the things in the work environment that made them feel comfortable in disclosing and we're summarizing them here. It was obvious to them that this was a proactive employer who really was desirous of people with disabilities in the workplace and they saw evidence of active recruitment of people with disabilities either obvious in promotional materials or on Websites or in the articulation of top management commitment. These are all ways to assure people in the work environment to assure employees and including employees with disabilities that this is a workplace that really wants, values individuals with disabilities in their workforce. Secondly, is, if people, for people in the workforce is enhancing awareness about disability to minimize anxiety, concerns, suspicions that might lesson the likelihood of a real truly inclusive environment. So conducting disability awareness training whether that be training discreetly targeted to disability or including topics around disability in broader diversity initiatives but increasing awareness about disability for all staff. And in particular it is important for supervisors and managers as well since they set, often set the tone in a work environment. And thirdly, showing a commitment to making a work process, a work environment that enables people to when needed have more flexible work opportunities by enacting flexible workplace policies. And we know from other research we've done that this is important not just for people with disabilities but for the broader workforce as well. It is a facet of workplace policy and practice that many people are finding it necessary with work/life balance today and other needs that they might have at home and this is also true for people with disabilities. So enacting flexible workplace policies. Fourth, having fair systems to address complaints. Systems where there's a designated person, there's a clear process and that people feel not only are the mechanisms in place to make inquiries about issues when they arise when it seems like accommodation requests have not really been duly explored, but also that the process is equitably applied and is a fair process. That's critical to people feeling comfortable to use a complaint process when it is in place. Creating accessible workplaces. Some of our respondents let us know that one of the reasons why they were comfortable in sharing their own disability is that they see that this is a workplace that proactively looks at making its facilities more accessible. And that can be physical access like ramps are obvious and most buildings, all buildings are easily accessible for people who have mobility impairments. But hopefully, more broadly, that there are different ways of accessing information for people with hearing and visual impairments including the e-technology that we all use both for recruitment but also for employee communication, that all of these systems are enabling all workers to access them through a consideration of accessibility. Next fostering supportive supervisor/staff relationships. I mentioned in one of the items above how important disability awareness training is for staff and really the importance of embedding that into overall training, the overall training routine but this is even more important for supervisors. And a part of that should be really encouraging supervisors to establish an inclusive approach to people with disabilities making sure that they're very even handed and showing the value of all their employees including their employees with disabilities. And including disability in the diversity statement, that proactive articulation by the organization of really sincerely wanting people with disabilities in that workforce is very critical, very important and people pay attention to that. Some things that we've also learned from our respondents are things employers should consider to pay attention to not do and that is focusing on disability rather than on the skills and assets that the individual brings to the workplace. And that is true across the employment process. It is true in the recruitment and interviewing experience of the individuals but once a disclosure has been made, it is important that supervisors, coworkers, other administration in a company be very mindful of focusing on the abilities of the individual and not the disability and not letting that supersede the ability to look at that individual for what they can bring to the organization in the particular job function. And related to that is treating employees with disabilities differently in relationship then other employees because we are, become aware of the disability in relation to interpersonal interactions whether that be in meetings, in one on one interactions with supervisors or other coworkers. Also equitable opportunity for advancement. Making sure that because a person has disclosed about a disability that we don't presume that that person is not able to take advantage of training, of mentoring or internship opportunities and for stretch assignments that would enable them to learn the next step of skill sets that they might need for career advancement in the longer term. Similarly, where performance reviews are concerned, it's very important for us to encourage supervisors to hear again be very even handed in their approach. We want to make sure that people with disabilities in their performance review process are dealt with the same as all employees. That there isn't a lens of allowing the person to not perform at the level that is required, there should be an even hand there but also that the opportunity to provide supports or accommodation is needed is offered in that performance review process if needed to maintain the desired required level of performance. And lastly here is hiring and termination. And that is that in the hiring process particularly once a disability has been disclosed, if it's not obvious, that we are very even handed in our assessment of the individual's skills sets, not taking that disability into account but really looking at the skills abilities training that the person has had. And that there is no different treatment of people in the lay-off process, that disability isn't the marker for early termination of someone, that it really depends on performance and the nature of the job that they're doing. So, that's our summary of what we've learned from this study and from the feedback from our study participants. And again, we hope that you will follow up with us and send us any questions that you have. In the interim, we would like to share with you some further resources we have more broadly on the topics of employment for people with disabilities that we hope you will take advantage of. All of these are free online resources or 1-800 numbers that you can access and all of these resources are very knowledgeable in how to maximize recruitment, hiring, inclusion of people with disabilities. The first is a resource funded by the Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy to Cornell University. It's the Employer Resource and Assistance Network, EARN, we have a large online listing of many, many resources across a wide number of products that's available at no cost at the askearn.org Website. There's also free technical assistance available by email or by phone from that site. Our sister organization also funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy, the Job Accommodation Network which I'm sure many of you are aware of, JAN. It can be accessed online at askjan.org. There is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, a National Americans with Disabilities Act network of centers across the United States, ten such centers, each of you has one that is designated just for your particular region. And those list of centers can be found at adapa.org. Cornell University has a series of 35 informational brochures on accommodating people with disabilities and good Human Resource practice both in English and in Spanish. And they can be accessed at hrtips.org. And more broadly we have at the Employment and Disability Institute at Cornell many, many publications and other online informational tools available from our Website, ilr.cornell.edu/edi. And finally, I want to give you information both if you didn't catch it in the first slide and you're just coming on and joining us today about where you can find the full report for the study that we've focused on today, Emerging Employment Issues for People with Disabilities. And we give you in this slide the link, digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu slash edicollect for collections slash 1288. And for further information we are going to send you to our colleague, Sarah von Schrader who was our main presenter today at Cornell. And Sarah's email is sv282@cornell.edu. So please do send us your questions, we are happy to respond and if you have any difficulty in accessing the report please also let you know, we'd be happy to personally send you a copy. We want to thank you for your time and participation in attention today. We hope that you have found this Webinar useful and we look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much for your attention.