DESPITE a more digitized workplace during the Covid-19 crisis, persons with disabilities (PWD) still faced considerable challenges when it comes to their employment during pandemic, according to an human resource expert.
Citing the results of a study conducted by JPMorgan Chase & Co. on disability inclusive recovery in the time of the pandemic, Criselda Bisda, a human resource and disability affairs consultant, said many PWDs have had to deal with “communication barriers” during the pandemic.
Such barriers include the lack of sign language interpreters, subtitles, or detailed audio description in the online platforms used during the pandemic.
“For most people, they thought becoming highly digitized in the Covid pandemic is very equalizing,” Bisda said during the virtual first-ever Annual Conference on Disability Inclusion in the Workplace of the Philippine Business and Disability Network (PBDN) on Wednesday.
“I hate to disappoint everyone, but that is not true at all because during the pandemic there was even a wider gap between persons with disabilities and opportunities when it comes to employment, education, even proper health services,” she added.
The crisis also left PWDs contending with a job-skills mismatch since some of them lacked digital and technical know-how.
And then there is the still existing preconceived notion of some companies, Bisda said, that PWDs could only do certain jobs, which greatly limit their employment opportunities.
Such treatment covers even PWDs who were able to obtain higher education; thus, many PWDs end up exploring entrepreneurship, according to the JPMorgan study.
Bisda said such perception is not only detrimental for PWDs, but also for the concerned companies since it prevents them from effectively tapping a considerable portion of the workforce.
12 percent with disability
In the latest National Disability Prevalence Survey of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), 12 percent of the 1,000 respondents said they have experienced severe disability, while 47 percent said they went through moderate disability.
Fortunately, Bisda said more companies are implementing disability inclusion initiatives, such as the conference held by the PBDN, to integrate and mainstream the participation of PWDs in their workforce.
“We need to shift our mind as an organization to move into a social model perspective for disability and rights based perspective. This means we should not only focus on what is acceptable, but also become accepting [of PWDs],” Bisda said.
International Labour Organization (ILO) Disability Inclusion Officer Jurgen Menze also lauded the PBDN initiative, which he said will encourage more companies to employ PWDs and address misconceptions about the said sector.
“More and more business leaders also understand it is not only the financial aspect and the benefit of including persons with disabilities in their companies. It is also the right thing to do. The ethical and the fair thing to do to treat people equally,” Menze said.
“Too often [there are] misconceptions about what persons with disabilities can and cannot do at work . . . so employers, specifically private sector employers, have a key role to play when it comes to changing these perceptions,” he added.
PBDN is a member of the ILO Global Business and Disability Network (ILO-GBDN).
Image credits: Bernard Testa