Including writers with disabilities in a writing team
Including writers with disabilities means addressing assumptions about their capabilities, providing accessible support and accommodations, and enabling them to contribute and progress. Support needs to reflect the individual rather than an assumed standard experience of disability.
Assumptions and their consequences
Other people's assumptions about a health condition can be as difficult to navigate as the condition itself. A medical writer describing their experience in 2022 had progressed into upper management and been recognised in reviews as a strong scientific contributor, but health problems made a conventional workday incompatible with attending to their needs. On one occasion, taking time-sensitive medication made them five minutes late to a meeting, which a company leader interpreted as disrespect. On another, physical therapy after a back injury during a regulatory submission prevented late-day meetings, and they were told they were failing at their job. Despite declaring their disability and requesting accommodations from the start, they felt excluded from the position they had earned and established their own business.
The ladder of assumptions, or ladder of inference, describes how observations pass through selected data, meaning, assumptions, conclusions and beliefs into action, producing a conclusion that may feel correct while misrepresenting another person's intentions or circumstances. Managing those inferences alongside health needs, deadlines, regulatory pressures and uncertainty about whom to approach for help can create a work environment that worsens health and prevents continued work.
Capability and recruitment
Employers should avoid assuming that a person or disability-owned vendor is unqualified or will need too much help, even when hiring procedures or the etiquette of disability discussions seem daunting. Disability-owned businesses often bring expertise and a commitment to hiring others who have experienced similar assumptions. Disability:IN argues that adapting to an inaccessible world develops problem-solving skills and capacity for innovation. Barriers can include effort others do not notice: one worker with cerebral palsy described the concentration required to move between meeting rooms while fearing a fall.
US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance described in 2022 distinguished three stages of disability-related inquiries.
- Before a job offer: Employers could not ask about a disability or ask questions likely to reveal one, even when it was visible. Voluntary reporting for affirmative-action purposes was permitted.
- After hire but before work began: Disability-related questions and medical examinations were permitted if applied to everyone in the same job category.
- During employment: Such inquiries and examinations were permitted only when job-related and consistent with business necessity.
Employees generally want their role and talents respected even when they achieve goals differently; colleagues should avoid pitying language and terms such as handicapped that diminish the person. Inclusion requires following through from interviewing people with disabilities to contracting and onboarding them, whether candidates self-identify or are found through databases of prescreened people and vendors.
Accessible support and accommodation procedures
Disabilities differ, so support should be informed by the individual's needs. Potential corporate resources include the following.
- Formal training for colleagues without disabilities on available tools and accommodations.
- Tailored onboarding, including reasonable-accommodation procedures and orientation materials in accessible formats.
- Mentoring and career-development programmes.
- Employee resource groups.
Support resources should be created and posted accessibly, even without a formal employee resource group. Once an employee has told Human Resources what accommodations they need, they should not have to keep repeating or defending the request; the company should know what enables them to work successfully. One writer had to justify equipment accommodations on a form requiring three managers' approval, repeatedly disclosing their needs across the company. Suggestions for more inclusive policies or accessible resources should be met without defensiveness or dismissal, because they can reveal a perspective overlooked when the arrangement was designed.
Open support for accommodations
Managers should express their support after listening to employees' needs. In 2022, the US Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibited employment discrimination against qualified people with disabilities and required reasonable accommodation. An accommodation was defined as a change to a job or work environment enabling a qualified person to participate in an application process, perform essential job functions or enjoy equal employment benefits and privileges.
In 2022, most requested accommodations were reported to cost nothing, with the remainder averaging $500 per employee. Medical-writing accommodations can include adjustable-height desks, headsets, speech recognition, closed captions and flexible schedules, as well as service animals, a quiet or appropriately lit workspace, particular temperatures or colour-coded filing.
Flexibility and progression into leadership
Flexibility, protection of time off and attention to work-life balance should continue beyond the pandemic for employees whose disability creates daily barriers to a conventional work pattern. Pandemic experience demonstrated that innovation, including vaccine development, could happen without face-to-face office work and with technology enabling accessible work. The pandemic also showed that budgeting for technology enabling accessible work need not be prohibitive. Maintaining that flexibility can allow colleagues with mobility difficulties to participate.
Experience advocating and negotiating for their needs can be a leadership strength for writers with disabilities. Teams should provide support and resources for their career aspirations, including leadership roles. Sharing experiences of working with a disability can help colleagues understand needs, and managers should ask employees what further support their particular situation requires.