by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
As a general rule, employers today obviously still think of hard of hearing and deaf employees as “deaf and dumb” and thus pass over us when handing out promotions.
Here are the results of a recent Deaf Professionals Network survey. Approximately 141 people took part in this survey. 52% of of those responding knew that they had been passed over for promotions. Of these, 45% knew that they had been passed over for promotion more than once!
A mere 15% said that they were judged solely on their merits, whether they got the promotion or not, while 8% said they actually got the promotion they wanted. (If employers were being fair to us, this combined 23% figure should have been 100%!) Only 11% were not sure, but thought they were passed over, while the final 14% had no idea whether they were unfairly passed over or not.
Thus it appears that if these figures are representative of the hard of hearing and deaf work force, 3 out of every 4 employers are still unfairly discriminating against us based solely on our lack of hearing without considering our many talents, skills and abilities. This needs to change!
The good news is that 1 out of 4 employers are treating us fairly. That is all we ask.
