Because winning the first Wimbledon quad wheelchair singles AND doubles titles just isn’t legendary enough, certified Aussie icon Dylan Alcott has launched a new campaign to help Australians with disabilities find gainful employment.
Alcott launched the Remove the Barrier campaign today as part of the Dylan Alcott Foundation. It’s designed to help people with disabilities overcome the barriers to getting a job – which usually come in the form of other people’s unconscious bias and discrimination.
Of the one in five Aussies who live with a disability, only 54% are employed – twice the overall unemployment rate.
Alcott told Hack this afternoon:
One of the hardest things to overcome is actually the barriers that you can’t see. Those invisible barriers and things like unconscious bias and discrimination.
You can’t see unconscious bias but I promise you, as someone who’s faced it, you can feel it.
Alcott says that unconscious bias usually comes in the form of assumptions that people with disabilities are less capable than able-bodied people, and therefore less employable.
“It’s not fair, but more importantly, it’s not true,” he said.
The campaign has already been backed by ANZ and Nike, and Alcott says that talking about it is already moving towards fixing the problem.
We want to show organisations all across the country how easy it is to remove those barriers and give people with disabilities the opportunity they deserve.
People think it’s going to be really hard to hire someone with a disability but it’s actually not.
According to the Remove the Barrier website, 66% of organisations who employ people with disabilities say they’ve experienced positive benefits, and that 90% of employed people with disabilities are as productive or more productive than other workers.
Seems like pretty sturdy stuff from a pretty solid guy. Check out more about the campaign at the website here.
