Job Market – Including Deaf

Current statistics indicate that America’s deaf community is underemployed and too often overlooked in a company’s diversity efforts.

Educating about employing the deaf community

An employer’s hesitation with regard to employing members of the deaf community is likely a result of honest misunderstandings about working with deaf individuals. The two most common misperceptions are:

• That deaf individuals will be unable to effectively communicate with co-workers and/or clients; and,
• That accommodating a deaf employee would be extremely costly.

Employers often develop and maintain these unfounded fears largely because they have not explored the benefits of working with the deaf community and means of accommodating deaf employees at little to no cost.

As a result of employer reluctance to employ members of the deaf community, the Career Center at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C.— the world’s leading university dedicated to teaching and developing students who are either deaf or hard of hearing — invites employers that hire their students as interns to participate in its Deaf Awareness Workshop.

The Workshop focuses on teaching employers, and their employees (both deaf and hearing), about developing communication strategies and the types of accommodations readily available to provide to deaf employees. The Workshop is intended to ease both the employer’s concerns about the deaf workforce and the deaf employee’s apprehension about working in a hearing environment…

Choosen excerpts by JMM from

via Tapping the Untapped: Including Deaf Employees in the Workforce.