30 percent of peopleunder the age of 65 have a chronic health condition.
Will my manager be less likely to give me important and high impact assignments?
Employers need to break down disability barriers.
People with disabilities succeed when communities choose to be inclusive.
The biggest barriers exist not in the person, but in the social, physical, and digital environments.
(emphasis mine)
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Many tech companies have explicit reputations as being unwelcoming to those with health issues.
Health is not binary
Illness & disability can fluctuate.
Perhaps some days a person needs a wheelchair or cane and other days they dont.
Some days they are capable of tasks that other days they cant do.
Anyone else who dares to use one is either lazy or faking.
The truth is, wheelchair users are a highly varied group of people.
Some people do need their wheelchairs because of paralysis or other conditions that make walking impossible.
Illness & disability can be invisible
You seem like you are doing great!
people tell me when I bring up my health challenges.
People are complex and multi-faceted, and you cant assess their health based on appearance or mood.
At one point, I was one of the two top people recommended to follow for the#NIPS2017hashtag.
This paints two different pictures of my time at the same event.
I had to request a referral to neurology.
I went back repeated times to be given antidepressants, sleep charts, analgesia, etc.
No one took me seriously.
Avoid giving unsolicited health advice.
Even when its well-intentioned, offering unsolicited health advice can come across as patronizing or dismissive.
Know that if a simple solution existed, the person would have already figured it out.
Trust people to know their own bodies and to be experts on their own lives.
The limits of language
Dont compare everyday experiences to someone elses chronic condition.
Feeling tired is not the same as chronic fatigue.
Being sad is not the same as clinical depression.
DoingVipassana meditation for an houris not the same as living with chronic pain for years.
