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Comment by cal_dent | Hacker News Reader

Show me the incentives....

Yep.

Obvious counter-move for the elite universities: Detail every student's disabilities & accommodations on their transcripts, to assist potential employers and graduate schools in anticipating their special needs.

Graduate schools and potential employers cannot discriminate based on the basis of a disability.

It's true that the law is clear.

This might be shocking to you, but companies do illegal things all the time.

And this is one of those things that big corps really want to stay away from.

If I had someone spontaneously tell me a potential hire were disabled I would block all communication from that someone. Way too much risk.

If the "disability" means that Chris Smith needs 2X the hours to complete tasks - sane employers might do Whatever It Takes, to keep a "certified 0.5X" worker" off their payrolls. Similar for decent grad schools - which know that completing a (say) Ph.D. is extremely difficult for even a 1X student.

Then why do potential employers now consistently ask ethnicity, gender, age, and disability questions on job applications?

Does anyone legitimately think that those are not used as factors for candidate selection?

Documenting the disabilities seems ethically dubious (and perhaps legally dicey -- not sure if HIPAA applies here); wouldn't it be sufficient to document just the accomodations? Those are what should be relevant to employers and grad schools, after all.

> ...wouldn't it be sufficient to...

Probably yes. The college's motive is to axe the rate of mendacious malingering; pushing beyond that could give them legal costs without commensurate benefits.

...and I'll show you the outcomes. Amusing how many of us were thinking the same thing.

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