What are the advantages and disadvantages of disclosing your disability to a potential employer?

Disclosing a disability results in employers not giving you a chance

Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of disclosing your disability to a potential employer?
Position‹2 of 2: Disadvantages of disclosing your disability
Argument‹2 of 2: Disclosing a disability results in employers not giving you a chance

Employers knowing that you have a disability can result in them not giving you a chance. Your disability might serve as a reason to eliminate you from consideration. It can also cause the interview to be all about your disability instead of your abilities.

The argument

Employers knowing that you have a disability can result in them not giving you a chance, and the law itself is the clearest evidence that this is a real risk rather than a suspicion. Laws such as the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) restrict what employers can ask about your disability before a conditional job offer has been made, because employers frequently used this information to exclude applicants. A protection written specifically to keep the information out of the hiring decision is an acknowledgement that the information changes that decision. Choosing to disclose your disability before you are hired hands the employer what the statute was designed to withhold, and it can mean that you don't get the job. The disadvantage operates at every stage of the process. Disclosing your disability prior to the interview might serve as a reason to eliminate you from consideration and mean that you get fewer interview invitations — a cost that appears as an absence, with no explanation attached to it and no opportunity to show that the concern was misplaced. If you do get an interview, then learning about your disability can serve as a distraction. The interview can end up being all about your disability instead of your ability to perform the job well, which is the ground on which you would otherwise have been judged. Finally, even without overt discrimination or distraction, the effect persists in a quieter form. Knowing you have a disability can impact how the employer perceives you, because employers may have preconceived notions of your disability and read everything else you say through them. Taken together — exclusion, derailment, and altered perception — the possibility of discrimination in the hiring process is a big disadvantage to disclosing a disability.

Premises

[P1]The ADA restricts what employers may ask about a disability precisely because they have used such information to exclude applicants. [P2] Disclosing a disability before being hired can cost you the job, bringing fewer interview invitations or eliminating you from consideration. [P3] Even in an interview, the disability can become a distraction or trigger preconceived notions that color how the employer perceives you. [C] Therefore, because disclosing a disability results in employers not giving you a chance, this is a disadvantage of disclosing.

Counter-arguments

There are laws such as the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) to protect people with disabilities from hiring discrimination. If you are qualified for the position, there is no reason to think that you won’t get hired because of your disability. Employers are human and everyone has different issues, they understand that.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] There are laws to protect people with disabilities from hiring discrimination.