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Equality, diversity and your career: disabled students

Find out about disability friendly employers and requesting reasonable adjustments.

Introduction

If you are a disabled student then you can access Careers Plus appointments. You will also have access to specific events throughout the year.

A disability is defined as:

  • Having a substantial and long-term adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
  • Includes a long-term health condition including mental health or long-term chronic illness such as Crohn’s Disease, Asthma and ME.
  • It also includes physical or sensory impairments such as visual/hearing loss or a specific learning disability such as dyslexia/dyspraxia as well as mobility impairments and Asperger's/Autism.

Careers Plus appointments and support

If you have disclosed a disability

If you have disclosed a disability to the University then you will be able to book disability Careers appointments. We call these Plus Appointments.

These can be useful for discussing any careers issue relating to your disability. This could include:

  • disclosing a disability
  • support you might need in a recruitment process
  • support when you start a placement or graduate job

You can book these appointments through MyFuture.

If you are not sure or have not disclosed a disability

If you are not sure or have not disclosed a disability to the University, you can still access this support. Please contact us via careers-plus@bath.ac.uk.

Further information

We have put together a helpsheet that summarises the extra support you can access. Find out more about our additional support for disabled students.

Autism-friendly advice

Careers have produced tips to support consultants/advisers to make sure the advice we provide is autism-friendly. We hope this will be a useful aid to both the student and the consultant/adviser. Go to Careers tips on providing autism-friendly advice.

We are always looking for ways to be more inclusive and make our careers appointments accessible to everyone. If you have any suggestions/comments on other areas that might be helpful to include in this advice, then please do let us know.

Researching disability friendly employers

Organisations offering support into placements and jobs

There are specialist recruiters who specifically help disabled students:

Autistic students

There are also organisations specifically supporting autistic students and graduates:

Students with mental health conditions

There are also businesses/organisations specifically supporting students/graduates with mental health conditions:

Disability Confident employer scheme

Some companies are registered as a Disability Confident employer. The government Disability Confident Scheme:

  • Helps employers to make the most of the opportunities provided by employing disabled people.
  • It is voluntary and has three levels that have been designed to support a disabled person on their Disability Confident journey

View a list of employers that have signed up to the scheme.

Level 2 Disability Confident employers

Level 2 Disability Confident employers commit to offer an interview to disabled people who meet the minimum criteria for the job. If employers do not advertise a formal guaranteed interview, they should make it clear in their recruitment material that a disabled applicant meeting the minimum criteria for the job (that is the description of the job as set by the employer) will be given the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities at an interview.

Disability Forum

Many organisations are also a member of the Business Disability Forum which accredits organisations with a Disability Standard. View a full list of members.

Using MyFuture to search for jobs

We advertise vacancies targeted at Bath students in MyFuture. Many organisations advertise roles or schemes aimed at those with disabilities. To find these select 'Equality and Diversity' in the type of opportunity. You can also use keywords to further narrow down your results. For example, you can search for ‘disab’ and this will retrieve relevant jobs and opportunities that contain 'disabled' or 'disability' in them.

Go to MyFuture

Disclosing a disability and requesting reasonable adjustments

Many students and graduates are understandably apprehensive about revealing a disability during the graduate recruitment process, and again during employment.

However, there are many positive reasons for disclosing your disability:

  • Provides an opportunity to request reasonable adjustments to help manage any concerns you may have on the process
  • Gives you the best chance to perform well on the day
  • Ensures a level playing field for everyone so you can compete with those students/graduates who don’t have a disability

The Equality Act 2010

Under the Equality Act 2010 there is legal protection for job applicants and disabled employees. The following is a summary of key points:

  • It is unlawful to discriminate against workers because of a disability or to fail to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate a worker (job applicant) with a disability.
  • There is no legal obligation on your part to disclose at any time, unless there are safety issues in a job you have applied for.
  • You can disclose at any time of the recruitment process. Some students for example do not disclose until interview stage. Other students may need some reasonable adjustments for psychometric tests and therefore will disclose earlier in the recruitment process.

Find out more

To find out more you can:

Further information

Other pages on equality, diversity and your career

Enquiries

If you have any questions, please contact us.