The Top Ethical Issues Relating to Disabilities

An issue of growing concern facing rehabilitation professionals today relates to transition services. Specifically, young adults experience a transition from secondary education into either the workforce or post-secondary education and potentially another transition from post-secondary education into the workforce. For people with disabilities, these transitions may become more arduous and complex depending on the breadth and depth of accommodations a given individual requires to function at a high level in their environment. To make that transition as smooth as possible, any number of services may need to coordinate their efforts including the secondary school system, vocational rehabilitation, college and university services, employers, counselors, psychologists, and medical and rehabilitation professionals. Nevertheless, this collaboration does not always occur in a systematic or effective manner. In fact, ethical guidelines for counselors and psychologists suggest tight collaboration with other professionals to ensure continuity of services during these transitions however in many cases, this does not happen (Corrigan, 1998).
In the transition literature, much effort is made toward understanding the transition from secondary education to work for people with disabilities while empirical investigation of the post-secondary to work transition remains nascent yet underdeveloped (Fichten et al., 2012). In a study examining the experience of post-secondary graduates with disabilities navigating the transition, Fichten and colleagues (2012) found that while there was little difference in the employment rate between graduates with and without disabilities, the graduates with disabilities were employed less often in a job related to ...

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...yment following graduation. At this stage, issues of disability disclosure become paramount. According to Gillies (2012), disability disclosure during job interviews is a case-by-case situation whereby the person with a disability tends to assess how their disability may affect how they are perceived by the employer and their job function. If the applicant determines their disability is not pertinent or necessary to disclose, they do not disclose. For individuals with apparent disabilities or those requiring accommodation to perform their job, there is an issue of when to disclose. In Gillies’ (2012) qualitative study of 10 graduates transitioning into the workforce, participants described their search for meaningful employment, their experience of discrimination, their concerns about disclosure, and how the transition influenced the construction of their identity.