Imagine you’re attending a webinar, but you can’t hear what the speaker is saying. Turning up the volume on your computer still doesn’t allow you to fully participate, and the organizer didn’t offer closed captions. You’re irritated because you can’t access the information you paid the organizer to receive.

Now imagine you’re experiencing a miscommunication with your colleagues. No one’s at fault, but everyone is talking past each other. Your colleagues frequently use language that you have difficulty understanding, but when you ask for clarification, they respond with hostility. You’re anxious that this misunderstanding will hurt your workplace relationships.

You likely don’t have to imagine being a hardworking occupational and environmental health and safety professional who sometimes puts their own health and safety on the line when protecting workers from illnesses and injuries. But this time, imagine you’re the one who becomes ill or injured. Your health condition requires treatment or medication and limits your ability to move, travel, and otherwise be physically present in the work environment. When you realize you must disclose your circumstances to your employer, you wonder if they’ll work with you to develop reasonable policies and practices that will help you remain a productive employee—or if you’ll be let go.

These scenarios are based on experiences related to The Synergist by OEHS professionals living with disabilities. If you’re a disabled OEHS professional, you may have experienced similar situations, when employers, colleagues, or professional organizations didn’t implement policies, practices, or procedures that would have helped you access information and opportunities. At best, these situations may have caused you frustration. At worst, lack of accessibility or reasonable accommodations may have cost you opportunities for jobs and professional development.

For this article, The Synergist spoke with three OEHS professionals who identified themselves as disabled or as living with a disability. Because disability encompasses a vast range of experiences—according to CDC, almost one in four adults in the United States reported having a disability in 2022—it would be impossible for The Synergist to represent all of them within a single feature article. But the insights shared by the Synergist’s interviewees can start a conversation about how the OEHS profession can better serve disabled practitioners and workers.

NAVIGATING DISABILITY The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines a person with a disability as someone who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, has a history or record of such an impairment, or is perceived by others as having such an impairment. “Major life activities” comprise things people do every day as well as sensory processes and the function of the body’s organs. Under this broad definition, conditions including diabetes, AIDS, autism, deafness or hearing loss, blindness or low vision, mobility limitations, intellectual limitations, and major depressive disorder are considered disabilities.

The ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in the workplace and requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” by modifying existing facilities or implementing practices that allow disabled people to use and access the work environment. “Accessibility” is not defined by the ADA, but this article uses the term to refer to approaches that proactively consider individuals’ varying levels of physical and cognitive ability in the design of environments, products, and services.

The individuals and communities under the umbrella of disability express diverse preferences for how they wish others to refer to them. “Disability” and “disabled” are generally considered neutral words. They are widely preferred to terms such as “differently abled” or “special needs,” which “tend to be euphemistic and are not frequently used by the people to whom they refer,” according to Syracuse University’s Disability Cultural Center. Some individuals and communities prefer “person-first” language—constructions like “a person with a disability”—while others prefer “identity-first” language—constructions like “a disabled person.” The Synergist’s practice is to alternate between person-first and identity- first language when referring to disabled people in general. For individuals, this article applies the same terms they use to refer to themselves.

There are multiple models for thinking about disability as experienced by people in the real world. The “social model” of disability sees disability as the result of a mismatch between the person and their physical or social environment. Under this model, a person’s disability is addressed by changing their environment to reduce the mismatch. The OEHS professionals interviewed by The Synergist discussed challenges they encountered due to disconnects between themselves and their professional environments, as well as ways to reduce these disconnects.

THE NEED FOR CLOSED CAPTIONING AND ASSISTIVE LISTENING DEVICES Jill Asch, MPH, CIH, CSP, is a corporate health and safety officer at Hillmann Consulting LLC with more than four decades of experience in industrial hygiene. She is a former president of AIHA’s New Jersey Local Section and received the association’s Outstanding Volunteer Group Member award in 2023.

“By being hearing impaired, I have difficulty understanding others, especially in loud situations, such as networking events,” Asch related in a series of emails with Synergist staff. “It is difficult to discuss industrial hygiene concerns with others, even in quieter locations, if I am not always able to understand what I am being told.”

In face-to-face conversations, it helps Asch when other people look at her while speaking. “By being able to see the lips moving and facial expressions, it is easier to understand what is being said,” she explained. She uses an amplifier that increases the sound on her office phone and adjusts the frequency of the caller’s voice. Her hearing aids connect to her cellphone via Bluetooth, allowing her to hear conversations more clearly. However, meetings held through video conferencing platforms such as Microsoft Teams are more accessible for her. “I prefer Teams meetings [more] than conference calls since I can see the speaker and rely on the captions to fully understand what the other people are saying,” she wrote.

A lack of closed captions is one of the most persistent barriers to accessibility that Asch encounters in professional environments. “I find it difficult to take part in webinars that do not provide closed captioning and will leave the webinar if they are not provided,” she stated. “Closed captioning should be more easily accessible during Zoom and Teams meetings and, more importantly, during all webinars and presentations that are done online.”

She stressed that professional conferences must provide closed captions or assistive listening devices. “I always reach out to AIHA and ASSP before the annual conferences and have been provided with one or both choices,” she wrote. It is also important to clearly inform attendees that these accommodations are available. At AIHA Connect 2024, she was “thrilled” to see that signs providing QR codes to access closed captions were posted outside the auditorium where the opening and closing sessions were held. “I hope AIHA continues to do so.”

“I am autistic. I have been officially diagnosed as autistic,” Klane said. While the ADA considers autism and other neurodivergent conditions to be disabilities, he explained that “a lot of the newer research into autism talks about how it is really not so much a disorder of communication as it is a challenge for people who are autistic versus people who are not—the word is allistic—to communicate with each other.”

Allistic people tend to use idiomatic language, including euphemisms, sarcasm, cliches, and metaphors, while autistic people tend to “speak clearly, distinctly, briefly, to the point,” Klane said. Although members of either group communicate well among themselves, “interacting between them creates what researchers call the double empathy problem,” he said. “That’s where the challenges come in.”

Klane has experienced the effects of the double empathy problem, including reprimands by supervisors, complaints from colleagues, and being forced to leave a job. “There is this stigma to autism,” he said. “Part of it is the style of communication looks so very different to people. It doesn’t seem to align with the style of communication that most people are used to.”

Klane has found that disclosing his autism to colleagues and supervisors can help him form better working relationships, if they respond with empathy and acceptance. Klane added that employers could accommodate him by allowing him to educate his colleagues and others on some of his challenges, as well as ways they can help mitigate those challenges in their communications. For example, he prefers his colleagues to avoid using sarcasm with him, “because I don’t understand sarcasm,” he explained. “Sarcasm can be difficult even for the allistic, let alone the autistic.”

Allistic people can accept behavioral traits common among their autistic colleagues. For example, an autistic person may speak in a monotone voice and have difficulty looking others in the eye. “It’s very fatiguing on my brain,” Klane explained. “The fact that I’m looking down or to the side or wherever has nothing to do with you. It merely has to do with my autistic brain. It’s not even something I think about.”

Two other traits common among autistic people are “masking” and “stimming.” Masking refers to an autistic person’s adoption of behaviors associated with allistic people. Because these behaviors are not intuitive to the autistic person, Klane noted, masking causes extreme fatigue. Stimming refers to repetitive physical movements often performed unconsciously to manage sensory input, which autistic people don’t experience in the same ways as allistic people. In autistic children, stimming may look like flapping the hands, rocking the body, or spinning, but stimming behavior in adults is often more subtle. Allistic people may also engage in stimming, such as by twirling their hair, biting their nails, or humming. “Some people try to reduce stimming activities in autistics,” Klane wrote in a follow-up email to The Synergist. “But why in the world would we want to remove a coping mechanism that works and helps someone deal with sensory overload?”

Awareness, understanding, and empathy are essential to accommodating autistic people in the workplace, Klane stressed. Screening among eight-year-olds indicates that 2.8 percent of the U.S. population is autistic, although as screening improves, this proportion may increase. Klane also would not be surprised if a greater proportion of OEHS professionals are autistic, given that autistic people are often drawn to professions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. “So the more we can do,” he said, “to really encourage, in a very accepting way, these conversations about autism and understanding each other will hopefully help destigmatize it, will hopefully help defeat the double empathy problem.”

THE NEED FOR SUPPORTIVE WORKPLACE PROGRAMS Anthony Appleton, PhD, is the research safety coordinator at Colorado State University. In May 2020, Appleton underwent neck surgery that led to him developing complex regional pain syndrome. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes states that people living with CRPS “have pain that is much greater than normal, even without a visible injury.” They may also experience impaired muscle strength and movement disorders and a range of other symptoms. “Severe or long-lasting cases of CRPS are very disabling and can prevent a person from working or doing their usual activities,” NINDS notes.

2020 was also the year that the COVID-19 pandemic was declared. Because of the transition to remote work, “no one really noticed how disabled I was in the beginning,” Appleton said. “Over time, though, my disability got worse and worse.”

He was able to work at a desk, he related, but his ability to move and travel was more limited. “I wasn’t hoofing it across campus miles a day in boots and full gear,” he said. He also began to have problems with memory, such as losing his train of thought during conversations. Over time, these symptoms became more debilitating and affected Appleton’s ability to support his researchers as the leader of a safety culture program. “I got to the point where I felt like I couldn’t even serve the researchers whose needs I was supposed to meet,” he related.

Appleton was also prescribed medications to control his pain, which he was required to disclose to his supervisor. These conversations with his supervisor led eventually to Appleton stepping back from his work and going on long-term disability leave.

During this difficult time, Appleton was aided by programs CSU already had in place. He learned that CSU’s Office of Equal Opportunity, which provided accommodations for students, was responsible for implementing the ADA and therefore also supported university employees. “Because they are in charge of accommodations,” Appleton explained, “if you have a diagnosis, and this diagnosis shows up on a certain list of theirs, they already have the accommodations in place.” Potential accommodations for CRPS are included in federal guidelines developed by the Office of Disability Employment Policy’s Job Accommodation Network, so employers and workers don’t have to develop accommodations from scratch. “For instance, I could take a 30-minute break lying down,” Appleton said. “I could work from home as much as possible.”

Regarding remote work, “I feel like I’m very lucky to live at the confluence of disability and technology,” Appleton said. “I didn’t necessarily have to go on a lab visit if someone had their cellphone. They could turn it around and show me exactly what they wanted me to take a look at.” Video conferencing programs let him hold meetings in environments where he was comfortable. “I really enjoy Microsoft Teams and things like that, which allow me to do my job without necessarily having to travel,” he said.

Digital participation helped him attend the annual conference hosted by the Campus Safety, Health, and Environmental Management Association. Organizations that offer a virtual component to their events often see an increase in attendance, Appleton noted, and disabled professionals can participate to an unprecedented extent.

Appleton encouraged OEHS professionals who become disabled to meet with their employers’ human resources departments to find out what accommodations for their disability are listed in federal guidelines. He also urged non-disabled OEHS professionals to consider that they too may become ill or injured and find out what programs their employers have in place to support them, such as long-term disability insurance. Before Appleton developed CRPS, he hadn’t considered that he might become disabled, and he wished that someone had given him this advice. Although his own employer was supportive, “I could see someone going through the same process and being let go because they don’t know that they had certain rights or access to certain resources,” he said. “I have seen some real dangerous environments, where it’d be really nice to know that if I get hurt, my company’s going to be able to take care of me rather than pushing me away.”

“Another thing that I wish our professionals would do is to be not as tough,” Appleton added. He noted that OEHS professionals often push themselves to work long hours, put others’ health and safety needs before their own, and forget that their job also involves getting themselves home safely. “I was exactly the same,” he said. “I put my body on the line without really thinking twice. And then something happens, and it changes your perspective.”

TALKING ABOUT ACCOMMODATION Accommodations can be conceptualized as part of the hierarchy of controls. Employers and organizations can support professionals with disabilities by eliminating features that cause difficulties, substituting those features with more accessible alternatives, introducing accessibility features to work environments, implementing organizational policies and procedures, or training workers to change their behaviors. Like controls for occupational hazards, accommodations increase the productivity and well-being of the whole workforce. But for this to happen, accommodation and disability must be more frequently discussed in OEHS circles—a view shared by the professionals interviewed for this article.

Asch has observed other attendees with hearing aids at events, yet she often seemed to be the only one to receive accommodations. Organizations hosting professional events may need to be more proactive at communicating that accommodations are available for participants who are hard of hearing. For example, when opening registration for professional conferences, “it would be good to highlight that if one is hearing impaired, that they can contact the committee to get closed captioning or a listening device,” Asch wrote.

She always notes that she’s hearing impaired on conference registration forms, but others may be unwilling to disclose and therefore don’t receive accommodation. “It should be much easier to get this,” she wrote, “so that those who are embarrassed or shy do not have to miss out.”

Before Klane knew he was autistic, he twice met with supervisors on behalf of autistic colleagues. In both instances, the managers were unwilling to discuss the colleagues’ autism, which Klane found surprising. To him, discussing accommodations for an autistic person is as intuitive as discussing ramps for a wheelchair user. “But because it’s autism, there is this stigma, where people are like, ‘No, no, no, no. You can’t talk about it,’” he said. “Well, why can’t we talk about it, if the goal is to truly help this person in their role, in their life?”

Appleton echoed this viewpoint when he urged people interviewing for jobs to ask potential employers about recent workplace injuries. “We don’t talk about it enough,” he said. “Is it time for us to talk about our disabilities and how we can help each other rather than looking at them as a liability? If my boss knows I have this, or if it gets out, am I not going to be as valued a team member as I once was? And I think we’re past that now.”

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