This section explores the impact of disability on academic work and consistency of policies toward disabled academics at 1UCS. For this purpose, the HR managers’ interview comments are examined below.
Richard: Employee well-being and disability are given importance. Historically, we have done
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Felicity: Understanding the issues of disabled staff, raising awareness and supporting them in
every stage of their employment. We ensure that they are valued and working in an environment that supports their disability.
In summary, the above interview comments give the appearance of 1UCS being disabled-friendly and accessible. Richard spoke about having better financial provision, which meant that significant amounts of money were being invested in making buildings accessible and supporting students and staff with disabilities. However, the disabled academic participants’ OH indicated that their
experience did not in some situations exactly match the hegemony at 1UCS.
Joseph’s disability decreases his confidence as an academic, leaving him always worried and
exhausted. He describes:
Although, academia is competitive, I feel because of my disability I have not achieved enough. It makes me tired very easily. It is difficult and damaging dealing with sudden spontaneous unplanned events. For example, being assigned teaching without any notice beforehand is not suitable for me.
In the beginning of his academic career he was anxious about juggling several academic
responsibilities, like teaching preparations, research presentations, writing and reading. He finds managing his disability on his own very strenuous and time-consuming allocating him little time and energy towards other academic tasks, like publications. As a fresh academic employee, he was hesitant to ask for assistance from the University, but after asking for some basic reasonable adjustments, for example extra time, he feels slightly more positive about his academic development.
Similarly, Catharine was unconfident and insecure in the beginning of her academic teaching career, due to her disability. Such worries would further increase her fatigue and reduce her capacity to work:
When I began to teach I had doubts about confidence, talking in front of 50-60 people. It is not easy to speak if I am tired or have a lot of things to do.
She continued explaining that her disability was constantly limiting her to progress as an academic, but the major encouragement of colleagues and self-managing her disability, she became a
flourishing academic. This suggests that at a workplace it is crucial to have encouraging colleagues (Ely and Thomas, 2001) who are aware about disability. Although Catharine understands that the University policies are obligated to provide support towards disabled academics, at the moment she
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does not feel a crucial need asking for help towards her disability and prefers to self-manage her disability. Although she is content with this situation, she does explain her routine on spending time and effort on the teaching preparation:
My stammering is a problem for me. When I give a talk in front an audience, I have to be explicit in my speech and inform people it may take some time to express myself. The best times when I speak is when I prepare extremely well, I know for 10 or 20 minutes I am the expert. I have to do more preparation than a normal person, but this is part of the deal and I don’t want to change this.
Nisha explained playfully the teaching strategy she adopted in the beginning of her disability:
When I was diagnosed I was anxious to teach students, so I attended the classroom with my sun-glasses and my walking stick to help inform all students about my disability. This helped and now I am not embarrassed, I am a full-time disabled academic.
She continued speaking about the adverse amount of stress she experiences when she repeatedly needs to ask 1UCS for the same adjustments. She also explained that dealing with such situations is also exhausting for other disabled academics. For example, ensuring accessibility during meetings that take place on a regular basis:
For four year I have been going to the same meeting. They know I am visually impaired, but every time when I attend the meeting they always either provide the wrong text or wrong colour font.
This disability mismanagement by the University costs Nisha her valuable time and strength, providing insufficiency in assigning time and energy towards essential academic tasks, like marking, suggesting that, ‘the politics of disability in the workplace are primarily shaped by employer
willingness to accommodate disabled people, rather than by their right to be there’ (Foster, 2007: 82).
In comparison, Joseph did not experience mismanagement in implementing accessibilities. Perhaps, because Joseph, was a junior employee, the University found it convenient to simply provide just basic reasonable adjustments without properly consulting him, hence demonstrating surface level equality practices. As Joseph was a junior academic employee, he preferred to risk his disability than his freshly achieved academic employment. This demonstrates traditional intellectualism in the form of common-sense, comprising of irresponsibility and an unconscious-bias or perhaps simply a lack of interest and having no value towards disability accessibility. This indicates that inequality is practiced
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more where bargaining around equality policies is practised (Foster, 2007), resulting in unequal treatment for the minority workforce (Hoque and Bacon, 2014: 279).