A new study concluded that employers are still discriminating against job applicants who have a disclosed disability.
The Study
For the study, which was conducted by Rutgers and Syracuse, researchers sent cover letters and rsums to various accounting companies for just over 6,000 jobs in the accounting field. The only difference in the applications was that some cover letters disclosed that the applicant had a disability. In the experiment, “one-third of cover letters disclosing that the applicant has a spinal cord injury, one-third disclosing the presence of Asperger’s Syndrome, and one-third not mentioning disability.” Half of the applications described a candidate with several years of experience, and the other half portrayed inexperienced recent graduates.