Taken for Granted: Ableist Norms Embedded in the Design of Online Recruitment Practices
This chapter shows that the move towards the use of online recruitment by employers can lead to further social exclusion of people with disabilities from the labour market. Grounded on a qualitative UK-based study, semi-structured interviews were undertak
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ormation and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as the Internet, are nowadays a medium that we engage with on a daily basis, at home or at the workplace, and over the years it has also become the preferred recruitment tool that employers use to find their ‘ideal employees’. Even though the Internet can provide an opportunity for self-advocacy, employment and social networking, for many people, including disabled people, this virtual world has evolved as a ‘disabling environment’ (Easton 2013; Seymour and Lupton 2004; Trevisan 2017). It is argued that the Internet is built based on ableist norms of the ‘ideal end user’, thus it inevitably ignores individual differences and requirements (Easton 2013). Research shows that the Internet has created a digital divide in society, between groups who have access to it and can use it, and others who do not have that access or the information technology (IT) skills required for it (Eurostat 2016; Scholz et al. 2017; Vincente and Lopez 2010; Office for National Statistics 2015). Despite the push of governments to adopt accessibility standards to make this virtual world more inclusive, the concept of accessibility itself takes for granted the availability of socio- economic contexts (Abscal et al. 2016), such as accessible infrastructure or public computer courses, but also socio-relational factors, such as age, educational attainment or financing that can have an impact on whether disabled
F. Scholz (*) SEIN – Identity, Diversity & Inequality Research, Faculty of Business Economics, Hasselt University, Campus Diepenbeek, Diepenbeek, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. L. Fielden et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Disability at Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42966-9_26
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people have access to the Internet (Scholz et al. 2017). The use of web-based recruitment practices can therefore result in an adverse impact on disabled people and their access to paid employment, because technology, for example the use of algorithms, can select against certain groups of workers (Mann and O’Neil 2016). This chapter will argue that these recruitment practices are built on the basis of ableness, which may discount individuals who are not thought of as ‘ideal’ because of their impairment, and who are perhaps considered to be less competent than able-bodied workers. Thus, the findings of the data help to identify ableist norms that are deeply embedded within the design of online recruitment practices and can without doubt impose social barriers onto disabled jobseekers during their job searches and applications. This study is informed by the ‘extended social model of disability’ which understands the social oppression associated with relationships, at both the macro and micro social scales, between impaired and non-impaired people (Reeve 2004; Thomas 2004). This view acknowledges that not only socio- structural barriers and constraints discriminate and exclude disabled people from paid employment, but also social practices
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