Navigating an Inaccessible World Takes Skill. Employers Often Overlook It
The Conversation Canada's argument begins with a stereotype: ableist assumptions — including the association of disability with "economic inactivity" — shape how employers read a candidate and their abilities. Against that it sets a claim about labour: how much skill it takes to navigate an inaccessible world, work employers often overlook because it never shows up on a CV.
The sharper move is double-entry bookkeeping. The same effort registers as a cost, part of the hidden costs of living with disabilities, and as a competency, because the abilities it builds can be useful at work. Which ledger you use decides whether that effort looks like a deficit or a skill.
That tension is worth sitting with rather than dissolving. Read as a cost, the burden points back at the employer who should be removing the barrier. Read as a competency, it points at the applicant, expected to sell the workaround. Both readings can be true of the same Tuesday afternoon spent getting a form signed.
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The reframe is tidy, but it can quietly shift the burden onto the applicant: the barrier becomes something you're expected to have monetised into a job skill.
The misreading it answers is the real problem. Employers already weigh that labour — they just file it under inactivity instead of capability.
What makes it interesting is that it is one effort counted twice: a cost on the household ledger, a competency on the hiring ledger, and nobody sends both to the same desk.