My career and my disability: 5 key learnings by Abigail Lewis

I am head of content at a company that provides careers advice for students and graduates seeking their first job. I have been continuously employed by the organisation, a private sector small-to-medium-sized enterprise, for almost two decades. I started out as an administrator/PA and have been promoted several times to head a team. I also have cerebral palsy.

Along the way I have explored different ways to handle matters such as disclosing my disability and requesting reasonable adjustments. I’ll outline some of these here, along with some of the insights I’ve gained, based on my own experience, about working life.

My disability

I have a visible physical disability. I am ambulant with an uneven walking gait and now use a walker (but didn’t when I started work).

I walk more slowly than most people and can only climb stairs if there is a rail. I can’t stand for very long, especially without anything to hold on to, and can easily fall over, especially if tired. I suspect I get more physically tired than people who don’t have my condition.

Choosing a career

‘Don’t overthink things or limit yourself’ is the key lesson I have learnt, and the message I’d give to others with a disability exploring careers.

Throughout my English literature studies, I was certain I wanted to be an academic – to get lost in a world of Shakespeare and early modern manuscripts. However, when studying my masters, I realised that an academic life wasn’t for me. I ended up leaving university with no idea of what to do next. Eventually, I thought: ‘I know, I like words… I’ll be an editor’, despite not really knowing what an editor did.

Did my disability affect my career choice? Not directly. I was led by personal preference: I’ve always loved books and words, and I’ve never been one for the outdoors. I was always going to choose a desk job regardless of any physical limitations.

But my disability did lead me to reject professions and employers for reasons that I now know were false assumptions.  For example, looking back I can see I had many of the skills needed in the civil service, however as a new graduate I dismissed the idea as I knew I would find London life difficult; I also feared I would struggle with online assessment tests. I didn’t question my assumption that you couldn’t have a ‘successful’ civil service career if you worked outside of London, nor did I think to investigate whether there was a recruitment process that didn’t include online tests.

Ultimately, I’ve been happy with my career choice and employer – after all, I’ve chosen to stay in both for nearly 20 years. However, my advice is to explore any profession or employer that interests you even slightly. Don’t ‘self-select out’ purely because of your condition, as there could still be ways in. Talk to your careers service, ask employers directly and use resources offered by MyPlus Students’ Club and other careers advice sites, such as the one I work for: targetjobs.co.uk.

Disclosing my disability

The question of whether I needed to disclose my disability on my CV was one I definitely overthought. My physical disability was going to be pretty obvious at an interview, but I didn’t want anyone to judge me based on popular conceptions about it. I also felt a sense that I somehow owed it to a recruiter to tell them, although I couldn’t say why.

I asked a friend’s mother – whom I vaguely knew was high up in business – what she thought. She said she would find it odd if I didn’t mention my disability, which I took to mean ‘put it on my CV’. So, I added a single line: ‘I am independently mobile but have an uneven walking gait.’

After hiring me, my manager told me he thought it was odd that I had included that.

And no wonder. Disclosing a disability isn’t about telling an employer for the sake of it. You don’t ‘owe’ them your life or medical history. Disclosure should always be about asking for any reasonable adjustments to usual processes that mean that you can be assessed fairly and work to your full potential.

So now I don’t put it on my CV because there is no need for me to do so. If I am invited to an in-person interview, I ask whether they have lift access to the interview room. If they don’t, I explain that I walk with a rollator and ask whether they could accommodate me with an interview on a ground floor.

Have I ever been discriminated against? Obviously, I cannot be sure, and it is something that I always worry about. But I have not felt discriminated against in any interviews so far. Whenever I haven’t got a job I’ve applied for, I can usually point to something I said in the interview, totally unrelated to any disability!

Working life so far

Right from starting at my company, I have always felt supported in terms of my disability. I have never felt that anyone cared that I had a disability – they cared that I was able to do my job well and to be a good colleague, just the same as everyone who works there.

At some large companies, you may have an occupational health assessment or some form of welfare interview. I never have (and would have felt a little freaked out if I had – I’ve never wanted my disability to be a ‘big thing’; it is just a small part of me). In my company, I just have an informal chat with my manager on an as-needed basis. It has never been a big deal.

These are some of the adjustments I have had:

• Taxis or chauffeurs when travelling to London: At times, I have needed to attend client meetings in the capital. Ever since one bad occasion when I got into difficulty travelling via the Tube, my employer has paid for taxis in London. On a few occasions, colleagues have chauffeured me. Similarly, if I have needed a hotel room, they make sure it is one that is properly accessible for me, even if it costs a little extra.
• Flexitime for physio and other exercise sessions: Over the years, I have needed regular physio sessions (either with a physio or a personal trainer) to remain mobile. To get the best from them, I need to do them during the day instead of the evening when I am more tired. So, I have been able to take the time and then make it up over the working week, as long as I still make work deadlines and meetings.
• Different working hours: Pre-pandemic, when I was working full time from the office, we shifted my working hours later by half an hour. Doing so halved my commute, avoiding rush hour, which made me less tired. It also meant that I could answer the office phone calls after people left at around 5.30 – always appreciated by colleagues.
• A personal fire evacuation plan and other health and safety risk assessments: These are actually legal requirements. However, I have a personal evacuation plan regularly reviewed. This includes designated people to help me from the building (HR asked them at my request – I felt awkward, even though I know they wouldn’t mind).

However, the biggest adjustment came relatively recently. I’d moved two hours away from my hometown to work at my company. Following a couple of bad falls and finding things a bit harder in recent years, I wanted to live nearer to family. I put in a flexible working request to work two days a week from home and three in the office (paying for a hotel room). Since the pandemic, my team all work from home more.

Personal lessons

One thing I’ve learned about myself is the importance of managing my energy. I’ve consistently performed well in my role, and I don’t have abnormal sickness levels. However, I did go through a phase of being late to work because I was too tired to get out of bed easily. This became a cycle as I would work later to make up the time. My manager stepped in, advising me to stop, take a break and change my working hours so I was less tired. Now I try to pace myself outside of work, focusing on activities I know will help me be my best inside work.