Show HN: Remote jobs for people with disabilities

The only job posted there says they want you to work in their office to start.<p>That is just a content problem, but I have mixed feelings about the site in general. As someone with medical problems that do impact my work, I love the idea of a site that has filtered the postings down to employers who will be supportive. But I don&#x27;t see anything there that actually enforces that filter or proves that the employers understand the related issues. Also, the concept seems to be on shaky ground, legally, at least in the USA where employers are not privy to the medical status of their employees.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.disabilityjobexchange.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.disabilityjobexchange.com&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;disabilityjobs.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;disabilityjobs.net&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.disabledperson.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.disabledperson.com&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;abilityjobs.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;abilityjobs.com&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.disability.jobs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.disability.jobs&#x2F;</a><p>This is from the first two pages of the Google results for &quot;disability jobs&quot;. I&#x27;ve excluded government programs and disability-focused sections of more generalized job boards.

You&#x27;ve got some encoding issues, I think it&#x27;s double UTF-8: (&quot;You’ve&quot;)<p>I appreciate it&#x27;s only a demo but your one job being not actually remote is a bit of a letdown.<p>The big challenge is going to be getting this advertised.

I think the initiative is brilliant, despite the fact that there&#x27;s only one job posting right now (Aug 24th, 8am PT).<p>Let me share my point of view as founder&#x2F;CEO of a small startup in San Francisco, hoping that this helps.<p>What we do: we are building a software platform to digitize real estate properties (titles) using the Blockchain. (I know, Blockchain will solve everything bla-bla-bla... the reality is that we think this is a good use case for Blockchain technology; but I digress...)<p>We are a team of 3 co-founders (2 fairly technical, one business oriented), 1 lawyer (the product requires a lot of legal stuff), and 2.5 software developers.<p>Right now we are looking for at least one more technical person, possibly a front-end.<p>We have raised ~650k in an angel round, after bootstrapping for ~10 months. We launched an alpha version of the product, and we have one paying customer (a company, as we are mostly b2b at the moment).<p>The next few hires will be absolutely crucial for us. We can&#x27;t really afford experiments. What this has to do with disabilities?<p>I am happy to hire anyone with the right skills, no matter his skin, gender, sexual orientation, or disabilities. Heck, we even hired Italians! (I am Italian, I can make that joke :D).<p>We don&#x27;t mind remote people, either. We have a very flexible policy in regards to work. We are not big fans of 9-to-5 and offices.<p>To be able to hire someone with disabilities, we would need a healthy &quot;inventory&quot; of candidates. The site mentioned in this post, jobenabler.org, lists job opportunities, but doesn&#x27;t guarantee a good enough list of candidates.<p>As CEO of a small young cash-poor startup, I have to be brutal and prioritize my time, and therefore I am not sure whether this tool is good enough to find our next hire.<p>Please note: I am trying to share my point of view as a potential employer, hoping that this helps the discussion.<p>Any comment, suggestion, or ways in which we can improve the chances of hiring someone with disabilities, please share here, or email me at simone @ fabrica.city.

I like the idea, but isn&#x27;t the problem the fact that more tech isn&#x27;t &quot;disabled-friendly&quot; anyway? Wouldn&#x27;t it be technically illegal to discriminate against disabled without a bona fide reason?<p>As far as the site itself goes - hey, go for it! But it should have a mission statement, some kind of FAQ or explanation of why that should be used instead of other sites, and more information on the kinds of disabilities being catered to in a posting (or why a job is particularly considerate of disabilities).

How does this cater to the disabled more than any other remote job site? If it does, there should be a little blurb about it

Bit of a mixed bag this one. Love the site itself. It&#x27;s accessible, it&#x27;s fast, it&#x27;s easy to use. But it also only shows two jobs. One of them isn&#x27;t remote, and it pays in euros but the salary section at the top of the page says dollars. I&#x27;ll leave the discussions re: disclosing a disability to employers upfront or being refered to a company by a disability-specific jobsearch site to other people; I&#x27;m disabled myself but still don&#x27;t have answers in those areas.

And... the only job posted there also uses a gendered term (&quot;king&quot;) that suggests it&#x27;s not open to women.

As a more meta point. Maybe we could get a supportive tag on the monthly who&#x27;s hiring post?

Is this some kind of joke? There&#x27;s literally just 1 job listed, and even that looks like a &quot;Lorem ipsum dolor&quot; type placeholder content.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jobenabler.org&#x2F;job?id=2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jobenabler.org&#x2F;job?id=2</a><p>POSITION : Are you our King of Dev?<p>COMPANY : Member Get Member Company.<p>If this is a landing page to gauge interest, it&#x27;s a really poor attempt and definitely doesn&#x27;t belong on Show HN (per guidelines).<p>&gt; If your work isn&#x27;t ready for people to try out yet, please don&#x27;t do a Show HN. Once it&#x27;s ready, come back and do it then.<p>Source: Show HN Guidelines <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;showhn.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;showhn.html</a>

What kind of disabilities are we talking about here ? Physical ? Mental ? Both ? Any way to know ? Does anthropophobia count as a disability for instance ?<p>Searched on the page but I could not find anything relating this.

I have mixed feelings about this. I have a disability. I went through a program to help me get a job. Thankfully, I had a job offer by the time the intake process was completed because their approach was likely to leave me trapped in poverty permanently rather than merely for years while I sorted my personal issues.<p>It seems to be inherently problematic to do this type of focus. Putting your emphasis on the disability first and foremost tends to be counterproductive.<p>It also promotes a mentality that you deserve a job for your son story. This tends to work about as well as nepotism does, and for pretty much the same reason.<p>People may need a job even though they are disabled, but the focus really needs to be on &quot;Well, what <i>can</i> you do?&quot;<p>The very first problem I see with this is that it promises <i>full-time</i> remote jobs. Disabled people often have a lot of trouble working full-time. Many of them want part-time work.<p>My first full-time job was actually only 37.5 hours per week on the evening shift. That 2.5 hours difference was important. I eventually made the switch to 40 hours on the day shift and the transition was really hard. I spent weeks feeling exhausted, and this was after having that job for a while. I probably would have washed out had I started at 40 hours on day shift.<p>I would prefer to see a blog that explored disability issues combined with a remote job board where the listings answered the kind of questions a person with a disability might have. The blog could explore what works and why for different types of disabilities, then highlight a few current job postings.<p>A lot of disabled people were able-bodied until something bad happened to them. They may not know what they need to know to make life work as a disabled person. Most messages aimed at disabled individuals tell them they just can&#x27;t do what others do. Figuring it all out yourself is an extra job on top of trying to make life work with a disability.<p>I would especially like to see part-time remote jobs and things with flexible hours.<p>In practice, I have found that 1099 positions serve my needs better than a &quot;remote job.&quot; I saw how remote jobs were handled by my previous corporate employer. To my mind, it was a worst of both worlds scenario.<p>As a person with a disability, I need more control over my time and life and more opportunity to do things on my terms. I need control over my schedule. Jobs tend to not offer that. Certain contract positions classified as 1099 work tend to be better about that. (Which isn&#x27;t to say this is always true. Not all 1099 positions are like that.)<p>One problem with a job: the work is structured with an expectation that you show up at certain hours and hit a certain productivity level for those hours. I like doing piece work where I know when it needs to be finished, but it is up to me when I do it and how long I spend on it.<p>Different disabilities will have different needs and remedies. What a blind person needs will very much differ from what I need. What a deaf person needs will very much differ from both those scenarios.<p>I hope you are wildly successful. Please take my remarks in the spirit of constructive feedback.<p>Edit: I will note that I like the name and I think the name gives it potential to become something that fits with my above thoughts about how to approach this problem space.

There isn&#x27;t any difference between a job for someone with a disability vs someone without a disability.