Students with disabilities feel supported in their postsecondary education environment but fear the transition to employment. They fear workplace discrimination and employer refusal to accommodate their needs. Focus groups composed of prospective, current, and former students with disabilities were conducted at 10 sites nationally. The groups were designed, with participant input, to elicit student-consumer perspectives regarding the issues of supports and barriers in the postsecondary setting and the workplace. The results at each site were then analyzed across the groups to reveal both recurring and site specific issues.
Students fear the transition to employment because they expect workplace discrimination.
They expect to be denied special accommodations, and thus prepare to self-advocate more aggressively. Some students see telecommuting as a viable alternative to regular employment and thus want to become more computer literate. There is a conflict between the expectation that postsecondary education will prepare students for employment and general assumptions that people with disabilities are unemployable. Students who succeed at postsecondary education still expect employers to question their qualifications based on their disabilities. The main barriers in the transition from postsecondary education to employment are discriminatory attitudes and assumptions about abilities and accommodations.