Accessible Recruitment for Autistic Applicants

This weekend the world marked Aaron Swartz Day, a celebration of one of this century’s heroes.

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While San Francisco saw a day of talks and hackathons around internet freedom, a group of us here celebrated by putting together a green paper ready for handing over to developers to start working on a tool to make the recruitment process and the workplace more accessible to autistic people so that we can all contribute our skills to facing up to the world’s challenges.

You can download the green paper How You See me, How You Don’t:A specification and workflow for the production of an interface to create a new, low-friction customisable CV to make the workplace more accessible to autistic people here

Abstract

In the UK, only 16% of autistic adults are in employment. This figure is a result of the inaccessibility of workplaces, and the inaccessibility of the recruitment procedures that allow access into those work places.

Yet we live in a time when the challenges facing businesses, organizations, and society are changing at a pace we have never seen before, and with a potential reach of impact we have never seen before. Never has society more needed to use all its available resources, and never has it more needed different, and better ways of thinking. It is accepted again and again that diverse workplaces make better decisions, are more adaptable, and are more likely to meet challenges more effectively, yet barriers to diversity in the workplace remain stubbornly high.

This paper outlines a solution to one of these barriers — the accessibility of recruitment and retention for autistic people.

Call to action

Calls to action usually come at the end, but that is a really bad place for them. We want you to read this document knowing what it is we are asking from you. Which is this.

• Developers — we are looking for anyone who might be interested in taking this forward and who has the skills to do so to work on turning this specification into an app.
• Employers — we would love you to agree to pilot this.
• Members of the autistic community — we would love you to be involved with the pilot also, telling everyone involved in development what works and more important what doesn’t.
• Anyone else — please spread this as far afield as you can so that more people have a chance to be involved.

Please help us with the next stage — tweet with the #howyouseeme hashtag, email rogueinterrobang@gmail.com or comment here