www.Greatwithdisability.com This is supposed to be a new website but seems to have beeen registering members since 2010, and now has 1846 registered members. So is it new as publicised? or reworked from something else?
I cannot find out from the website who runs it - I suspect it comes out of the recent Government initiatives to get people into work, but if so why can't it be transparent about who runs it? It seems to be for graduates but isn't consistent - some clearly non-graduate.
The Home page is full of sponsorship logos and adverts, which is a bit overwhelming. There is a large subsection of refreshed information (refreshed every 5 seconds!!!). Seven pages flash past, 6 with small print and a clickable option that leads to something with a different label. A lot of apparently clickable things don't respond. Pages change just by accidentally coming within an inch of them with the cursor moving about on the page.
You can tell pretty quickly this wasn't set up by a disability-aware website designer! There doesn't seem to be any way to adjust print size or background, or otherwise adjust the page.
There are two things on the site which might be useful (a lot of the rest is crowded tables with tiny print that don't do much).
The first useful bit contains 38 case studies/real life stories - 20 recent graduates, 11 at five years on and 7 at ten years on. Unfortunately it doesn't explain the disability up front, but bits of information are slipped in lower in the text, and more than one THIRD of the case studies there is no disability identified. Surely knowing the disability up front would be helpful to disabled people looking for role models?
Also, while not underestimating the difficulties people can face with these conditions, two have a stammer, five have dyslexia, some have back pain. Two have one arm missing, some are hearing or sight impaired. There are just two fully blind, and a couple fully deaf. Most of the rest are wheelchair users.
True there is someone with aspergers amongst the recent graduates, the first on the list....you have to work out though that he had ten years of part-time jobs before finding a place with Barclays in 2009 where he seems to have been since. But it is a bit vague about the work experience other than that he has an understanding manager. There is also a profile for a trainee teacher with dyspraxia.
Most of the jobs are in banking and insurance, some in engineering, couple in law. Not very diverse.
The other useful content is the toolkit, which I couldn't open from the toolkit icon at the top of the page, but only by looking out for the managing with a disability option on the flash past pages.
This starts by saying you ought to declare your disability . It then points out the only way you can declare your disability, because application forms don't usually ask directly, is in the request for disability information if you are attending for an interview.
It then progresses through various reasons why you ought to declare, but then maybe not, and ends with an apparent strategy for keeping it from the employer even after being recruited ?!?!
Why is this contortionist section useful? well it does air the issues. Pity the person who wrote it started out with good intentions then discovered for his/herself that it is not that easy - hence undermining the whole point of the website!!!
In my personal opinion this wdebsite is badly written, incompetently designed, and a disgrace that only typifies how badly adrift of the needs of the disabled are work and pensions and employment civil servants, not to mention Government.
Perhaps others might be able to post reactions in favour of this website, or evidence that it does what it sets out to do.
Also I think NAS should be commenting on this and raising questions about it.