A Box on a Form Is Not Disability Inclusion

By Simbarashe Namusi

I was going through the government's e-recruitment portal when I reached a section I did not expect. Applicants with disabilities are asked to describe their condition in brief detail.

It is a small field, but it tells me something. Whoever designed that form knew persons with disabilities apply for jobs. Most local portals, public or private, are built for one default applicant, and everyone else is left to fit.

I have been hard on corporates over how they treat persons with disabilities. This does not soften that criticism. It sharpens it. Government carries the constitutional duty. Section 22 of the Constitution commits the State to the dignity and participation of persons with disabilities. The Disabled Persons Act has been on the books for decades. If a public portal can make room for these applicants, a private employer with a different obligation has no excuse for silence.

Credit is due, then. But credit for visibility is not credit for practice.

The portal says nothing about what happens to the answer. It does not say who reads it. It does not say whether the information is used to arrange an accessible venue, a sign language interpreter or a readable format for a blind candidate. It does not say whether disclosure is voluntary, or whether it will be held against the applicant. A field with no stated purpose can be a doorway or a filter. From the outside, the two look identical.

The wording matters too. Asking for a condition is the weaker question. The better one asks what support the person needs to compete fairly. A condition is medical detail. A support need is a practical fact. An employer entitled to the second is not entitled to the first. Where the form asks for the condition, it invites a panel to judge the diagnosis instead of the candidate.

Then there is the portal itself. A screen reader user must be able to complete it. A deaf applicant needs a way to ask questions that does not depend on a phone call. Where they cannot, the field is decoration.

A box on a form costs nothing. A ramp, an interpreter, and a panel trained to ask the right question cost something. That is the difference that counts.

The test is a shortlisted applicant arriving at a venue. The ramp is in place. The interpreter is seated. The panel asks what the candidate needs, not what is wrong with them.

Until that happens, the field is only a field.

Simbarashe Namusi is a media expert writing in his personal capacity

disability inclusion in recruitment