Employees with disability should be given the same opportunities for training and development as other employees.
Regularly discussing learning and development opportunities during the performance review process provides you and your employees with an ideal opportunity to discuss how your employee can gain new skills and experience (learning and development) that will enhance their career development in the short, medium and long term.
Learning and development programs should be designed with your employees to enhance or address any gaps in skills, knowledge, behaviours, abilities and qualifications identified in the performance review process.
The following information may also be useful when considering learning and development opportunities for people with disability:
Providing appropriate adjustments
When deciding on a learning or development program, whether provided internally or externally, it is important to ensure that appropriate adjustments can be made to ensure full access to the course. For example:
- provision of course material in alternative formats such large print, audio tape, Braille or Easy English
- provision of additional breaks
- provision of course material beforehand to allow your employee more time
- making sure that any computer-based learning programs will be accessible to your employee.
Providing an electronic version of all training material with minimal formatting and no graphics, ahead of time is good practice. This not only allows employees to read and digest the material ahead of time, it also allows people who own or have access to assistive technologies to convert the material into the format that best meets their needs. For example, a Word document (text only) can be printed to a Braille embosser.
Other examples of things to consider for the learning environment include:
- a person who is deaf or hard of hearing who lip reads will need to sit in full view of the presenter in a room that has no excessive background noise
- a person who uses screen reading software will need to have the software installed on the computer being used for training
- a person who is Deaf may require Auslan interpreters or access to a web-based Auslan interpreting service.