{"id":159,"date":"2021-03-31T14:16:08","date_gmt":"2021-03-31T18:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/?p=159"},"modified":"2021-04-06T10:50:02","modified_gmt":"2021-04-06T14:50:02","slug":"young-mans-social-media-employment-success-story-highlights-hiring-barriers-facing-youth-with-disabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/2021\/03\/31\/young-mans-social-media-employment-success-story-highlights-hiring-barriers-facing-youth-with-disabilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Young man\u2019s social media employment success story highlights hiring barriers facing youth with disabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Ryan
20-year-old Ryan Lowry with his mother, Tracy. (Jay Korff\/ABC7 News)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Article by Bronwyn Oatley<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this month, a young autistic man\u2019s employment letter went viral on LinkedIn, gaining over 180,000 likes and prompting job queries from popular animation studios and a specialized training program for people with disabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while Ryan Lowry, the 20-year-old author of the letter, was overjoyed with the success, some advocates are raising concern that youth with disabilities need to resort to such public and dramatic tactics to get a job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Image
Ryan Lowry’s handwritten cover letter that was posted on LinkedIn. (Ryan Lowry\/LinkedIn)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cIt is incredibly tragic and also a bit unsurprising that this happened,\u201d said Courtney Ayukawa, manager of inclusive employment with the United Way of Greater Toronto, a funder of social enterprises that employ youth with disabilities. \u201cIt shows the state of employment\u2013\u2013or lack of\u2013\u2013for people with disabilities as a whole, but especially during and probably post-COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Canada, just 15 per cent<\/a> of youth with intellectual disabilities, including autism, are employed. And nearly three quarters of adults with intellectual disabilities who live independently or with friends rely on social assistance, according to a report by the Canadian Association for Community Living.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The challenges are similar for American youth, like Lowry, who are looking for work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his open letter, Lowry asked employers to \u201ctake a chance\u201d on him. \u201cI don’t learn like typical people do,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI would need a mentor to teach me, but I learn quickly, once you explain it, I get it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Ayukawa, Lowry\u2019s post highlights one of the main challenges facing youth with disabilities: social stigma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard many stories of an employer saying something like, \u2018Well, one time I tried hiring someone with a disability and it didn\u2019t work out\u2019,\u201d she said, underscoring that employers often take a \u2018one shot\u2019 approach to hiring a vast array of people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This response, she says, is rooted in a lack of knowledge about the varied capacities and required accommodations for people with disabilities\u2013\u2013and based on a misunderstanding of the basic fact a single person with a disability cannot be used as a proxy for all others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(Ambika Sharma\/Ryerson News)
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

This summer, Lowry will attend Exceptional Minds<\/a>, a non-profit training program that prepares youth on the autism spectrum for animation and digital arts careers, according to Variety<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In parallel, tens of thousands of other young Americans and Canadians with intellectual disabilities will remain unemployed, despite their capacity and passion to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Article by Bronwyn Oatley Earlier this month, a young autistic man\u2019s employment letter went viral on LinkedIn, gaining over 180,000 likes and prompting job queries from popular animation studios and a specialized training program for people with disabilities. And while Ryan Lowry, the 20-year-old author of the letter, was overjoyed with the success, some advocates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":418,"featured_media":203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,59,60],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-employment","tag-inclusivity","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/418"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}