What Would You Do If You Saw Someone Discriminate Against a Deaf Job Applicant?

Feb. 2, 2011 — -- Two young women walk into a coffee shop to apply for a job in the kitchen when something strange happens: the manager seems oddly reluctant to let them fill out an application. Then, in full view of customers, out it comes: the real reason the manager isn't interested in hiring them? They are deaf.

It's a shocking violation of the law, or it would be if this weren't an episode of "What Would You Do?" The manager and the deaf job applicants are actors. Of course the customers don't know that. How will they respond to a display of the kind of discrimination this country outlawed two decades ago?

Click here to watch the full episode.

This special WWYD was developed with the help of students and administrators at the Rochester Institute of Technology's National Technical Institute for the Deaf, in Rochester, N.Y. It is the world's first and largest technical college for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

In an interview at the college, student Brenna DeBartolo said, "I have a lot of respect for people who aren't deaf, for people who are hearing. At the same time, it would be nice for them to think about, 'What is it like to be a deaf person?' I mean, how would they like to go into a place and want to apply for a job and then be discriminated against just because of who you are?"

Although they're still in college, many NTID students already have an idea of the difficulties they may face in the workplace. Maya Ariel told WWYD that when she applied for part-time jobs in the past, "one or two places never called me back."

"From what I found out, they didn't call me back because I was deaf," she said, speaking thorough a sign language interpreter.

Hannah Worek's parents are deaf. "My dad right now, he doesn't have a job," Worek said. "He got laid off. He's been looking for jobs and it's hard because you have to get an interpreter every time you do an interview."

The new president of NTID, Gerry Buckley, explains how employers are supposed to treat a deaf or hard-of-hearing job applicant (or any disabled applicant, for that matter).

"What should happen is that that deaf or hard-of-hearing person has an equal opportunity to apply for the job, just like any person. The supervisor or the employer … interviews them with the same kind of questions and scrutiny that they interview anyone," he said.

The employer should "really look very specifically at their skills, related to being able to perform the work functions," Buckley said. "Questions related to accommodations or costs associated with accommodations should be set aside (to) focus on whether the person has the skills to do the job."