I have written a great many cover letters over the past year and a half. There’s one thing, every cover letter, I have to decide. Should I include it? Or do I not?
My visual impairment.
A few months before COVID I spent a week in intensive care. My vision melted. I was on stroke protocol. Thankfully, I did not have a stroke. There were other issues, however, and my vision never recovered. I can read, I can write, I can operate a computer and drive a car (though I try to avoid driving at night when I can). I appear to be fairly normal. But, as I told one of my Diamond colleagues one day when she asked, “My vision is not as good as I let on.” I have a folding sight cane, and I use it. When I don’t, I look a bit hangdoggish, walking around, looking at my feet.
I never know how to approach this in a cover letter. When I apply to a job online and I’m asked in a form whether I have a disability, I always answer yes. In the early days of my job search following Diamond’s declaration of bankruptcy in January 2025, I would take a sentence to explain why I answered yes to the disability question, until I found out that the recruiter/hiring manager doesn’t even see that form.
Until the end of 2025, then, I didn’t reference the impairment at all.
These days, I take it case by case.
When I apply for a corporate job, I almost never mention it unless I feel it’s relevant. I’ve yet to interview for a corporate job, though I apply to several every week, so I have no idea if it makes a difference or not.
When I apply to non-profits, I sometimes do bring it up. The cover letter I wrote this morning talks about my impairment, because it’s with a non-profit that works with disabled people. But the cover letter I wrote over the weekend, I didn’t mention my partial blindness at all. When I sat down to write it, I thought I would. I hadn’t entirely worked out how I would relate it to the mission. I hoped there would be “a happy accident” as I wrote, but no happy accident came, and so it was left unsaid.
It’s situational, I guess.
This morning I received an alert for a job in the Harrisburg area. I think I would like it and enjoy it. I think I could do things to help them grow. But I’m not going to apply because of my visual impairment. I wouldn’t feel comfortable, and I’m not sure it would be safe.
That’s something I have to navigate, too, in this job search. Pre-selecting myself out because I know with my degraded sight it wouldn’t work.