Economic Justice

“You don’t look disabled,” a well-meaning colleague said. How do you respond to that? Say “thank you,” as if somehow you hit the jackpot that your disability was not immediately apparent? I opted not to extend false gratitude. Smiling, I replied: “What does someone with a disability look like?”

My response flipped a small switch. My colleague didn’t want to verbalize her gut reaction because it now seemed offensive. I knew I don’t look like what my colleague thought someone with a disability should look like. She didn’t have to say words like “wheelchair,” “cane,” “oxygen tank,” or “hearing aid” for me to get her point. I’ve heard that labels are for jars, not people. As someone who never adhered to fashion advice, I never could afford the labels anyway.

I wear the disability brand, and I look like me. I embrace it as an opportunity to educate.

The best way I know how to do this is by explaining my job, which is directly responsible for my immersion in disability advocacy. I work for Accessibility Partners, a business that works with client organizations and government agencies to make their technology more accessible to end-users with disabilities. When we test for accessibility, we tell our clients that there is no “typical” user, and that’s a lesson we’ve also taken to heart in our own policy. Our corporate structure is heterogeneous: a collage of people who identify as having all types of disabilities. We know that there is no “one-size-fits-all” accommodation process. Disability is our uniform at Accessibility Partners, but it fits each person uniquely.

Successful support for workplace accessibility is contingent on a top-down business model -- specifically, an Accessibility Maturity Model. Most employers view accessibility and accommodation as something they must address in order to meet obligations. Accessibility done right is a way to cut costs, build capacity, and establish partnerships. Accessibility as a driver for innovation is an opportunity to learn what’s needed to design delightful products and support the needs employees with disabilities. This is a paradigm shift that creates cultural change and, at root, must be C-Level driven. 

More about this can be found at: 

Accessibility for Business & Pleasure:

https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2016/01/accessibility-for-business-and-pleasure/ 

An Accessibility Maturity Continuum

https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2014/06/accessibility-maturity-continuum/

Our celebration of National Disability Employment Awareness Month provides a chance to reflect on the progress achieved and the challenges that remain for people with disabilities around the country who can and want to work in the mainstream American economy.  In 1999, in Olmstead v. L.C., the Supreme Court ruled that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, “unjustified institutional isolation of persons with disabilities” constitutes discrimination, plain and simple.

For the last eight years, the Department of Justice has led vigorous Olmstead enforcement efforts to implement the Supreme Court’s community integration mandate.  Because of our Olmstead efforts over the past few years, today 10,500 people with disabilities will have meaningful access to integrated services and supports to assist them in securing jobs with competitive wages.

Work produces far more than a paycheck.  It affects our livelihood.  It is a springboard for economic self-sufficiency, personal growth and self-esteem.  Work also shapes how we spend our time, relate to our families and contribute to our community. 

During Justice Department investigations in Rhode Island and Oregon, we found people with disabilities stuck in sheltered workshops who were capable of, and wanted to, work in their communities.  As a result of our settlement agreements (Rhode Island and Oregon), with access to integrated employment services and supports, thousands of these people are on track to work in competitive, integrated jobs.

Economists have long struggled to explain why a growing proportion of men in the prime of their lives are not employed or looking for work. A new study has found that nearly half of these men are on painkillers and many are disabled.

The working paper by Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist, casts light on this population, which grew during the recession that started in 2007. As of last month, 11.4 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 — or about seven million people — were not in the labor force, which means that they were not employed and were not seeking a job. This percentage has been rising for decades (it was less than 4 percent in the 1950s), but the trend accelerated in the last 20 years.

Throughout the past year, the Administration for Community Living (ACL) has shared profiles and promising practices from employment service providers working with people with disabilities across the country. Many of the providers described their experiences transitioning from a sheltered workshop to more integrated community-based models.

For National Disability Employment Awareness Month, we’ve compiled the many tips, strategies, and leverage points that providers identified as critical to their success. These include tips for planning, cultivating partners and funding, staffing, and supporting beneficiaries.

Planning and Preparation for a Successful Transition

Develop and implement a strategic plan.

Take small incremental steps to build infrastructure and slowly reallocating resources.

Establish a committee to identify strategies for the workshop transition. Include parents and caregivers of individuals who have transitioned from the workshop to successful integrated employment on the committee and ensure the committee reports to the provider’s Board of Directors regularly.

Utilize technical assistance resources and subject matter experts, including those focusing on individualized supports and person-centered planning.

Stay connected to other providers who have either gone through, or are undergoing, the same transformative change. Learn from each other.

Create a core team that really believes in the integrated model. The team should get together regularly so they can overcome issues and keep things moving to avoid falling back on the old model.

Implement a holistic approach that includes "wrap-around" services to meet the diverse needs of their customers.

Communicate with families about their fears.

Make sure the community hears about the program’s successes during the transition. Utilize newsletters, email blasts, board meetings, parents groups, and other relevant forums to highlight the positive experiences of successfully employed individuals.

And much more....

Example of topic (one of four)

Tools for Recruiters, Hiring Managers, and Supervisors

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I may look absolutely fine.

But inside I have a knot in my stomach. My mind is racing with a million different thoughts. Most of them are about how to get to a safe place. I can’t breathe, and the panic is slowly building. I have to get out. I have to get out now.

Calm down, the voice of reason inside my head tells me. You’re okay, you’re just trying to have a panic attack. Now, breathe.

Now how do I explain that to someone who doesn’t have severe anxiety? How do I explain to my boss that I need to take a sick day because I physically couldn’t come into work today?

I’ve tried. I’ve tried to tell the truth when this happens. Then I get the “talk.” I need to be more reliable, consistent, dependable. They can’t depend on me because I can’t predict that my anxiety won’t show up.

So I lie. I text that I woke up with a cold. A stomach virus. Something physical that they can understand. And when I go into work tomorrow, I’ll explain that it must have been a 24 hour bug.

Two pieces of legislation updating the Achieving a Better Life Experience, or ABLE, Act got a green light from the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance this month.

Under the ABLE Act, which became law in late 2014, people with disabilities can establish special accounts where they can save up to $100,000 without jeopardizing Social Security and other government benefits. Medicaid eligibility is not affected by any level of funds accrued in the accounts.

However, the accounts are currently limited to $14,000 in deposits per year. That would change under legislation known as the ABLE to Work Act that’s now headed before the full Senate.

The bill calls for people with disabilities who are employed to be allowed to save their earnings up to the federal poverty level — currently $11,770 for a single person — in their ABLE accounts above and beyond the existing cap, nearly doubling their annual savings allowance.

A separate measure that also won committee approval — the ABLE Financial Planning Act — would allow families to rollover money saved for an individual with a disability in a 529 college savings plan to an ABLE account.

“I was asked to leave,” she recalled. “The woman who would have been interviewing me put her hand on my shoulder and said, ‘We don’t have a position for someone with your condition.’”

Katulak’s story isn’t unique – individuals with disabilities like visual impairment face barriers at every stage of the job search process. Oftentimes, they encounter hiring managers who are uncomfortable interacting with non-traditional candidates.

A new online course created by Perkins School for the Blind and Harvard Extension School seeks to change that. “Introduction to Inclusive Talent Acquisition” (INC1.1), which launches October 11, teaches hiring professionals how to successfully interview and hire candidates with disabilities.

“Recruiters and hiring managers are the gatekeepers of an organization,” said Perkins Community Resource Manager Rachel Kerrigan, who helped create the course. “This is an opportunity for them to think more broadly about where they’re recruiting from and how they can make the hiring process more inclusive.”

The course will be available for free on edX, the preeminent online educational platform utilized by top colleges and universities. Participants can take the course in one 3-hour sitting or absorb the material week by week. Either way, they’ll emerge with plenty of strategies they can implement immediately.