5
Approach People Management from a Disability Perspective

ONCE YOU HAVE HIRED ONE OR MORE people with disabilities to work for your company, you must work to incorporate your new employees into the workforce. What can you do to help the worker with a disability grow in his job and become a productive member of your work team? How can you work to remove barriers (both intentional and unintentional) to achievement that can hold back the employee with a disability? What are reasonable accommodations? Do you have to pay for adaptive technology? How can you prevent a disability discrimination lawsuit?

This chapter answers all these questions and many more. It ends with the example of how manager Curtis Bryan and employee Randy Hammer made blindness irrelevant in serving customers. Their story sums up what this chapter—and this book—are all about.

How Self-Esteem Affects Workplace Performance and Behavior

Nathaniel Branden, in his book The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (Bantam, 1995), says, “Self-esteem is like calcium in our diet—lacking it we do not die (like when we don’t have food or shelter), but it impairs our ability to function well.”

Self-esteem is life supporting and life enhancing. It builds us up so we can function in a healthy manner toward ourselves, our loved ones, our coworkers, our supervisors, and our society at large.

“To trust one’s mind and to know one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self-esteem,” writes Branden. “It is a motivator, more so than a feeling or a judgment; it inspires behavior.” In other words, how we act in the world and our level of self-esteem influence each other profoundly.

So what are the traits of high self-esteem and low self-esteem?

A General Profile of Self-Esteem

Our levels of self-esteem fluctuate every day, based on our individual actions, emotions, and experiences. But generally we all have a baseline of self-esteem in terms of how we feel about ourselves and our actions and our behavior in the world.

Put very simply, we could say that those with high self-esteem love themselves, their families, their friends, their work, their coworkers, their bosses—and society at large. They think that they are doing well at whatever they choose to do or say or think.

Those with lower self-esteem generally live in fear. They fear they don’t measure up to other people. They fear that they are incapable in the eyes of others (and in their own). They don’t trust themselves to make effective decisions. No one has ever given a whit about them, and no one ever will, they believe. They are alone and lonely in the universe, and they know why—because they don’t deserve any better.

However, that’s too generalized and too simplistic, according to Branden. So, think of the previous two paragraphs as a self-esteem profile. Not everyone’s self-esteem is so black and white; most of us have a little of each kind of self-esteem in our actions, thoughts, and beliefs.

Liz Seger, an educator and a journalist who has written extensively about self-esteem, points out that people with higher or more positive self-esteem seem to demonstrate a majority of similar positive traits compared to persons with lower or negative self-esteem.

Self-Esteem in the Workplace

Let’s examine higher and lower self-esteem in the workplace.

Have you ever heard of someone who appears to the world as having it all (a good job, lots of money, power, and influence)? The person has all the outward trappings of what we call “success.” Yet, the person does something stupid and totally self-sabotages a career or a legacy.

This is typical of people with low self-esteem. They fear they are imposters. They fear that eventually someone will find out that they are not as good at their jobs or as smart as they’ve been told they are. So they do something to show the world that its judgment of them is absolutely right. They self-sabotage. They fear their own success, so they do something to prove to themselves that they are not capable or talented or deserving. It’s kind of like the old Groucho Marx line: “I wouldn’t join any club that had me as a member.”

On the other hand, people with high self-esteem recognize their achievements and know that they have worked hard to produce them and, as a result, deserve whatever prestige or accolades come their way. They’ve done the work, either as individuals or within a team, and they’ve achieved what they expected to achieve.

People with lower self-esteem, however, fear being different, so they scapegoat or pick on someone whom they perceive as having lesser status. That’s how bullying starts. It’s in the workplace as well as in the schoolyard.

Name-calling, nit-picking, making inappropriate remarks, using intimidation, and having a gang to surround the person they are targeting are all tactics bullies use. And generally they do it because they fear anyone else getting ahead or finding out they’re not as good at their jobs. They will do, think, and say anything to preserve their status and to prove that they are valued and valuable on their jobs.

People with higher self-esteem, however, aren’t intimidated by others and their achievements, Branden explains. If anything, they are supportive. They have no need to feel superior to anyone else because they are confident in their abilities to do their jobs, take criticism, and not necessarily have to be one of the members of the “in group” to be effective.

They can assert themselves appropriately without throwing a “hissy fit” and calling attention to their abilities. People with high self-esteem stand up for themselves and their achievements as well as take criticism gracefully. They don’t need to prove their worth or value to themselves or to their employer. They know they do well in their jobs because their work gives them happiness. They enjoy doing well. They accept the accolades and the promotions, but their feeling of confidence is not dependent upon them.

People with lower self-esteem often fail to make good choices. They fear anything new or different in their personal and working lives because it is different and might upset their beliefs about who they are and why they are there.

They often fear innovation and creativity because it may shine the light on them, and they prefer to be invisible. But they try to get all the “goods” on others to reinforce their viability and value within the company.

By contrast, people with higher self-esteem do not fear others, are not judgmental, and think that what they have or do or are is enough to be happy in the world. Joy is their motivator—not fear. They wish to experience happiness and believe they are worthy of it. They do not wish to always be suffering. They are not continually judging themselves or avoiding themselves. They tend to attract people into their lives who have similar levels of self-esteem.

Bragging about what one has or does is not high self-esteem. Being arrogant and making others feel inferior has nothing to do with high self-esteem. Rather, it is the mark of low self-esteem. It’s an effort by a person to prove to himself that he is worthy and valuable.

Branden writes:

A well developed sense of self-esteem is a necessary condition to our well being. Its presence doesn’t guarantee fulfillment, but its lack guarantees some measure of anxiety, frustration and despair. Positive self-esteem is the immune system of consciousness, providing resilience, strength and a capacity to regenerate. That is not to say positive self-esteem doesn’t fluctuate, but it helps one be more resilient and overcome life’s difficulties.

A Story About Resiliency

Resiliency, based on a healthy sense of self-esteem, can turn a bad situation into a good one. Liz Seger writes that she has had to be resilient in her life, and many times, was positive she was “down for the count.”

Here’s her story:

“The first really horrible event was when, at two weeks before graduation, the Dean of the Faculty of Education called me in and said, ‘We’re not granting you a degree, despite the fact that you passed all your courses; no school board will hire a blind person.’

“I came out of his office in shock and angry. I mean, sure, take my money, educate me, and then yank it all away! Why? You know, I was disabled when I came in. It’s like teasing a dog or cat with a treat, and, as soon as they are about to take it, you yank it away. Well, you know what happens in the animal world—someone gets bitten or scratched.

“In the human world, you can either fight back (high, positive self-esteem) or slink away and beat yourself up (low, negative self-esteem). For a time, because I was young, I did just that—I stood back and beat myself up. I must be stupid or something. Who takes a degree away just before graduation?

“My mother let me grieve for about two months. Then, she said to me, ‘You’re not sitting home doing nothing. What are you going to do about this?’ My parents had gone up to the university to investigate this and came home saying our poodle had more intelligence and empathy than the dean—and Natasha was not the brightest poodle on the planet.

“My dad just kind of wanted me to go do something else—go back to school and take secretarial stuff. We both looked at him and said, ‘Oh, yeah, that’ll work.’

“However, my mom got her cronies involved. A friend who was a teacher said to me, ‘Come and work in my classroom. I can use the help and it will keep your teaching skills sharp. I can’t pay you, but the experience will look good on your resume.’

“Another principal heard about it and called me and asked, ‘On the days you’re not at St. John Bosco, can you come volunteer in our itinerant special education classes? I can’t pay you; you’re not certified. But the experience could be valuable for you.’

“I also acquired a lot of personal references for when I did pick up the fight, and it wasn’t long before I got feisty.

“Being with those kids those years convinced me I was indeed a good teacher. I filled in at story time when the librarians were busy. I went far further than an educational aide could in a class. I taught special education kids, and the kids were ‘inventing behaviors’ to get into my classes.

“All the while my mom was writing letters to the ministry and getting her friends to write letters to the ministry in my support. But, the best of all, my mom found an old friend who was the local radio talk-show lady.

“Joan had a fairly controversial talk show for two hours each day, and she tackled some very difficult subjects. I had a mad crush on her nephew all through high school, and so he and I were friends as well. I think the word made it to Tommy that Lizzy-tish was having some problems, and he talked to his aunt Joan who, in turn, had been talking to my mom.

“Joan interviewed me on the radio with a woman from the Handicapped Employment Program, now known as the Council on Disability and Work, part of the Ministry of Labor. The case worker, Dorothy Dacy, and I hit it off like popcorn and butter and her executive director, Barb Earle, formed the final part of the triumvirate. Together we were going to take this very prestigious Canadian university down.

“Using the emerging disability rights movement and Independent Living movement in Canada, we found out that this university had been given government grants specifically to train teachers with physical disabilities but, in the five years of grants, had never graduated a teacher with a physical disability. We found the mother-lode when we came upon that piece of information.

“I don’t know what happened, but I heard via the grapevine from a few of the profs I had that the you-know-what hit the fan when Mrs. Earle marched into the Dean’s office with that piece of information and an implicit threat that, if my degree wasn’t granted and my Ontario teacher’s certificate wasn’t decreed, all hell was going to break loose. The anchorman from our national broadcasting agency had been chasing me for six months, wanting to do a story on this. The great-granddaughter of one of our chief justices of the Supreme Court was after me to sue and make sure the case got up to the Supreme Court.

“The university caved in. Since two-and-a-half years had gone by at this point, I had to do my practice teaching over. I went, and I got ‘A’s from my profs at my undergraduate school.

“The principals and most of the teachers at both of the schools where I was volunteering signed petitions to get my degree and certification reinstated.

“In 1980, my B.Ed. degree and Ontario Teacher Certificate were granted—two years late (but at least they got granted).

“I went from being in the depths of despair almost three years earlier to thanking God for giving me this experience so I could go out into teaching and give that faculty of education the middle-finger salute. And the best part: I got a teaching job with a board of education that next year.

“I subbed on and off with that board for 10 more years. I taught in a school in Alberta for a year, ran my own tutoring service, and wrote for a newspaper, covering education and disabilities.

“So, from a totally negative experience that could have left me crying into my pillow, I not only made some incredible friends and colleagues along the way but also taught kids who I loved and came to inspire (so I’m told).”

And that is Seger’s story of strength, resiliency, and regeneration—sparked by a healthy dose of self-esteem. That self-esteem helped her to surround herself with supportive friends and acquaintances; to happily volunteer in order to gain experience; and to build an independent, vibrant life for herself despite her visual and other physical disabilities.

Accomplishment outside of work can foreshadow what to expect from a high-functioning job candidate with a disability who joins your team—someone who has experienced:

A taste of success

A proof of his or her abilities

A thirst for independence

A hesitancy to be judgmental of others

Being a people manager comes a little bit easier for you when you have more people (disabled or not) within your work group with that kind of experience. And recognizing that each of those experiences has extended meaning for those you manage who do have disabilities adds a new dimension to your management style.

Avoiding Paternalism in the Workplace

Paternalism can sap your company’s productivity and competitiveness because it chokes off the potential that employees with disabilities have for helping you effectively and efficiently serve customers. It’s a damper to self-esteem.

Participants on eSight Career Network’s “Swimming in the Mainstream” (SiM) blog talked about how individuals with a disability can best deal with paternalism on the job. In the process, they came up with some insight about what employees as well as employers can do to both prevent and combat it.

Through this blog’s dialogue, we discover that paternalism typically flourishes under these two conditions: a new employee’s lack of work experience and society’s misguided approach to disability.

A New Employee’s Lack of Work Experience

It may be tempting to see yourself as a father or mother figure toward someone who joins your company and has no corporate or teamwork experience (a situation that can be fairly common with individuals who have a disability).

Take a look at what Mike writes:

“I hold a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. The topic for my thesis, required for completing my master’s, was about ‘Employing People with Disabilities, with Emphasis on the Blind.’ In my thesis (see http://employtheblind.blogspot.com), I discuss relevant issues and statistics that contribute to the 70 percent unemployment rate of legally blind and visually impaired people in the United States of working ages between 18 and 65.

“Let me add further that I have had trouble not becoming yet another statistic. Trying to acquire a decent job when you are visually impaired is extremely difficult if not almost impossible. Though I possess the formal education, I still lack much-needed experience in my field of study and expertise where I can get my foot in the door.

“However, I will not give up, but I am afraid I may not be headed in the right direction in order for me to get where I believe I need to be at this point in my life.”

Mike is maybe someone who could flourish “under the wing” of a supervisor who is willing to “give him a chance” despite his lack of work experience. The common inclination is to help him adjust to work life.

But, as a leader, you might be more effective in pairing an individual such as Mike with a mentor assuming the role you normally take as a manager or supervisor and letting that mentor/mentee pairing work out any lack of experience he may have.

Society’s Misguided Approach to Disability

In job candidates or individuals newly hired with a disability, look for the ability to project themselves as adults, despite society’s tendency to treat them as children.

For example, as a radio personality in Canada who is blind, Alyzza finds condescending pats on the back for doing what everyone else does particularly aggravating. “It’s almost like social expectations [for people with disabilities] are so low that even the most mediocre activity warrants praise with abandon,” she writes.

Liz Seger, a teacher and writer, puts such paternalism into perspective:

“I think most of the time the people who treat those of us with disabilities as children or marginalize us do it out of ignorance. They’ve not been exposed to disability, they’ve believed all the myths or they’re just plain frightened and may suffer from their own handicap of foot-in-mouth disease. …

“You want to be treated like an adult? Do the best job you know how to, act professionally but with humor and empathy, and then show how it’s done.”

Barney concurs with Liz. He actually sees the tendency to treat adults with disabilities in a childlike manner as an opportunity: “Acting like an adult should bring adult responses. … We have the opportunity to teach them who we are and what we are capable of. We are looking for allies and supporters. Everyone will not fit this bill but do not dally. Try to convert people. Know who you are and act accordingly.”

But, consider the following two before-and-after examples of how pervasive paternalism can be in a variety of circumstances.

“I have been a PWD [person with a disability] since I was almost 40,” blogger Art says. “Among my greatest surprises was that … most [people] will underestimate my age by at least five years.”

He adds: “Most suggestions that a PWD’s age is lower reflect a failure to see the PWD as an equal. Unless the deed as well as the intent are eventually recognized, there is an open invitation to further demeaning treatment.”

Jeremy also notices a gap in credibility:

“For many years, I did my best to hide my disability (very poor sight). But, with a little sight I had and a lot more confidence than I felt inside (and no small amount of smoke and mirrors), I could fool the casual observer into not knowing I had a disability—this way enjoying equal respect.

“Obviously closer observers were aware, and, now that I think about it, I had to spend more time than necessary convincing those people that my ideas or opinions were valid and relevant.

“But I must admit that after ‘coming out’ and using a cane (which incidentally changed my life), I have also noticed a tendency of people to doubt my maturity. …

“I co-run Disability Solutions, a consultancy focused on disability integration issues, and I have definitely noticed this tendency to regard [me] as not quite an adult. I know my business partner, Guy, who is a paraplegic, can relate to this, too. …

“I have noticed a tendency in clients to be more cautious when making a decision about using our services. They are simply awed at having to deal with PWDs on the same level as they, particularly since they have little or no experience with PWDs at their level in the organization. …

“I was most annoyed recently when I was told that my training on disability awareness was too expensive. This was from a client who had spent more on a diversity program that had left disability out. As far as I can ascertain, most diversity programs over here (New Zealand) leave disability out or deal with it very sketchily. Yet, diversity sells well.”

Maturity, respect, credibility—all three are in jeopardy for both the individual with a disability and your corporate culture when paternalism is allowed to grow, largely due to lack of awareness and misinformation.

Here are four benchmarks of productive organizational behavior—behavior that can prevent paternalism from sprouting and spreading in your workplace.

1. Recognize true commitment. George combated being late to work (due to paratransit) by buffering his start time by an hour and telling the transit personnel that he had to be to work at 7:00 A.M. instead of 8:00 A.M. So, he often shows up too early. Other employees and bosses see this as an extra commitment on his part.

2. Acknowledge the person’s experience in the right way. Says Liz, “I do think, though, when someone calls us ‘inspiring’ or ‘special,’ it sometimes comes out of a place where they want to acknowledge our experience but can’t find the right words so, because our culture is so ‘hero’-oriented anyway, they call us ‘heroes’ or ‘heroines’ or ‘inspirational.’ Maybe one day none of us will have to endure being ‘special,’ as Dana Carvey’s ‘Church Lady’ would say.”

3. Treat employees as individuals. Recognize both strengths and weaknesses in an employee with a disability. Sara may be able to pay attention to detail and have the ability to accurately and precisely communicate and process information far better than her coworkers, but, at the same time, she may not be able to see the big picture and plan for the future like George, her coworker, can.

4. Recruit people with disabilities who have interpersonal skills. As one eSight member, let’s call her Barb, tells her fellow bloggers: “You need to be an adaptable, social, and likeable individual before you can ever expect to become an employable professional at any level. Learn to golf, laugh, and make friends.”

Remember, from a corporate as well as an individual vantage point, the opposite of paternalism is validation.

Here are Hasse’s seven recommendations for effectively supervising an employee with a disability.

1. Avoid Parent-Like Behavior

Resist the temptation to run interference for an employee who has a disability. That’s not your job and it wastes time.

“I once took a one-day business trip to interview a new manager for an employee publication,” says Hasse. “When I arrived for the interview, I discovered that one of my colleagues had called ahead to point out to my interviewee that I had a disability. I felt about three feet tall because someone else was shadowing me. I had a father figure back in the home office.”

Paternalism has no place in a corporate setting, but we tend to transfer to the office what we know and do at home when we see someone we think is vulnerable and needs help and protection.

2. Allow Ownership of Mistakes

Paternalism can go further than calling ahead to forewarn an interviewee. It can lead to burying mistakes that the employee with a disability makes and not allowing him to fail—or succeed.

Hasse says: “I once made an end-run call without consulting with my boss or field staff director. My decision created all kinds of questions in the field. Customer service reps were getting telephone calls without knowing why. I should have ‘caught hell’ for making such a stupid mistake. But I didn’t. I later found out about the ramifications of what I did only after I took the initiative and asked the people in the field.”

It is best to confront mistakes and failure with the person who has a disability so that person can learn and grow from it. And avoid lowering your established expectations for results just because the work involved is being performed by someone with a disability.

3. Assign Responsibility

The tendency to hide mistakes and failure from an employee with a disability can lead to the more serious issue of reassigning her shoddy work to others. That’s unfair to her because you are not giving her the opportunity to improve her work. It’s also unfair to other members of your team, who may be expected to pick up the slack because of her poor performance. And that breeds resentment.

Like others on your team, the employee who has a disability needs clear assignments and well-defined areas of responsibility. When those responsibilities are not met, deal directly with her about correcting those work problems.

4. Follow Promotion Policies

If you choose to reassign or promote an employee with a disability, do it in an evenhanded way according to your organization’s established assignment and promotion policies. If it’s a promotion, make it clear that it’s a promotion—just as you would with any other employee.

“In my own experience of climbing the corporate ladder,” Hasse says, “I’ve noticed a tendency to discount promotions that involve people with disabilities as not as significant as those involving nondisabled people. Perhaps those promotions are done quietly—almost apologetically—with the realization that latent resentment among nondisabled colleagues could be a problem for the organization.”

5. Keep Job Functions Intact

Another temptation is to dilute job functions to meet your preconceived notions of a disabled employee’s ability or inability. It’s true that productivity is enhanced when jobs can be tailored to a particular person’s skills and interests, but levels of responsibility and authority must also be kept intact for specific jobs.

Hasse says: “I’ve found that I always needed to ask specifically for secretarial services—even when I was a vice president and corporate officer. Somehow it was assumed that, since I had keyboard skills, I did not really need that kind of support, when, in reality, the lack of it hampered my productivity.”

6. Praise Real Accomplishment

Putting your employee with a disability on a pedestal is just as harmful as downplaying his skills or diluting his job function. Completing a routine research project using a screen reader doesn’t warrant lavish praise just because it may take extra effort. That kind of overcompensation shows you really have not accepted him as a fully contributing member of your team, and it gets old fast. It becomes silly in his eyes as well as from the perspective of your other team members.

Instead, compliment your employee with a disability just as you would other members of your team—for outstanding, beyond routine results, for instance. Use your own pattern for recognition and reward. Just make it consistent for every member of your team.

7. Avoid the “Inspiration” Label

Here’s another easy habit to form and a difficult one to break once you’ve fallen into it. One of the last comments an employee with a disability probably wants to hear from her colleagues and her boss is that she’s an “inspiration” for them. It’s bad enough when you say it privately to her. But if that type of sentimentality is expressed publicly—especially in a large forum by a corporate officer—it can be deadly, for it can really damage her credibility among her associates as well as those above and below her in the chain of command.

When your associates repeat the “inspiration” label often enough for that employee, it becomes a part of the accepted corporate culture for your organization and brands her with an identity she will find difficult to change. It could become a burden for her because she’ll continually feel the need to perform and inspire others instead of becoming just another one of your team members working toward a common goal. And becoming that is usually all she wants.

It’s trite, but it’s probably true—and it best sums up these seven guidelines for validating an employee with a disability: Most employees with a disability want to be treated like everyone else.

Assigning a Mentor for Your Newly Hired Employee with a Disability

When the legendary adventurer Odysseus set out for the Trojan War, he left his son, Telemachus, in the capable hands of a trusted friend named Mentor. Since then, the word “mentor” has been used to refer to any adult who guides the development of another person, whether a child, a student, or a person new to an environment.

Studies of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America have revealed remarkable success in its efforts to prevent young people from detouring into drugs, pregnancy, and crime. No wonder, since a synonym for mentor is “coach,” and the impact coaches have had in the success of individual players and entire teams in sports has been understood for decades.

Many people can credit at least some of their success to the support and advice of a mentor. For most of us, that mentor either sculpted our growth into adulthood or provided the feedback and encouragement we needed in choosing and pursuing a career.

For decades, the corporate world has recognized the value of mentors. In many organizations, mentoring programs for new employees have been a long-standing practice.

Mentors can assist workers within an organization in a variety of ways. Just as mentors can help young people make good life decisions, mentors can help business owners make good business decisions and employees make good career decisions. Within a company, experienced workers, in their mentoring roles, extend initial training and provide individualized feedback and guidance, with the new employee’s specific tasks and adjustment issues in mind.

Assigning mentors to new workers is, in fact, a cost-effective and value-added way to make the probationary employment period a success. The employee makes good decisions and develops well. The mentor gains a sense of his importance in the company and recognizes his own influence on its future. And the employer gains new workers who are more effective and satisfied. Mentoring is truly a win-win-win situation.

Specifically, what are the benefits of a mentoring program for new workers? Let’s take a look:

New employee training often ignores adult learning theory and presents too much information in too short a time and in a way that adults have trouble retaining. The mentor, in an informal way, helps reinforce and extend that “traditional” training for the new employee.

The mentor is available to guide the new worker, answer questions, and offer constructive advice when a supervisor may not be readily available.

The mentor can assist the new worker in adjusting to the climate of the company, both in terms of overt expectations and in the less tangible aspects of organizational culture.

The mentor often intervenes before a worker’s poor work habits get to the point where they are noticed by the supervisor. This encourages the worker to improve and head off problems before their impact is damaging or simply a drain on time.

The mentor’s consistent relationship with the new worker gives him a more accurate impression of the worker’s strengths and weaknesses and a greater understanding of the source of any problems, making evaluation easier and more realistic.

Simply having someone “on the new worker’s side” increases the chance that this new worker will feel comfortable seeking out and making use of constructive criticism. The inevitable but invisible wall between an authority and the follower (the supervisor and the new employee) is not present in the mentor/mentee relationship and does not act as a barrier to development.

Mentors show new workers that a job is more than just a job. It is a career or even a profession. The mentor models the pride and sense of accomplishment that will and should be expected from the worker as he grows in the company. The mentor, chosen for his exemplary qualities of teamwork and collaboration, instills these qualities in the person he’s coaching.

Some businesses may be concerned that hiring individuals with disabilities is a drain on company time and resources when the new employee has real or perceived limitations. Assigning mentors to these newly hired people directly addresses that concern. Here are specific examples:

If the relationship begins immediately, the mentor can provide the individual assistance a worker with a disability may need while in training.

The mentor can continue this one-on-one attention during the probationary period to ensure that the employee can handle the double challenge of learning a new job and learning how to use the adaptive tools to do it.

The mentor models acceptance of and cooperation with the employee who has a disability; that helps other staff, including managers, learn how to work with the employee.

The mentor, if properly trained, can reflect back to management which problems arising from the new employee’s assimilation into the organization are due to the disability and which are simply performance deficits. The mentor is likely to have a more accurate idea of what the worker is like.

Since a new employee is bound to worry about others’ attitudes toward his disability, the mentor can act as a trusted and accepting ally as well as an interpreter of which coworker perceptions are real and which are not.

With trained mentors, the section supervisors do not all have to become specialists in helping employees with disabilities adjust to a workplace setting. The mentor, through training and experience, can take his specialized role and free the supervisor so she can concentrate on real work issues and other people-management priorities.

A mentor does not necessarily just teach an individual how to reach a goal. He teaches that individual how to be the person who can and will achieve it. A mentor for an employee with a disability, for instance, needs to go beyond the “how to do the task” to “how to be a skillful and reliable performer of a task.”

Choosing Mentors

Mentors in business settings must first of all be experienced employees, both in terms of knowing the business and the job and in knowing the nuances of how the company operates on a day-to-day basis. In addition to an ability to understand and interpret the corporate culture, effective mentors must possess strong interpersonal skills.

Mentors paired with individuals with a disability need not be highly trained in issues about disability and employment. A good mentoring candidate will be someone who is open and enthusiastic about learning. It is no more of a benefit to have a mentor who holds the employee with a disability to lower standards than it is to have someone who is biased against him.

The mentor must be open-minded but not so far open that, as the saying goes, his brains fall out. He is doing the person with a disability a disservice if he gives him so much rope he gets tangled up in it. The mentor must be able to distinguish between the purely mechanical challenges of a disability and the psychological habits that can come with “getting away with murder” because of it.

Ensuring Mentor Success

The first step in developing a mentoring program is to be very clear what you want it to accomplish. Every aspect must be designed to support the company’s interests by enabling the best level of work any new employee can do. When you know why you are assigning mentors and the potential value of those relationships, then you can confidently communicate to others in your organization the importance of those mentors and gain support for them.

It is essential that you choose people who can succeed at mentoring. It is very difficult to teach someone without the combination of empathy and good sense that make up a great mentor. As all great chefs say, “You must start with the best-quality ingredients.”

Be sure the tools the mentors need are in place. They will need effective training in the techniques of mentoring and a thorough understanding of policies and procedures as well as your management’s vision for mentoring new employees. They will need access to ongoing advice for themselves: They need mentors, too! And they need the trust and confidence not only of you and their assigned mentee but also of coworkers and supervisors.

In addition to providing opportunities for feedback and support, you need to make known your intention to hold the mentor responsible for the development of an assignee. You must demonstrate that you value good mentoring and will evaluate the mentor’s performance.

Give mentors opportunities, venues, and other tools as well as support in time assigned away from their usual duties. The Internet is a perfect tool to use in supporting your mentors with the least impact on everyone’s time and workload. The International Society of Automation (http://www.isa.org), for instance, has developed a thorough understanding of how online support can help achieve the goals of a mentoring program in the most efficient way.

For the mentor assigned to help an employee who is disabled, there are a few additional supports you need to supply. You must clearly articulate that you want to see the individual who is disabled succeed right alongside those who are not disabled. The employee with a disability earned her position; it was not given as a gift. Tie the value of an employee with a disability to your company’s success, and make it known that you expect her skills and qualities to be evaluated and developed.

Provide “reeducation” about disabilities for mentors. Avoid calling it “sensitivity training,” since that generally focuses on courtesy instead of the basic cold facts of a disability’s real impact on an individual from a mechanical perspective. You don’t have to be extra polite to individuals with a disability. But you and the mentors should know something about how they carry out activities that others not familiar with their situation may believe cannot be done.

Mentors must be made aware that the disability experience is nothing like what they may think it is. In fact, it is not always all that bad. One adjusts, and, for some people, it truly is all they know.

Provide both mentors and new associates with opportunities to mingle with other employees and the staff in other departments. The education your workforce will receive through the modeling of a positive and mutually enjoyed relationship will go far to boost the effectiveness of your mentor program in the future.

Finally, take pains to check back with everyone involved to see how effective the mentoring has been and how satisfying and rewarding it turned out to be for the new employee, the mentor, the worker’s supervisor, and the company workforce in general. Be prepared to make changes, to retrain mentors, to better articulate expectations, and to learn. Only then will inclusion of an individual with a disability in your workforce become a reality and a source of pride.

Using Your Leadership to Help an Employee with a Disability Grow in His Job

When there is no leadership in a company, people stop listening to each other, people stop doing good work, teamwork disintegrates, the workplace gets nasty, and people start picking on each other—particularly those who are considered “different.”

But people picking on each other is just the beginning. The situation continues to go downhill from there, according to John Baldoni in his handbook 180 Ways to Walk the Leadership Talk (Walk the Talk Company, 2000). Product and service quality take a nosedive, some employees quit, customers start leaving, and business dries up, he points out.

It’s a real danger signal when you see people picking on each other. It could be that you’re already halfway down the slippery slope; you’re at a point where you’re going to lose your best employees and best customers.

How can you tell for sure?

An Employee Who Is “Different” Can Be a Bellwether

In one sense, your employee with a disability, as a minority and as an employee who is “different,” is a bellwether. If other employees are picking on him, either he doesn’t know how to handle his unique situation within a work setting (in which case he may not be the right person for you in that job or he may need your counseling in correcting the situation) or the atmosphere has deteriorated in your group because of your leadership.

Assuming you’ve done the background work so the job and the person with a disability are a pretty good fit, there are some things you can do as a leader to encourage notable performance on the job from that individual. The next section examines these tips.

Leadership Tips from a Disability Perspective

As a business leader with a disability for more than four decades, Jim Hasse has been collecting ideas about how to effectively lead from a disability perspective. Following are eighteen of them that he finds particularly helpful. Baldoni also cites some of these tactics in his handbook.

1. Set up a place on your company’s intranet in which each of your employees (not just the person with a disability) can privately post compliments, suggestions, and complaints in a nonthreatening way to facilitate your in-person communications with each individual.

2. Build relationships with leaders in other companies to learn from their successes and setbacks in employing people with disabilities. Such networking, particularly with others from diverse backgrounds and functional areas unlike your own, will provide you with lots of new ideas.

3. Pave the way so your employee with a disability can make good things happen for himself. You can do that by listening—finding out, on a continuing basis, what your employee truly needs to do his job better.

4. Live by your words and set an example. Treat your employee with a disability according to patterns that you would like his coworkers and your colleagues to follow.

5. Be proactive and look for potential problems before they become real issues for your employee who is disabled or his coworkers. Approach your leadership role with the concept that problems are really solutions waiting to happen.

6. Use appropriate discipline to protect individuals within your group from infringing on each other’s individual rights or the rights of the group. Remember that your employee with a disability can be the one who is hurting others as well as the one who is being hurt. However, know when your employee needs to solve a problem himself—and when you need to intervene.

7. Be forgiving. Most people deserve a second chance if they demonstrate that they are willing to learn from their mistakes. But also make sure that your employees, disabled or not, realize what you expect of them. Forgiving is not lowering your standards for performance. That’s particularly important when your employee with a disability is involved.

8. Tell stories, particularly those that illustrate behavior that applies to issues your employee who is disabled is currently facing. Let him draw his own conclusions about how the story applies to him.

9. Develop a story folder of anecdotes that you can draw upon to make your points with your employees. Your employee with a disability, by the way, needs “nondisability” stories as well as those that address his personal issues about disability.

10. Give your employee with a disability the same orientation and basic training you give others within your group so that he will be prepared to succeed.

11. Make it a habit to make regular contact with each of the members of your group—not just your employee with a disability. They should not have to come to you.

12. Talk to your employee about his disability. Get to know his situation. Empathize.

13. Use that empathy to reinforce your awareness that you are ultimately responsible and accountable for the actions of each of the others in your work group as well as your own.

14. Be patient while your employee with a disability is learning a new task. Remember, those who learn the fastest are not always the best performers or those with the most “staying power.” Your patience shows that you respect others—and that others can trust you.

15. Respect and encourage as well as console your employee with a disability when he has experienced failure. Show concern—but also show your appreciation that he tried and encourage him to take another (maybe lesser) step forward.

16. Include your employee with a disability in cross training—just as you would other members of your team. He will become more enthused about putting his new skills to good use, and you’ll gain a better qualified, more well-rounded team.

17. Check for teamwork experience when you interview a person with a disability for a job. If the candidate responds to your query about such experience enthusiastically with concrete examples of collaboration, you may have a team player. But remember that not everyone is a team player. Some individuals work best alone. Let them “do their thing” if they’re good performers.

18. Learn how to manage a diverse team of individuals, including those with a disability. Show that, under your leadership, a team can produce exceptional results precisely because members have learned to tap each other’s strengths and compensate for another’s weaknesses. Create opportunities for each team member to show what he can do on a team or with a special assignment.

A Mutual Interest

In one sense, you and your employee with a disability may have a mutual interest. As someone who is “different,” he has a larger than usual stake in how well you perform as a leader. And he can be your bellwether. The extra time you may be required to spend in helping him perform well in his job and as a member of your team may actually provide you with an opportunity to showcase your skills—and grow—as a leader.

Removing Intentional and Unintentional Barriers to Achievement for Employees with a Disability

You’ve done the smart thing. You hired the best candidate for your job opening, and you didn’t let the fact that she has a disability deter you. You are confident both in her abilities and in your capacity to put her to work with the accommodations she needs. You anticipate a bottom-line benefit from your decision.

If you want to realize that benefit, however, your work doesn’t end there. You also must empower your employee so she can work toward achievements beyond her entry position.

Some barriers that impede the development of a worker with a disability are “sins of commission,” and some are “sins of omission.” There are, in some cases, intentional barriers. Intentional barriers usually have their roots in the hiring decision. You hire a person with a disability for the wrong reason: to fulfill a quota, to show what a good guy or company you are, or to fill a job with someone who comes cheap. You may develop “set aside” positions with little responsibility or challenge because you figure that’s all a person with a disability can handle.

Most obstacles to achievement among employees with disabilities, however, occur unintentionally—even in companies with genuinely inclusive philosophies. Many times the barrier is simply an oversight, a situation of “Gee, I never thought of that!” Training materials are not accessible. Because of local transit deficits, the worker cannot get to work on weekends to put in overtime. It may be that you simply don’t realize you are using different language when talking to a disabled worker—just as studies in the 1980s found that teachers were unaware that they called on and expressed confidence in female students less frequently than their male counterparts. Or you may not have realized a key player in personnel development either has an overt bias against people with disabilities or simply needs more education.

Whatever the cause of unintentionally overlooking the potential in an employee with a disability, you squander possibilities for you and your company as well as the individual.

If You Don’t Do It for Them, Do It for You

Obviously most employees (and certainly the most valuable to you) want to succeed and advance in their careers. Providing clear and open paths for personal development and leadership within a group is a well-known strategy for boosting employee morale. In fact, this strategy can be even more effective in terms of turnover and morale than the short-term benefit employers often realize when they reward employees with across-the-board pay raises. Fulfilled workers don’t leave, and that can mean less work for you.

But achieving a lower turnover rate among employees and avoiding the expense of replacing workers who leave are not the only bottom-line benefits of helping workers reach their full potential. Well-trained, motivated employees simply are more productive and do better work. If employees with a disability start out willing to give their proverbial 110 percent, imagine what they’d accomplish in positions of higher responsibility. And that’s a reflection on you as a mentor, a supervisor, a manager, or an administrator.

So it simply does not suffice to hire a person with a disability, give her the accommodations she needs to work, and then walk away. Like a garden, you must fertilize and cultivate your employee’s efforts to harvest her true potential. If you do walk away, you may never see the heights she could reach on your company’s behalf.

Yes, she wants to advance, but more important, you want her in a position where she can have the most impact. Chances are she’ll best contribute to your company’s success and most effectively reflect your leadership skills if she is allowed (and empowered) to find her place on the corporate ladder.

The key is to look at those areas where a superior employee shines and how she is making her best contributions so that you can make sure no artificial barriers exist in those areas where she is likely to excel.

The Four T’s: Tools, Training, Teamwork, and Travel

There are four basic areas where employees gain the skills and contacts to access positions with more challenge and responsibility: tools, training, teamwork, and travel. Each of these areas can be problematic for employees with a disability. Although otherwise quite capable of excellence, they can be held back because of a lack of accessibility. Lack of accessibility can lead to lower expectations. That stymies perceived potential, and as a result, they lose opportunities to learn. Without training and development, they miss out on being able to show what they can accomplish. Their work, then, is often judged with a lower standard.

Let’s look at each of these four areas and how, with nurturing on your part, they can become springboards to achievement for your employee with a disability.

Tools

The first area is simply a matter of having the tools to do a job. You don’t send a plumber out without a pipe wrench. And you wouldn’t expect a receptionist to take calls without a telephone. The assistive technology and other adaptive tools people with disabilities use are no different.

For instance, seating someone with a visual impairment in front of a monitor without screen magnification and speech output is tantamount to seating her in a corner facing blank walls. She couldn’t produce there without her adaptive software—not because of any lack in her abilities but because, just like the phoneless receptionist, she would lack the tools to use the equipment. Providing the access tools is simply part of your investment in a promising worker.

Some tools are less tangible. A software development company wired its coffeemaker into its computer network. Developers saw a coffee cup icon on their monitors when a new pot was brewed. They would all drop what they were doing and head to the break room. What was the benefit to the company? It was in the exchange of ideas and the problem solving that occurred when every developer stopped midstream and brought challenges and breakthroughs to the table, literally.

Your workforce is not only a platoon of hands but of minds. Your employee with a disability is most likely a practiced problem solver. If you unwittingly deny or diminish his involvement in “group-think” activities through lack of access to the right tools, you hamper his development and you lose out on his contribution.

Training

Do you provide skill improvement opportunities beyond the employee’s initial orientation? It is likely you do. Whether in-house or outsourced, such training probably includes skill upgrades, new-system training, certification readiness, tuition reimbursement programs, professional symposia, or even just opportunities for professional betterment through seminars and conferences. Training adds to employee knowledge, skills, and productivity and brings new information and ideas to your company. It is widely regarded as an employee benefit. Those employees who seek training opportunities are also most likely your high achievers.

But is the training you provide accessible to your employees who have a disability? If not, it’s a mistake. You are squandering a resource. You don’t provide the training to be nice; you provide it to produce better results for your company through better informed, better equipped, and more motivated personnel.

The individual with a disability who cannot access your intranet’s training modules, cannot get transportation to off-site seminars, or cannot gain access to a professional development conference (or simply is not told about it or not expected to obtain further training because of low expectations) is being handicapped more seriously than by any disability. In such cases, you’re not doing what’s best for the company because you’re not empowering someone who would probably use the training to its fullest.

Teamwork

Bluntly put, if your worker with a disability isn’t drawn into teamwork situations and allowed to contribute within a group, you are losing on several fronts. You are not getting her input and her ideas. You aren’t seeing her in action or getting feedback from other team members about how she can most effectively contribute to their efforts in solving problems. You are enforcing her isolation and just making her struggle to reach her full potential more difficult.

You are also sending a far from constructive message to other staff members that the worker’s contribution is not valuable. Further, you may be contributing to tension and distrust among your workers, if they perceive you as a leader who is not fair but uses circumstances as an excuse for treating individuals differently.

By your example, on the other hand, you can demonstrate true inclusive practices and create a “norm” of mutual assistance as well as mutual benefit.

Many companies have special committees or events specifically designed to help build cross-department teamwork and relationships. Whether it’s a community service committee, a safety committee, aerobics classes, or a company picnic, your disabled worker can and should strive to become an involved and contributing member. Avoid “ghettoizing” her into your company’s diversity council or disability awareness committee (which, taken by itself, may be carrying out a constructive role) if her greater strength is elsewhere. Encourage and support her in that effort to be fully engaged in whatever special committees or events your company offers.

Travel

Let’s break down travel into two types: local and business. You may not have a lot of control over the transportation options available to your employee for getting to and from work. Local transportation is not your responsibility; it’s the worker’s. If he can’t take the initiative to ensure that he can get to work, he shouldn’t have applied for the job.

Local travel presents a barrier to achievement, however, when an employee cannot equally contribute to overtime efforts. In your estimation, a worker may be falling behind because he doesn’t want to put in after-hours or weekend time, but it may be just a transportation problem. It’s your responsibility to brainstorm with your employee to find alternatives for maximizing extra work time, such as sharing rides or working at home.

Then there is business travel. At a job fair geared to job seekers with disabilities, David was rejected out of hand by a recruiter because his openings involved travel—and David is blind. People who are blind travel all the time. There is absolutely no reason to assume that a person with a disability cannot travel on business.

If a worker’s disability is the only reason he isn’t given assignments that involve travel, then he misses an opportunity to grow and (even more important) to demonstrate to you what he can do. Often business travel involves sales or persuasion in some way, and such success on the road can tangibly impact the company’s bottom line. Networking done during business travel can bring an influx of new ideas; new tools; new intelligence; and, potentially, new employees and customers.

Your business traveler is a goodwill ambassador as well as a scout. An achieving worker with a disability may miss out on such an important contribution. The company itself is risking an opportunity by not sending its best persuader. Don’t let that happen because of false assumptions.

Clear Their Way to the Top

Having “a retarded guy in the mail room” is not inclusion. It’s tokenism. And it does little good for the individual or the company.

Inclusion is about hiring the very best people without regard to the artificial differences among us. Let’s say Jane is a wheelchair user, and Joan is not. If hiring Jane would have turned out to be the best decision you ever made but you go with Joan because it’s easier or because you can’t imagine how Jane could do the work or you expect she might be an underachiever, you have chosen the second-best candidate for the job.

Realizing that sometimes the best may be a person with a disability should also remind us that the best are often ambitious achievers with high commitment and a desire for ever-increasing responsibility and challenge. Why would you hire a hot prospect and then stick him in a corner to waste away?

Affirming the career goals of capable employees with a disability means keeping an eye on their promotability. Give them all the same opportunities to grow and to achieve as well as to show off what they can do.

Remember that a person with a disability, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was President of the United States. Since we now know John F. Kennedy was dealing with Addison’s disease throughout his presidency, we can probably say the United States has had two presidents with disabilities. A blind person, by the way, was recently the British Home Secretary. Another blind individual, David Paterson, has served as governor of New York. Yes, people with disabilities can be very strong leaders.

Make it clear as well to your employee with a disability that just because he got the job his own responsibility for his career advancement has not ended. Make sure he knows that he is expected to work hard and to look for ways to contribute beyond his job description. Don’t accept “I can’t.” Expect him to find a way. And problem solve with him to make it both possible and his duty. By doing so, you will have empowered him for his best effort.

An inclusive workplace offers employees with a disability the same chance to achieve and advance in their careers as nondisabled workers. Instead of “walking away” and dusting off your hands once a disabled person is hired, stay with him, pay attention to him, and never let your assumptions or lack of access get in his way.

That also means understanding his specific disability and working with him to put in place any “reasonable accommodation” he may need to do his job effectively.

Adaptive Technology Is Making Major Forms of Disability Irrelevant in the Workplace

Disabilities are usually a result of accidents, an illness, or a congenital physical or mental condition. A disability can be a condition (such as a brain or spinal cord injury) that is not progressive in how it affects an individual, or it can be progressive (get worse over time) if not treated properly. A disability can be acquired later in life through accident or disease or be a lifelong condition.

Let’s take a look at some general types of disabilities and the adaptive technology that is available today for making each condition largely an irrelevant factor in how a person can perform in the workplace.

The Job Accommodation Network (JAN) is a service of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy. It offers a Searchable Online Accommodation Resource (SOAR) system (http://www.jan.wvu.edu/soar/) to let users explore various accommodation options for people with disabilities in work and educational settings.

SOAR divides potential accommodations into four broad disability categories: cognitive/neurological impairments, deaf/hard-of-hearing impairments, motor impairments, and visual impairments.

Cognitive/Neurological Impairments

Cognitive disabilities impair, since birth, an individual’s learning process in a particular way. Cognitive disabilities, many of them nonapparent, can affect many different functions, including the ability to pay attention, learn and retain information, solve problems, and use language to express thought. Examples of such disabilities are dyslexia (typically a reading impairment) and dysgraphia (typically a writing impairment due to lack of fine-motor muscle control of the hands and/or processing difficulties). Note that a cognitive (learning) disability is not the same as an intellectual disability.

For information about twelve nonapparent disabilities and suggestions for hiring and interviewing job candidates with those disabilities, see Muhlenberg College’s “Employer’s Guide to Hidden Disabilities” at http://www.muhlenberg.edu/careercenter/
emplguide/cognitive.html.

Here’s a partial list of frequently requested adaptive technology products that SOAR includes on its website for people with cognitive disabilities:

Deficits in Math

Calculators

Mathematic Software

Talking Calculators

Talking Tape Measures

Deficits in Reading

Color Contrast Overlays

Color-Coded Manuals, Outlines, and Maps

Portable Handheld Reader

Reading and Language Development

Reading and Writing Software

Reading Pen

Text Reader

Word Processing Software

Deficits in Writing

Electronic Dictionary

Form Generating Software

Reading and Writing Software

Word Prediction/Completion and Macro Software

Difficulty with Time Management and Organization

Color-Coded Manuals, Outlines, and Maps

Electronic Organizers

Job Coaches

Locator Dots

Organization Software

Professional Organizers

Timers and Watches

Word Processing Software

Memory Deficits

Tape Recorded Directives, Messages, and Materials

Memory Software

Noise Reduction

Environmental Sound Machines

Headsets

Sound Absorption Panels

Sensitivity to Light

Anti-Glare/Filters for Fluorescent Lights

Anti-Glare/Radiation Filters for Computer Screens

Flicker Free/LCD Monitors

Sun Boxes and Lights

Light Deprivation

Personal Visors

Sun Boxes and Lights

For details about each of these products and vendors that have them, go to http://www.jan.wvu.edu/soar/cognitive/index.htm.

Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing Impairments

The deaf/hard-of-hearing impairments category includes people who are completely deaf or have partial hearing in one or both ears. They may be able to communicate through sign language or read lips and may have a slight to severe speech impairment due to hearing loss. They may need hearing protection or noise abatement equipment.

Check this partial list of frequently requested adaptive technology products that SOAR includes on its website for people with hearing impairments:

Alerting Devices

Amplified Stethoscopes

ASR/Voicewriting

Assistive Listening Devices

Automated TTY System

Cellular Telephone Technology

Cochlear Telephone Patch Cords

Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) Services

Hearing Protection

Noise Abatement

Noise Canceling Headsets

Paging Products and Services

Personal Paging Devices

Portable Text Communicators

Realtime and Off-line Captioning Services

Telephone Amplification

Telephone Clarity

Telephone Flashers

Tinnitus Maskers/Environmental Sound Machines

TTYs

TTY Software

Vibrating Watches and Alarms

Video Relay Services

Video Remote Interpreting Services (VRI)

Voice Mail Transcription

For details about each of these products and vendors that have them, go to http://www.jan.wvu.edu/soar/
hearing/hearingprod.html.

Motor Impairments

Motor impairments include various types of physical disabilities that affect upper limbs, manual dexterity, lower limbs, and muscular coordination of various parts of the body.

Note that, from a clinical standpoint, people who have simply broken a leg or sprained a wrist are considered disabled due to a motor impairment.

A motor impairment can be due to a mild, moderate, or severe brain injury either at birth (such as cerebral palsy) or acquired through a traumatic brain injury.

An accident that damages a person’s spinal cord can result in various degrees of motor impairment. Or, a motor impairment can be the result of a disease, such as multiple sclerosis, in which the nerves of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) degenerate.

Here is a sample of the frequently requested adaptive technology products that SOAR includes on its website for people with motor impairments:

Alternative Input Devices

Alternative Keyboards

Alternative Mice

Expanded Keyboards

Keyguards

LCD Pen Tablet Displays

Left Hand-Dominant Keyboards

Miniature Keyboards

On-Screen Keyboards

On-Screen Keyboard Software

One-Handed Keyboards

One-Handed Keyboard Software

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Speech Recognition Software

Switches

Ten Keypads

Word Prediction/Completion and Macro Software

Anti-Fatigue Matting

Book Holders

Building Access

Elevators

Emergency Evacuation Devices

Stair Lifts

Ramps

Carts

Motorized Carts

Multi-Purpose Carts

Chairs, Cushions, and Stools

Assist Lift Cushions

Chairs and Stools for Medical Services

Ergonomic/Adjustable Office Chairs

Forward Leaning Chairs

Large-Rated Chairs

Nonfluorescent Lighting

Stand Lean Stools

Doors

Automatic Door Openers

Door Handles

Door Knob Grips

Force Measurement Gauges

Ergonomic and Other Office Equipment

Accessible Copiers

File Carousels

Forearm Supports

Headsets

Money Handling Products

Mousing Surfaces

Remote Control Blinds

Slant Boards

Typing Aids

Writing Aids

Lifting Devices

Compact Lifting Devices

Page Turners

Software

Ergonomic Software

Form Generating Software

One-Handed Keyboard Software

Tools

Anti-Vibration Material

Ergonomic/Pneumatic Tools

Tool Balancers

Workstations

Accessible Workstations (Industrial)

Accessible Workstations (Office)

Supine Workstations

For details about each of these products and vendors that have them, go to http://www.jan.wvu.edu/soar/motor/index.htm.

Visual Impairments

In North America and most of Europe, legal blindness is defined as visual acuity of 20/200 or less in the better eye with best correction possible. This means that a legally blind individual would have to stand 20 feet from an object to see it (using corrective lenses) with the same degree of clarity as a normally sighted person could from 200 feet.

Visual impairment may be caused by many eye diseases such as age-related macular degeneration or cataracts. Some eye diseases can be treated medically; others cannot.

The following are frequently requested adaptive technology products that SOAR includes on its website for people with visual impairments:

Anti-Glare/Radiation Filters for Computer Screens

Braille and/or ADA Signage

Braille Printers

Braille Translation Software

Computer Braille Display

Closed Circuit TV (CCTV)

Detectable Warning Surfaces

External Computer Screen Magnification

Full Spectrum or Natural Lighting Products

Keyboard Tops and Labels

Large Computer Displays

Low Vision Enhancement Products

Magnification (Hand or Stand)

Optical Character Recognition

Prism Glasses/Bed Spectacles

Protective Eyewear

PDAs, Notebooks, and Laptops for Individuals with Vision Impairments

Screen Magnification Software

Screen Reading Software

Spoken Internet and Web Access Software

Stair Tread/Tape

Tactile Graphics

Talking Bar Code Scanner/Reader

Talking Calculator

Talking Cash Register

Talking Coin Sorter

Talking Color Detector

Talking Credit Card Terminal

Talking Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Maps

Talking Money Identifier

Task Lighting

Telephone Light Sensor

For details about each of these products and vendors that have them, go to http://www.jan.wvu.edu/soar/
vision/visionprod.html.

Note that you can search for adaptive technology solutions for specific disabilities (about forty of them) by going to http://www.jan.wvu.edu/soar/disabilities.html. You can also go to Lighthouse International’s website (www.lighthouse.org) for information about technology (see http://www.lighthouse.org/services-and-assistance/
computers-and-technology/assistive-technology-training/). You might consider items from the Lighthouse store or get information from a blog about vision-friendly technology at dorriessight.blogspot.com.

FAQ: Guidelines on Reasonable Accommodations for Employees with Disabilities Under the ADA

Knowing the guidelines of “reasonable accommodation” under the ADA is just as important as having a basic understanding of what is available today in workplace adaptive technologies for specific disabilities.

The following information about reasonable accommodations for your employee with a disability is summarized and paraphrased from guidelines offered by JAN at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/links/ADAtam1.html#III and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) at http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/accommodation.html.

Work-Site Accessibility

Question: Do we have to modify the work site if we do not have an employee with a mobility impairment?

Answer: Under ADA’s Title I, you are not required to make your existing facilities accessible until a particular applicant or employee with a particular disability needs an accommodation, and then the modifications should meet that individual’s work needs.

You do not have to make changes to provide access in places or facilities that will not be used by that individual for employment-related activities or benefits.

However, private employers that occupy commercial facilities or operate places of public accommodation and state and local governments must conform to more extensive accessibility requirements under Title III and Title II when making alterations to existing facilities or undertaking new construction.

Although the requirement for accessibility in employment is triggered by the needs of a particular individual, you should consider initiating changes that will provide general accessibility, particularly for job applicants, since it is likely that people with disabilities will apply for jobs in the future.

See the EEOC’s “Technical Assistance Manual: Title I of the ADA,” chapter III, section 3.10 at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/links/ADAtam1.html#III and “ADA Accessibility Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities (ADAAG)” at http://www.access-board.gov/adaag/html/adaag.htm.

Question: Do we have to provide accommodations for emergency evacuation?

Answer: If you have an emergency evacuation plan for employees, the plan should include employees with disabilities. If you do not have an evacuation plan for all employees, you must consider accommodations on a case-by-case basis for any employee with a disability who requests accommodations for emergency evacuation.

See “Employer’s Guide to Including People with Disabilities in Emergency Evacuation Plans” at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/media/emergency.html and “Emergency Preparedness and People with Disabilities” at http://www.dol.gov/odep/programs/emergency.htm.

Question: Do we have to provide parking as an accommodation?

Answer: Parking is considered a benefit of employment. Under the ADA, you must make reasonable accommodations that enable employees with disabilities to enjoy equal benefits of employment. So, if you provide parking for all employees, you must provide parking for employees with disabilities unless it would pose an undue hardship to do so.

A tougher question is: Do you have to provide parking for employees with disabilities if you do not provide parking for other employees? There are two ways to look at this issue. First, you could argue that an employer is required to provide reasonable accommodations that eliminate barriers only in the work environment and parking is outside the work environment. Therefore, you would not have to provide parking as an accommodation unless parking is provided for other employees.

Second, you could argue that an employer is required to provide parking as an accommodation because otherwise some employees with disabilities would not be able to access the work site, and, therefore, providing parking is a way to provide equal employment opportunities to employees with disabilities.

Unfortunately, there is no clear answer as of this writing about which argument is correct. See “Parking and the ADA, Act I” at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/corner/vol01iss14.htm and “Parking and the ADA, Act II” at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/corner/vol03iss01.htm.

Question: Do we have to provide transportation to and from work as an accommodation?

Answer: You are required to provide reasonable accommodations that eliminate barriers in the work environment alone, not ones that eliminate barriers outside of the work environment. So, you are not required to provide transportation as a reasonable accommodation for a commute to work unless you generally provide transportation for your employees.

However, if your policy regarding work schedules creates a barrier for an individual whose disability interferes with his or her ability to commute to work, you must modify that policy as a reasonable accommodation unless it would impose an undue hardship. For example, an individual who uses a wheelchair and commutes by public transportation may need a later arrival time in inclement weather.

Job Restructuring

According to the EEOC, job restructuring includes modifications such as reallocating or redistributing marginal job functions that an employee is unable to perform because of a disability and altering when or how a function, essential or marginal, is performed. An employer never has to reallocate essential functions as a reasonable accommodation, but it can do so if it wishes.

Question: How do I determine what job duties are essential?

Answer: JAN put together a publication called “Job Descriptions” (see http://www.jan.wvu.edu/media/jobdescriptions.html) that includes a discussion about how to determine whether a job duty is essential.

The EEOC also provides information about determining essential functions at section 2.3(a) of its “Technical Assistance Manual: Title I of the ADA” (see http://www.jan.wvu.edu/links/ADAtam1.html).

Question: Do I have to provide “light duty” for employees with disabilities?

Answer: The term “light duty” has a number of different meanings in the employment setting. Generally, light duty refers to temporary or permanent work that is physically or mentally less demanding than normal job duties.

Some employers use the term “light duty” to mean simply excusing an employee from performing those job functions that he is unable to perform due to an impairment.

Light duty also may consist of particular positions with duties that are less physically or mentally demanding created specifically for the purpose of providing alternative work for employees who are unable to perform some or all of their normal duties.

You may also refer to any position that is sedentary or is less physically or mentally demanding as light duty.

In the following discussion, light duty refers only to particular positions created specifically for the purpose of providing work for employees who are unable to perform some or all of their normal duties.

As an employer, you do not need to create a light duty position for a nonoccupationally injured employee with a disability as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. However, you must provide other forms of reasonable accommodation required under the ADA. For example, subject to undue hardship, you must:

Restructure a position by redistributing marginal functions that an individual cannot perform because of a disability or

Provide modified scheduling (including part-time work) or

Reassign a nonoccupationally injured employee with a disability to an equivalent existing vacancy for which he or she is qualified.

You cannot avoid your obligation to accommodate an individual with a disability simply by asserting that the disability did not derive from an occupational injury.

On the other hand, if you reserve light duty positions for employees with occupational injuries (do not create new light duty jobs when needed), the ADA requires you to consider reassigning an employee with a disability who is not occupationally injured to such positions as a reasonable accommodation.

The reason for this is that reassignment to a vacant position and appropriate modification of your policy are forms of reasonable accommodation required by the ADA, absent undue hardship. You cannot establish that the reassignment to a vacant, reserved light duty position imposes an undue hardship simply by showing that you would have no other vacant light duty positions available if an employee became injured on the job and needed light duty.

Note that you are free to determine whether a light duty position will be temporary instead of permanent. For more information, see the EEOC’s “Workers’ Compensation and the ADA” at http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/workcomp.html.

Modified Work Schedules and Leave

In its publication on reasonable accommodation and undue hardship, the EEOC discusses modified work schedules and leave as accommodations. The information is available at http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/accommodation.html. However, some issues regarding work schedules and leave are not addressed in that guide. Here is how JAN addresses the issues of schedules and leave.

Question: Do I have to change a full-time job to part-time as an accommodation under the ADA?

Answer: Although part-time work is a form of reasonable accommodation, you probably do not have to change an existing full-time job to part-time as an accommodation under the ADA.

According to informal guidance from the EEOC, when an employee is asking to cut his or her hours significantly, then, in essence, that employee is asking for a reassignment to an existing part-time job.

The precise legal rationale will be debated in courts for a while, but, any way you look at it, you fundamentally change a job when you significantly cut the hours (e.g., in half). One argument is that cutting a job’s hours in half necessarily entails cutting essential functions if “essential functions” embody the amount of work to be accomplished.

You could also say that you would be cutting the production standard, which is not simply an hourly standard but also a standard that measures how much should be produced in a full day.

Another legal argument is to say that significantly reducing the hours of a job would be changing a qualification standard of the job—specifically, the ability to work full-time. You should always be able to show that you created a full-time position because there is sufficient work that requires working full-time. As such, the qualification to work full-time meets the business necessity standard, and, as a result, it is not a reasonable accommodation to cut the hours in half.

That is why a request for part-time work by an employee often ends up really being a request for a reassignment to an existing part-time job. If there is only a minimal cut in hours, it might be possible to show that the essential functions, the productivity standard, and/or a qualification standard of the position will not be changed, despite the slight decrease in hours. In this case, you might need to eliminate marginal functions to permit the employee to complete all the essential functions.

Question: If I choose to change a full-time job to part-time, do I have to maintain the employee’s full-time pay and benefits?

Answer: No, not under the ADA—unless you maintain pay and benefits for employees without disabilities whose jobs change from full-time to part-time. You should consider whether other laws apply (such as wage and hour laws).

Question: How much leave time must I provide as an accommodation under the ADA?

Answer: Unlike the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which requires covered employers to provide up to twelve weeks of leave, there is no specific amount of leave time required under the ADA.

Instead, leave time is approached like any other accommodation request: You must provide the amount of leave needed by the employee (unless doing so poses an undue hardship). For additional information about the interplay between the ADA and the FMLA, see “The Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964” at http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/fmlaada.html.

Modified Policies

Question: Can I apply a no-fault attendance policy?

Answer: No. If an employee with a disability needs additional unpaid leave as a reasonable accommodation, you must modify your “no-fault” leave policy to provide the employee with the additional leave unless you can show that (1) there is another effective accommodation that would enable the person to perform the essential functions of his position or (2) granting additional leave would cause an undue hardship.

The act of modifying workplace policies, including leave policies, is a form of reasonable accommodation. For more information, see “Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship Under the Americans with Disabilities Act” at http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/
accommodation.html.

Question: Can we have a 100 percent restriction-free policy?

Answer: According to informal guidance from the EEOC, requiring an employee to be 100 percent restriction-free can violate the ADA when applied to an employee with a disability.

Although some courts have characterized such policies as per se violations of the ADA, most courts require that the employee meet the definition of disability before being allowed to challenge the policy under the ADA. If an employee does not meet those first two prongs, he may be able to show that his employer regarded him as having a disability, typically by relying on evidence that the employer would not let him return to his regular job or any other job in a class of jobs or broad range of jobs in various classes.

Question: Can I enforce conduct rules?

Answer: You never have to excuse a violation of a uniformly applied conduct rule that is job related and consistent with business necessity. This means, for example, that you never have to tolerate or excuse violence, threats of violence, stealing, or destruction of property. You may discipline an employee with a disability for engaging in such misconduct if you would impose the same discipline on an employee without a disability.

Question: Do I have to modify dress codes or hygiene requirements as an accommodation?

Answer: Most authorities (including the EEOC) treat dress codes and hygiene requirements as “conduct rules” but classify them as the type of conduct rule that must be justified as job related and consistent with business necessity before being enforced. So, if a person with a disability requests modification of a dress code or hygiene requirement as an accommodation, you must consider allowing the modification unless you can show that the dress code or hygiene requirement is necessary for the job at issue.

For information about handling hygiene issues in the workplace, visit http://www.jan.wvu.edu/media/
employmenthygienefact.doc. For additional information, see “The Americans with Disabilities Act: Applying Performance and Conduct Standards to Employees with Disabilities” at http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/performance-conduct.html.

Question: Do I have to consider allowing an employee with a disability to work from home as an accommodation?

Answer: Yes. Changing the location where work is performed may fall under the ADA’s reasonable accommodation requirement of modifying workplace policies, even if you do not allow other employees to work from home.

However, you are not obligated to adopt an employee’s preferred or requested accommodation and may instead offer alternate accommodations as long as they would be effective. For more information about work at home as an accommodation, see “Work at Home/Telework as a Reasonable Accommodation” at http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/telework.html.

Equipment and Services

Question: If we require work equipment, such as steel-toed work boots or stethoscopes, and an employee with a disability needs specialized equipment that costs more than the regular equipment (e.g., customized boots or amplified stethoscopes), do we have to pay the extra cost for the specialized equipment?

Answer: If the equipment or device is a personal-use item, then you do not have to provide it. For example, if an employee has to wear a special type of boot all the time, you do not have to pay for it. Common items that fall into the personal-use category are hearing aids, glasses, and medication. On the other hand, if the boots are necessary only for work and constitute an accommodation, you would have to pay the entire cost of the boots unless it would be an undue hardship to do so.

But there is also a tool-of-the-trade issue here. If the boots constitute a tool of the trade (i.e., the boots are necessary to get the job done), then the employer must pay for the specialized boots as a form of equal treatment if the employer provides the boots for other employees. However, if other employees buy their own boots and they own them, then an employee with a disability can be required to buy his own boots, even if they cost more.

Question: If an employee has a limitation such as a hearing impairment but chooses not to purchase a hearing aid, do we then have an obligation to provide a hearing aid at work?

Answer: The fact that an individual chooses to forego personal-use items at home (e.g., a wheelchair, hearing aids, protective clothing) does not mean that such items become work related because they are needed on the job. The limitations prompting the need for the hearing aids exist on and off the job and, as a result, they remain personal-use items.

However, you may still have to provide a reasonable accommodation, even though you are not obligated to provide personal-use items. For example, you might have to provide an amplified telephone or alternative means of communication for an employee with a hearing impairment who does not choose to use hearing aids.

Question: Do I have to allow an employee with a disability to use personal-need items (e.g., canes, walkers, wheelchairs, hearing aids) or services (personal attendant care, service animals) in the workplace?

Answer: Allowing an employee with a disability to use a personal-need item or service in the workplace is a form of reasonable accommodation, according to the EEOC. For example, it would be a reasonable accommodation for an employer to permit an individual who is blind to use a guide dog at work, even though the employer would not be required to provide a guide dog for the employee.

Question: Do we have to provide personal assistance services (PAS) under the ADA?

Answer: The term “personal assistance services” can include a wide variety of services. The Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act defines PAS as “a range of services provided by one or more persons designed to assist an individual with a disability to perform daily living activities on or off the job that the individual would typically perform without assistance if the individual did not have a disability.”

Under the ADA, reasonable accommodation can include PAS in the form of work-related assistance, but it generally does not include PAS in the form of personal attendant care at the work site.

Work-related PAS can include task-related assistance at work, such as readers, interpreters, help with lifting or reaching, page turners, a travel attendant to act as a sighted guide to assist an employee with a visual impairment who goes on occasional business trips, and reassignment of nonessential duties to coworkers. For additional information, see “Personal Assistance Services (WPAS) in the Workplace” at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/media/PAS.html.

Question: Do we have to provide personal attendant care for work-related travel?

Answer: According to informal guidance from the EEOC, the ADA does not require you to provide personal attendant care on the job because reasonable accommodation does not require employers to provide personal-need items or services.

However, when an employee travels for work and incurs personal attendant care expenses beyond her usual expenses when not traveling for work, there is a good argument that you must pay the added costs.

Question: What if coworkers voluntarily assist disabled employees with their personal needs? For example, coworkers assist an employee who uses a wheelchair with transferring her from her car into the wheelchair when she arrives at work. Do I have to allow coworkers to assist, or can I prohibit them from doing so?

Answer: According to informal guidance from the EEOC, in general, employers can decide how employees use their time at work. So, you can probably prohibit coworkers from providing personal assistance to employees with disabilities without violating the ADA outright.

However, from a practical standpoint, the EEOC recommends that you take a case-by-case approach and consider allowing coworkers to voluntarily help employees with disabilities when you, as an employer, do not have any liability for resulting injuries and the assistance does not substantially disrupt the workplace.

So, consider allowing coworkers to help an employee with a disability, at least with minor activities, such as taking off and putting on a coat and eating.

When more difficult assistance is needed, such as toileting transfers or administering medications, you may want to make sure that coworkers are properly trained before allowing them to provide this type of assistance.

Remember, under the ADA’s reasonable accommodation obligation, you must consider allowing employees with disabilities to have their own personal attendant in the workplace, absent undue hardship.

Question: Is it a reasonable accommodation to provide a job coach?

Answer: Yes. You may be required to provide a temporary job coach to assist in the training of a qualified individual with a disability as a reasonable accommodation, barring undue hardship.

You also may be required to allow a job coach paid by a public or private social service agency to accompany the employee at the job site as a reasonable accommodation. For more information, see “EEOC Enforcement Guidance on the Americans with Disabilities Act and Psychiatric Disabilities” at http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/psych.html.

Question: Do we have to provide accommodations for on-the-job travel such as driving to home visits?

Answer: According to the EEOC, you must consider accommodations such as alternative methods of transportation for work-related travel when driving is not an essential function of the job. For example, an employer must consider alternative transportation for a social worker who cannot drive due to vertigo; the essential function is completing the home visits, not driving.

Question: What guidelines can I use to write an accommodation policy for my company?

Answer: If you want to develop written accommodation policies and procedures, the EEOC, the federal agency that enforces the ADA, provides some useful publications, including:

“Establishing Procedures to Facilitate the Provision of Reasonable Accommodation”

“Internal Accommodation Procedures”

“Practical Advice for Drafting and Implementing Reasonable Accommodation Procedures”

Accommodations for Adaptive Technology: Who Should Pay for What Under What Circumstances

Although disability advocates love to crow that the average cost of accommodations on the job is $50 or less, the fact is that some of the high-tech aids used by some individuals with a disability are on the pricier side of the equation.

Adapting a computer for a person who is blind, for instance, can cost more than the computer itself. And that is just the beginning. It doesn’t include other equipment that the employee might need. It would be disingenuous to say otherwise. The cost of accommodations may be higher for your company or for your department than the average investment.

You want to do the right thing, but you also have to be realistic. It would be bad business to use company resources without a return on the investment. That is the “real world.”

Before getting into the answers to the question about who pays for what, consider these questions: What does it cost to bring any new worker on board? Do you pay for training? Do you pay for benefits? Do you pay for a workplace, furniture, equipment, supplies, and utilities this worker will need? And do you pay her for her time, talent, and effort?

Would you think twice about any of these costs if you knew you were hiring the person who will best contribute to the bottom line? Probably not.

Peggy works for a company that furnishes her with a car—a benefit designed to persuade her to work for the organization. Furnishing special tools a qualified person with a disability needs for work is a drop in the bucket compared to these very common costs willingly accepted by companies that want the best people working for them.

Now to the funding question. The short answer to “Who pays for it?” in terms of legal responsibility in many jurisdictions is you, the employer. For instance, “Generally, the ADA requires employers to make reasonable accommodations that enable employees with disabilities to enjoy equal employment opportunities,” according to JAN.

But let’s look at this topic in terms of reality. Who, in fact, is paying for adaptive equipment? To find out who really is picking up the tab for employees with disabilities, we conducted our own informal e-mail poll of eSight Careers Network members.

We asked, “In your personal experience of obtaining adaptive equipment for a job, who has paid for the equipment?” We received ninety-six responses. The results are as follows:

A state agency, such as vocational rehabilitation: 41 percent

The employer: 24 percent

The employee: 20 percent

Other: 14 percent

Insurance company: 1 percent

Family members: 1 percent

Those who selected “other” primarily used this choice to say that it really was a combination—that the government source, the employer, and the worker shared the cost in some way. Others received grants or assistance from private funders.

A fortunately tiny number, two to be precise, revealed that no one paid, and, as a result, they received no accommodation.

Although not scientific, these results appear to be on target with eSight Careers Network over the years. The major source for money for adaptive equipment is a government agency whose mission is to be that source. Next comes the employer, the one who officially should be doing it all. Then another very realistic response is in third place: the blind or visually impaired worker herself.

There are pros and cons to each source. What some believe the law requires and what is realistic are not necessarily the same thing.

Let’s say this is the situation confronting you now. You or the person charged with hiring responsibility is sitting across the interview table from a blind or visually impaired applicant for an open position. Let’s assume she has the top qualifications for the job, in terms of experience, education, personality, references, and other factors. Add the fact that studies have shown that workers with disabilities are good performers who stay on the job longer and have better than average reliability and safety records. This person could easily be the best addition to your workforce. To do the job, though, she needs some accommodations. Are you going to pass her by? Or work out a creative accommodation solution?

Let’s broaden the alternatives listed in our e-mail survey and propose some more funding options for obtaining the adaptive technology she needs.

Funding Options for Adaptive Technology

Employee Brings Her Own Accommodation

All the major producers of adaptive technology for the blind allow their software to be used on multiple computers in multiple locations. For example, if an employee uses a screen reader at home, the same software can be used at work without additional charge. If the employee can bring a software CD from home to be installed on an office computer, the employer just saved $895, hardly an insignificant amount. (This cost is based on the JAWS screen reader, which is the most popular screen reader used by people who are visually impaired.)

If you are not over that sticker shock yet, consider scanning software that allows the worker to read print independently. It costs about $1,000.

In addition to the employee using adaptive software for both home and work purposes, she may have equipment (such as a Braillewriter or magnifiers) that others have purchased for previous jobs or for school that can be brought to the workplace and used there.

So, considering her own equipment in an open and interactive accommodation discussion might lead to options that may show that accommodation expenses for you, as the employer, could be minimal.

Cost Sharing with the Employee

Small employers on extremely tight budgets might consider sharing the cost of software with their employees. Adaptive technology software licenses can be used at work and at home. Sometimes the employee has an older version of the software and an employer-sponsored upgrade is less expensive than buying new.

Other times, the employee may not have the technology needed. If the employee has no technology at home and a purchase is required, she and her employer can both benefit by sharing or splitting the cost of the technology. This may not work for larger employers because the ADA expects more from them. It also may not work if the adaptation can be used only in a work situation.

If the employee is receiving Social Security Disability Insurance benefits, costs for equipment may be applied as a benefit to be received in a month she ordinarily would be ineligible because of wage income. Such additional benefits can be paid while she is being paid a wage, so you, the employer, may actually not incur additional costs.

Sharing Accommodations

If you have more than one employee with a visual impairment on the job, accommodations may be shared. Depending on the job, various pieces of adaptive technology may be used continually or just occasionally. Consider the jobs and the employees involved. Can multiple people use equipment such as scanning systems, Braillewriters, and magnifiers?

Such approaches make the most sense when a customized and tailored access solution for a particular employee isn’t necessary.

Tax Incentives

The U.S. government offers two tax incentives for businesses paying for accommodations: a tax credit and a tax deduction.

The tax credit is available for those businesses that for the previous tax year had either revenues of $1,000,000 or less or thirty or fewer full-time workers. The credit can be used to cover a variety of expenditures, including provision of readers for customers or employees, sign language interpreters, adaptive equipment, accessible formats of printed materials, and removal of architectural barriers in facilities or vehicles. The amount of the tax credit is equal to 50 percent of the eligible access expenditures in a year up to a maximum expenditure of $10,250. There is no credit for the first $250 of expenditures. The maximum tax credit, therefore, is $5,000.

The tax deduction available applies to all businesses of any size for accommodation expenses up to $15,000. Unlike the tax credit, the deduction can be used only for the removal of transportation or architectural barriers. Many employers apply this after the fact and don’t consider this a true funding source because of the considerable lag time between the expense and the application of the tax benefit. For more about this tax deduction, see “Tax Incentives Packet on the Americans with Disabilities Act” at http://www.ada.gov/taxpack.htm.

In addition, the Work Opportunity Tax Credit is available to employers who hire clients of state or veterans vocational rehabilitation programs or who are recipients of Supplemental Security Income. Employers can receive a credit equal to $2,400 in wages paid during the first twelve months for each new hire or $4,800 for each veteran hired who is disabled. For more information, see “Tax Incentives” on the JAN website at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/media/tax.html or go to http://www.doleta.gov/business/incentives/opptax/.

State and Veterans Vocational Rehabilitation Programs

The U.S. federal government funds states and the Veterans Administration to operate vocational rehabilitation programs for people with disabilities. These programs can pay the entire cost of equipment and technology used on the job.

However, as one might expect when government bureaucrats are involved in something, the process can be complicated and lengthy, and the rehabilitation agency might only agree to pay part of the cost. Some employers report some success, if they have the right relationship with people who can get them through the process. It is a mixed bag and success with this program often depends on the people involved.

Public and Private Sources

In addition to government rehabilitation programs, there are numerous private foundations and other organizations that can be called upon to make grants or loans to fund accommodations. The Small Business Administration, economic development programs, charities, and other institutions include specific or general funding for employment of people with disabilities. The JAN lists several sources, including Delta Foundation, Southern Rural Development, and Abilities Fund on its website (http://www.jan.wvu.edu/links/
Funding/GeneralInfo.html).

These sources may not present your best option for help paying for accommodations, however, since the process can be lengthy and convoluted. Many of these programs also favor small-business owners with disabilities instead of employers of people with disabilities. Nevertheless, they are worth checking.

Paying for It Yourself

The final funding option is to bite the bullet and pay for the adaptive technology as the employer. You can justify this through the mandates of the ADA.

In addition, there are accommodation obligations tied to equipment purchases for employees with disabilities if you receive federal funds or are a federal contractor. Size of the employer, revenues, and cash flow are given consideration in determining an employer’s obligation—which is why smaller employers may be able to justify a position in which an employee shares some of the cost of the technology.

Whatever the situation, with today’s adaptive technology employing a worker who has a disability is possible and entirely feasible for even the smallest and most budget squeezed of employers. Consider the total accommodation and stipulate what works best for you, the employer, and the employee, and then decide who should fairly take responsibility for what.

When a Worker with a Disability Tries to Put One Over on You

Being manipulated by an employee with a disability can occur under a variety of circumstances.

Is an employee who uses a wheelchair demanding shorter hours because of transportation problems? Is someone with medical problems taking a lot of time off for doctor appointments but not making the time up? Does an employee appear to feel that rules around dress or behavior do not apply to him? Have you made accommodations but the worker still is not performing up to the appropriate level?

Remember, the “reasonable accommodations” guideline under the ADA does not require you to provide the accommodation the employee requests but only whatever will enable him to do the work. He may be expecting exactly what he requests, but if another tool will do what the employee needs with the same results and efficiency, you probably are not obliged to provide it.

When you start to have doubts about whether a person with a disability is being truthful with you about an accommodation or about an access need he has, take a step back and think about it. Try to get some further information about his particular condition, bearing in mind that he may not share the exact characteristics of the example descriptions about his particular disability you find during your research.

It is not necessary just to take a disabled person’s word for it when he says he needs some special conditions. You can ask for supporting evidence.

It may be that it’s only your perception that the problem is disability related. The worker, regardless of the existence of a disability, may be unable to perform the work simply because he is unprepared, unqualified, undermotivated, poorly trained or equipped, or not motivated by his direct supervisor in your company. Address these issues first—not your assumptions about the disability.

Here are five tips Jim Hasse has collected over the years:

1. Talk directly to the individual who has raised the issue. It could be a miscommunication. Once you have visited with the person, you may be able to find out more about the real issue (or if there is an issue at all).

2. Keep discussion about the employee to a minimum when the person in question is not present or is not totally informed about outside discussions. There is a tendency to patronize the person with a disability when he is “discussed” without having equal opportunity to contribute in such discussions.

3. Watch for resentment among coworkers. There may be other workers who regard reasonable accommodations as “special treatment,” which they then resent. Nip that in the bud by being open and honest with everyone concerned. Be willing to negotiate—but only what is truly fair.

4. Avoid taking into consideration what nondisabled coworkers say. They may be “ratting” on the disabled person. Their own fear and prejudice could be at work, trying to get the employee with a disability to leave.

5. Be willing to admit you may have made a wrong hiring decision. If you have hired a person with a disability and clearly see that that person does not fit the job or your company, clarify and restate your expectations in terms of job performance and interpersonal relationships for the individual and then give him respectful, positive, nonpunitive ways to stay or choose not to stay.

FAQ: Guidelines on Confidentiality for Employees with Disabilities Under the ADA

The following questions and answers about information and confidentiality under EEOC and ADA guidelines are based on information provided by the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, Inc. (NYLPI), 151 West 30th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10001-4007 (telephone: 212-244-4664; fax: 212-244-4570). NYLPI’s website is at www.nylpi.org.

This paraphrased information is only an overview and should not be regarded as legal advice. Consult your legal counsel about specific situations you may face as an employer.

Question: Can I ask an employee for medical or psychiatric information about his or her disability?

Answer: No, under most circumstances. However, there are some important exceptions to this rule:

After Extending a Conditional Offer of Employment

You may require a medical and/or psychiatric examination or ask questions related to the employee’s physical or mental disability. You are allowed to do this only if you require all entering employees in the same job category to be subject to the same inquiries or examination, regardless of disability.

While the inquiries or examination do not need to be related to the job, if you use the results of these inquiries or examination to screen out an individual because of disability, you must prove that the exclusionary criteria are job related and consistent with business necessity and cannot be met with “reasonable accommodation.”

After Hiring an Employee

You can ask an employee to volunteer information about whether she has a disability for affirmative action–reporting purposes. However, it’s up to her whether or not to provide this information to you.

You may ask an employee about her disability if she requests a “reasonable accommodation” to carry out the responsibilities of the job.

You are allowed to ask for medical or psychiatric information when an employee is returning to work after being absent for a disability-related reason and you want to know that she is able to return safely to work and perform the requirements of the job.

As of this writing, you may ask an employee about her disability when she is having difficulty with her job and you have a reasonable basis for believing that a disability is affecting her ability to perform the essential functions of her job or to work without posing a direct threat to herself or others. But check the current ADA and EEOC positions on this issue at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/links/ADAtam1.html#III and at http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/
docs/accommodation.html.

Question: Can I ask an employee to see a doctor employed or hired by my company?

Answer: Yes, in all of the aforementioned situations except for the affirmative action situation. When you ask an employee to see a doctor hired and compensated by your company for reasonable accommodation purposes, any medical examination must be job related and consistent with “business necessity” (which means the examination must be limited to determining the existence of a disability and the need for reasonable accommodation).

Question: Can a doctor hired by my company talk to an employee’s private physician about his or her medical condition or history?

Answer: That’s reasonable and legal to do so, but the employee’s doctor must have permission from the employee before discussing her medical condition or history. A savvy employee will permit your company’s doctor to discuss only information about her current condition and abilities—not her entire medical or psychiatric history.

Question: If an employee asks for a reasonable accommodation, can I ask for specific information about her disability?

Answer: Yes, if the disability in question and the need for reasonable accommodation are not obvious or you have not already received enough information to show that an ADA disability is involved, you can ask for more specific information.

Note that you cannot ask for documentation when the disability and the need for reasonable accommodation are obvious or when the employee has already provided sufficient information to establish the existence of an ADA disability and the need for reasonable accommodation.

Question: Exactly what am I legally allowed to ask?

Answer: You may ask an employee to provide medical or psychiatric documentation that she has a disability and document why the accommodation she is requesting is needed for her disability or because of her disability.

In requesting documentation, you need to state the specific information you require about the disability, the resulting functional limitations, and the need for reasonable accommodation (all narrowly tailored information).

Question: Can I ask for and obtain an employee’s entire medical or psychiatric record?

Answer: No. But you may ask an employee to sign a limited release, which allows you to ask a set of specific questions of her health care professional.

An employee may refuse to provide the medical or psychiatric release you request, if she believes that information is irrelevant to her current ability to do the job. You may generate an EEOC complaint, if, upon that refusal, you do not provide a reasonable accommodation or allow the employee to return to or remain at her job.

Question: Do I have to keep medical or psychiatric information about an employee confidential?

Answer: Yes. You must collect and maintain such information on separate forms and in separate medical files, apart from the usual personnel files. However, there are five limited exceptions to the ADA confidentiality requirements:

1. Supervisors and managers may be told about necessary restrictions on the work or duties of the employee and about necessary accommodations.

2. First aid and safety personnel may be told if the disability might require emergency treatment.

3. Government officials investigating compliance with the ADA must be given relevant information on request.

4. Employers may give information to state workers compensation offices, state Second Injury Funds, or workers compensation insurance carriers in accordance with state workers compensation laws.

5. Employers may use the information for insurance purposes.

(As previously noted, please note that the information in this chapter as well as the rest of this book is not presented as legal advice but as guidelines from experts and expert sources.)

How to Prevent a Disability Discrimination Lawsuit

Preventing discrimination against disabled people in your company’s staffing requires a great deal of self-examination. You must look at everything—from your hiring practices to the language in your documentation to the work environment (in terms of both physical and interpersonal conditions). This self-examination can prevent a less than comfortable examination by a court of law.

Preventative Steps

Here are some initial steps you can take in your effort to eliminate the opportunity for discrimination in your company’s employment practices.

Know the law. If you are under the jurisdiction of U.S. law (or that of another country) that protects the rights of disabled employees, it is important that you acquaint yourself thoroughly with it and with the case law stemming from it.

Obtain appropriate counsel. A law firm that specializes in employment law can identify problem areas and recommend solutions.

Review your job descriptions. Make sure you can identify essential functions as distinct from those that can be handled cooperatively or with adaptive equipment.

Examine your hiring procedures. Make sure your job applications do not call for information referring to physical or mental capacities that cannot be shown to be directly related to the job the applicant seeks. Make sure interviews or tests are accessible (i.e., people with a range of disabilities can access them from a physical as well as an informational standpoint).

Use medical examinations fairly and respectfully. Uniformity (a policy that applies to all employees with a particular job classification) is the key concept here.

Codify decision making. Create a well-documented and adhered-to procedure for hiring decisions and use it for all hiring—not just deciding whether to hire a person with a disability.

Train personnel, especially interviewers and supervisors, about disabilities and the law. Such awareness training is most effective when it eventually covers a wide range of disabilities and involves trainers who can speak from experience because they, themselves, have a disability. Awareness training also needs to be conducted within a wide range, vertically and horizontally, of your workforce.

Conduct employee evaluations on a strict schedule. By applying the same standards to all workers and informing them of problems and disciplinary actions according to established procedures, you demonstrate that you have evaluated the complaining employee objectively. Also provide a clear grievance procedure. Conduct exit interviews no matter what the reason for the worker’s departure.

These are just some of the ways you can start lawsuit-proofing your human resources policies and procedures. Contact your attorney, your local human rights commission, or your state’s Business Leadership Network for more in-depth information.

Documentation Is the Key

Documenting the accommodation plans you and your employee work out together, including before-and-after evaluations, is one tool for lessening the possibility of a discrimination suit. Broadening your documentation to include how you have improved policies and practices and any other proactive efforts can help protect you, too. Consult your attorney for guidance about what and how to document your inclusion initiatives.

It is important to understand the legal concept of “discrimination.” If you or your representative refuses to hire a disabled job applicant or neglects to promote (or decides to fire) a disabled employee, it is not necessarily discrimination. If you refuse to hire or promote him or fire him because of his disability and cannot show that the disability truly prevented him from doing the job, then it is discrimination.

The act is not what determines the discrimination; the motivation for the act is the discrimination. Careful documentation can be the lynchpin in your defense—that your decision was sound and unrelated to an intention to discriminate.

Your legal obligation as an employer is to provide for the mechanical or strategic bridge that provides the pathway for inclusion. The nuances of this requirement depend on where you are. The ADA uses the qualifiers “reasonable accommodation” and “undue hardship.” These “outs” actually add considerably to the importance of good documentation about your inclusion efforts. Courts make decisions about your goodwill efforts by examining what steps you have taken to promote and fulfill your obligation for inclusion.

By being solution oriented, you can avoid a discrimination lawsuit. But keep records of what you’ve tried, what you and the worker have negotiated, what resulted, and how you measured those results. A true good-faith effort will reveal itself in the records you keep.

For further information, see “The ADA: Your Responsibilities as an Employer” at http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/ada17.html.

Curtis Bryan and Randy Hammer Make Blindness Irrelevant in Serving Customers

Here’s a success story that spans a decade.

Curtis Bryan, manager of client services for CIS at Illuminet in Olympia, Washington, says it was easy to provide adaptive technology for Randy Hammer, when he hired him to serve the telecommunication company’s customers.

“He was the first person I called,” says Bryan in an interview for eSight in 2002. Charged with developing a new department to analyze and coordinate changes made in key software and systems, Bryan picked up the phone in the spring of 2000 and called someone he had worked with at Weyerhaeuser, a lumber and paper titan in the Pacific Northwest. This young man was Randy Hammer, who had impressed Bryan with his superior teamwork skills and ability to learn quickly.

The fact that Hammer was blind was, says Bryan, “irrelevant.”

At that time, Illuminet, a publicly traded company headquartered in Olympia, was providing advanced nationwide signaling and specialized network database services to communications carriers as well as prepaid wireless services through its subsidiary, National Telemanagement Corporation in Dallas, Texas.

Illuminet needed top-flight workers, and Hammer was a top-flight worker. Hammer, who became blind as a child, was happy to make the move to an exciting company in a location that was also a better commute.

No Concerns About Adaptive Technology

Bryan had himself been aware of some of the developments in making computers accessible for those with disabilities, but he had not seen them at work until he met Randy Hammer. The young graduate from Evergreen State College had appeared in the University of Washington’s DO-IT videos, which highlight motivated college students with disabilities who are using technology to advance their career goals. Hammer had also switched from MicroTalk’s ASAW to new software, HenterJoyce’s JAWS for Windows, which was more compatible with Weyerhaeuser’s in-house software. JAWS is a speech output application that works with a wide variety of screen configurations.

Bryan had seen for himself how readily, with this tool, Hammer could equal or better any other worker, so he had no concerns when he asked Hammer if he wanted to work at Illuminet.

“The expense was minimal,” Bryan admits. “Nothing we would even worry about. In fact, we’d ordered it before Randy even started working here.”

The only barrier these two ran into was that the software arrived during Hammer’s second day on the job. But, Hammer says, “I just downloaded the JAWS for Windows demo from Henter-Joyce’s website to use on my first day. I was able to get to work right away.”

Illuminet purchased the access software for about $1,500 and added a software maintenance agreement. “The computer,” Hammer adds, “already had the sound card you use with JAWS for Windows.”

Bryan says he wishes other employers knew how easy this was. He adds, “Our building was 10 years old [at that time], so it was already wheelchair accessible. We have been successful in accommodating other disabilities as well. With Randy, the only other thing we needed to do was go to less paper and more electronic communications, but we were doing that anyway.”

Hired for His Capability

Describing Randy Hammer, Bryan says, “Randy shines! He is a wonderful employee and earns all the kudos he gets. He was hired for his capability more than his experience. When I wanted to hire him and some were concerned that he may not have had the experience he would need, I told them that he is the quickest learner I’ve ever met. He has a natural aptitude for serving our customers.”

Bryan can’t say if being blind helped Hammer develop his skills or if he comes by them naturally, but he credits Randy’s success to other qualities as well: memorization, organizational ability, and troubleshooting skills. “He has a different perspective on problems because, at least in part, he uses slightly different tools.”

Illuminet and Hammer learned to solve unanticipated issues. When asked to provide drawn charts for reports, Hammer turned to Bryan for help. “I was glad to do it,” Bryan says. “And I tried to make sure all our charts had good accompanying text so Randy could use them.”

Hammer himself was a resourceful worker when other challenges came up. When he needed to help others within Illuminet, he ran into the barrier that JAWS for Windows was not installed on everyone’s computer. But he had so much experience doing support via the telephone that having a coworker just read the screen was all he needed.

Fast forward to 2010.

Bryan continues to work in information technology services in the Seattle area.

Hammer is manager of systems administration and support, directly supervising a six-person technical support team at Transaction Network Services, the parent company of Illuminet.

After bouncing between people and project supervision and finally settling on people management as his track, Hammer gives this decade-wide perspective: “The technology that we have today is vastly improved from when I started working at Illuminet in April 2000. There are very few barriers technologically to a visually impaired employee with today’s software.”

What to Remember from This Example

Bryan’s experience in hiring Hammer demonstrates the three main recommendations members of eSight Careers Network said they wanted to pass along to you as an employer—once they knew some of their blog entries would be included in this book. Here are their tips (in priority order):

1. Focus on individual abilities. Focus on how an individual job candidate can be an asset to your organization instead of that person’s disability. Since no two people are alike, assumptions about their abilities and disabilities are often misleading. So, evaluate both ability and disability on an individual basis.

2. Look at core attributes. Hire job candidates who have learned to live well with their disabilities and, in the process, have developed a personal sense of creativity, adaptability, and flexibility—attributes that can spark problem solving, interdependency, and innovation in your organization.

3. Allow for career growth. Gear your recruitment efforts toward job candidates with disabilities only when you have a sincere intent to address their career aspirations and provide them the same opportunities for accessible training, career development, and internal advancement you provide those who do not have disabilities.

The fact that Hammer is blind was irrelevant in Bryan’s mind when he hired him. Bryan chose Hammer for his organizational ability, troubleshooting skills, and customer orientation. Hammer appears to have an opportunity to grow in his career at Illuminet because Bryan recognized that he had superior teamwork skills and the ability to learn quickly (important attributes in a rapidly changing business sector).

Here are two key questions for you as a human resources executive or hiring manager:

1. If you substitute the word “differences” for the word “disabilities” in the three inclusive recruiting strategies just given, do you change the meaning of any of these guidelines?

2. If you see substantial overlap between these three recommendations and the priorities in your company’s diversity policy statements, is there any reason why disability should not be a part of your company’s diversity initiative?

These three recommendations stand alone as just good recruiting, hiring, placement, and development principles.

As eSight Careers Network member Barney Mayse urges, “Let’s grow beyond the idea that diversity is just about culture and skin color.” By doing so, you’ll have an opportunity to have first dibs on recruiting the top job candidates with talent, persistence, skill, and authenticity in a relatively untapped pool of job seekers with disabilities.

QUICK TIPS FROM THIS CHAPTER

Self-Esteem and Workplace Performance

As one of the pillars of emotional intelligence, self-esteem provides a capacity for regeneration—an attribute that gives top-notch job candidates with disabilities the resiliency to cope effectively with personal vulnerability. That resiliency is invaluable in job candidates because it can help your work group continue to succeed. For more information, see “Passport to Self-Esteem Is Easier Than You Might Think” at http://www.odt.org/SEP%20Press%20Release.htm.

Paternalism in the Workplace

Maturity, respect, credibility—all three are in jeopardy for both the individual with a disability and your corporate culture when paternalism is allowed to grow, largely because of lack of awareness and misinformation. For another view of paternalism, see “Court Says ADA Does Not Require Companies to Hire Those with Health Risks” at http://www.accessiblesociety.org/
topics/ada/echazabal1.htm.

Validating an Employee as an Equal Member of Your Team

When you hire an employee with a disability, you may forget the basics of supervision and leadership and try to accommodate that person in ways that are inappropriate. That sets up unrealistic expectations for the organization, for the person with the disability, and for that person’s colleagues. For more information, see “Effective Interaction: Communicating with and About People with Disabilities in the Workplace” at http://www.dol.gov/odep/pubs/
fact/effectiveinteraction.htm.

Choosing the Right Mentor

Hiring managers may be concerned about hiring individuals with disabilities because of a potential drain on company time and resources when the new employee has real or perceived limitations. Assigning mentors to these newly hired people directly addresses that concern. For more about why employees with disabilities need mentors, see “Restricted Access: A Survey of Employers About People with Disabilities and Lowering Barriers to Work” at http://www.heldrich.rutgers.edu/
uploadedFiles/Publications/Restricted%20Access.pdf.

Helping an Employee with a Disability Grow in His Job

You and your employee with a disability may have a mutual interest. Someone who is “different” has a larger than usual stake in how well you perform as a leader. And he can be your bellwether. The extra time you may be required to spend in helping him perform well in his job and as a member of your team may actually provide you with an opportunity to showcase your skills—and grow—as a leader. For more information, see “Managing Diverse Employees with Disabilities” at http://www.icdri.org/Employment/
managingdivers.htm.

Removing Barriers to Achievement

Most obstacles to achievement among employees with disabilities occur unintentionally—even in companies with genuinely inclusive philosophies. Many times the barrier is simply an oversight, a “Gee, I never thought of that!” Never let your assumptions or lack of access block achievement. For more information, see “Survey of Employer Perspectives on the Employment of People with Disabilities” at http://www.dol.gov/odep/documents/
survey_report_jan_09.doc.

Adaptive Technology for Specific Disabilities

Adaptive technology is available today for making each type of disability an irrelevant factor in how a person can perform in the workplace. See the JAN’s “For Employers,” a service of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/empl/index.htm.

Guidelines for Reasonable Accommodation Under the ADA

Title I of the ADA outlines specific guidelines for work-site accommodation, job restructuring, modified work schedules and leave, modified policies, and equipment and services. See the JAN’s “Employers’ Practical Guide to Reasonable Accommodation Under the American with Disabilities Act (ADA)” at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/
Erguide/index.htm.

Who Should Pay for What Under What Circumstances

There are at least seven general options for funding the adaptive technology a new employee with a disability may need. That means with today’s adaptive technology employing a worker who has a disability is possible and entirely feasible for even the smallest and most budget squeezed of employers. Consider the total accommodation and stipulate what works best for you, the employer, and the employee, and then decide who should fairly take responsibility for what. For more information, see “Accommodation” at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/topics/
accommo.htm.

When You Are Being Manipulated

When you start to have doubts about whether a person with a disability is being truthful with you about an accommodation or about an access need he has, take a step back and think about it. For more information, see “Accommodation Requests” at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/Erguide/Three.htm#B.

Guidelines for Information and Confidentiality Under the ADA

You may require a medical and/or psychiatric examination or ask questions related to a new employee’s physical or mental disability. However, you are allowed to do this only if you require all entering employees in the same job category to be subject to the same inquiries or examination, regardless of disability. For more information, see “Medical Exams and Inquiries” at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/topics/medexinq.htm.

Preventing a Disability Lawsuit

Documenting the accommodation plans you and your employee work out together, including before-and-after evaluations, is one tool for lessening the possibility of a discrimination suit. Broadening your documentation to include how you have improved policies and practices and any other proactive efforts can help protect you, too. Consult your attorney for guidance about what and how to document your inclusion initiatives. For more information, see “Seven Essential Elements of Quality Disability Documentation” at http://ahead.org/resources/
best-practices-resources/elements.

Making Blindness Irrelevant in Servicing Customers

In hiring Randy Hammer, Curtis Bryan followed the three recommendations eSight Careers Network members would like to pass along to you as an employer: (1) focus on individual abilities, (2) look at core attributes, and (3) allow for career growth. For more information, see “Business, Disability and Employment: Corporate Models of Success Manual” at http://www.worksupport.com/
research/printView.cfm/578.