New Survey On Employment of Americans With Disabilities

Since the Americans with Disabilities Act became law in 1990, there has been substantial progress in efforts among people with disabilities (PwDs) to be functionally equal members of society here in the United States. However, on one important marker of PwD participation in the larger society -- jobs -- there appears to be little improvement in the employment statistics of PwDs. Earlier this week, the Kessler Foundation/National Organization on Disability released the 2010 Survey of Employment of Americans with Disabilities, which found that "little progress has been made in closing the employment gap between people with and without disabilities since the passage of the ADA into law."  Sue Robitaille explores this topic further on Abledbody.com.

Let Your Fingers Do The Hiring: Part 2

Following up on everyone’s feedback and my response, I would like to add further clarity and color to my original article on Braille and employment.Born profoundly deaf, I often swam against the tide of popular opinion about deaf and hard-of-hearing people, just as successful non-Braille users did in swimming against the tide of popular opinion about blind and visually-impaired people which assumes that all blind people use Braille. While myriad educational choices were, and are, always available to deaf children – whether to teach speaking and listening, whether to teach sign language, or teach both, or follow other educational methods – conventional wisdom among uninformed (and I emphasize uninformed) hearing people was that pretty much all deaf people signed. This impression has made its way into popular media and informs general cultural discussions with regard to the deaf community. For that reason, many hearing people who approach me assume that I grew up relying on sign language to succeed, when that was never the case. I grew up learning to speak and listen, and did not learn sign language until I was 21 years old. Even then, sign language is not my primary mode of communication. I am most comfortable conversing in spoken English.This does not mean that I am against sign language. I am happily fluent in it, and have many deaf friends who I communicate with in sign language. I know many deaf people who have grown up being taught sign language, and have become successful and happy in their lives. Although sign language is the best known, and very popular, mode of communication in the deaf community, it is one of many different and equally valid educational flavors, each with its own strengths and shortcomings.For several decades until the end of the 1970’s, oral education for the deaf was implemented for as many deaf children as possible with little consideration for individual differences. While I have greatly benefited from oral education and count many other deaf friends who benefited as well, I cannot say that this approach was as beneficial for all deaf children. It was an “unmitigated disaster” for the deaf community in that many deaf children who otherwise needed sign language were denied it, sometimes by force. That is why in the 1980’s and particularly 1988 with the Deaf Power Now movement at Gallaudet, there was a backlash against oral education and increased interest in education through sign language, or bilingual education using sign language and English. This trend, however, was not helpful for some deaf children for which the oral or auditory-verbal option could have been more appropriate.By a similar token, uninformed sighted people think every blind person uses or should use Braille, when that has never been, and should never be, the case. Braille is not always appropriate for everyone in the blind community. That 90% of employed people know Braille means that the other 10% who are employed do not use Braille and still were employed.The point of my article is that Braille has become less accessible to blind people who have a need for it. It does not overtly say that Braille should be the be-all and end-all for every blind person, only that it is an essential tool to enable blind people to more effectively use the written word. My article is critical of the school administrators who made assumptions that non-Braille technologies are good enough for blind children, without examining carefully the skills and abilities of each child and whether that child has a need for Braille support. A school administrator who is extremely knowledgeable about the value of the Braille system, and extremely knowledgeable about the value of other assistive technologies for the blind, is in a much better position to evaluate the educational needs of a blind child than one who is not as knowledgeable. If that administrator says that this child does not need Braille to have a good education, then that administrator’s word carries far more credibility than the word of another administrator who cannot claim to have that level of knowledge. I take to task the educators who are not as informed or ignorant of the subtle and not-so-subtle issues in the blind community, and yet make decisions that impact the lives of blind children. This has unfortunately been a problem in the past couple of decades as the number of blind people using Braille declined.Technology is an empowering tool for people with disabilities, and also a tool that should be used carefully and appropriately – especially in cases where non-technological approaches can be just as beneficial, if not more so, to a person with a disability. I have had a cochlear implant (CI) for five years and I love it. Children as young as 8 months have undergone surgery for CI’s. The popular media has called the CI a device that “cures” their deafness and helps them to “hear again” (as if babies born deaf had ever heard sound in the first place!). This has given some parents the mistaken assumption that the CI will fix everything that is wrong with the baby’s hearing – when that is never the case. Consistent therapy, lots of elbow grease, and active parental involvement are essential to the educational success of a child implanted with a CI.This is the important rule that should be observed no matter what type of disability: evaluate each person on an individual basis, and evaluate that person well in the context of known tools, devices, and methods that have been verified to succeed for other persons with the same disability. It’s the approach I have tried to take in my writings and commentaries about issues relevant to people with disabilities, especially in the business world.

Let Your Fingers Do The Hiring: Responding to Your Comments

Last week, I wrote an article about Braille, the blind, and unemployment, titled, “Let Your Fingers Do the Hiring: Blind People and Employment.” With one exception to date, blind people I reached out to, or who posted comments on my blog, were positive in their praise of my article. My followup post is in response to a successful blind professional who wrote a point-by-point response that challenges the points I presented in my article.  Given the points he made, his response is best addressed here in a full post instead of in the Comments section.Michael Squillace, a software engineer who is blind and does not use Braille, has posted his comments here in full.  Below are my responses, with Squillace's comments in italics:

Since you have seemed to come up empty-handed in terms of finding information regarding, "..blind people who were able to lead quality lives without the use of Braille," let me assure you that there are plenty of us.

I stand by my article 100%.  Perhaps some sentences could have been phrased better, but my basic argument remains unchanged.People who succeeded in their lives and careers without relying on Braille should definitely be recognized. When I searched on the web for, and inquired around about, blind people who grew up and how they were educated, I was very skeptical of the lack of information on blind people who were successful without Braille. I knew they were out there -- those 10% of employed and legally blind people who do not use Braille -- and  I wanted to give them their due in my article, but I just had no empirical information available, and thus no stories to tell.  After I posted this article, I emailed some blind people and advocates for the blind, and asked for their feedback. The comments of those who responded were uniformly positive, which surprised me given the fact that I could not find successful blind or visually-impaired people who do not use Braille.I would appreciate information on any blind people who do not rely on Braille and have become successful in their lives or careers.  The more diversity, the better.Yet this is not the point of my article, which is about the decline of Braille as a result of decisions made by schools that were not well-informed and did not consider the whole spectrum of educational options available to blind and visually-impaired children. It is unfortunately an ongoing problem in other disability groups.

I resent the comment that our lives as blind persons have been an "unmitigated disaster" simply due to our not using braille, many of us by our own choice. You might just as well claim that blind people live intolerably horrible lives and have made little progress in the years since the Federal Rehabilitations Act because they did not receive, say, adequate orientation and mobility training, which many of us have not.

Yes, “unmitigated disaster” were strong words to use. There is no denying that 50% of blind people used Braille in the 1960’s and just 10% use Braille today, and that the statistics I show indicate the educational level among blind people have declined during that time. It is a disaster nonetheless, whether it was caused by declining use of Braille or other factors, and I was perhaps dramatic with the use of “unmitigated.” This does not mean that there are no blind people who have succeeded in their lives and careers without the use of Braille.This article in last December's New York Times was one of the guiding posts for my article. It examines both sides of the braille debate -- those who prefer to read print, and those who prefer to read Braille.Michael, you clearly have done well without relying on Braille, and I am not surprised there are others like you.  Born profoundly deaf, I do speak and listen well, and did not learn sign language until I was 21.  I worked extremely hard to be where I am in terms of spoken communication.  Just as I worked very hard to learn to speak, I am sure that some blind people have to work just as hard as I did to be able to spell and write well, and it is easier for some to do so by learning Braille.  This is not to say that every blind person has to learn Braille.  I certainly did not need sign language in order to speak and listen well, but other deaf people I know do want sign language to aid in their educational development, and they have become successful in their lives as a result.You mentioned “many of us by our own choice.” I have no statistics or hard data, but it would be safe to assume that blind and visually-impaired people who are not successful in their careers, and do not use Braille, came into this situation through decisions made for them during their childhoods that may have something to do with not using Braille.  Among the deaf and hard-of-hearing, and in other disability groups, some people have had choices made for them that in retrospect were ill-advised.  For blind people who became successful, whether they rely on Braille or not, the choices they made have little to do with the points I make in my article.The other person who made a comment to my article says, and it bears repeating here:  "I think the argument is that blind children need to be taught braille or they will have a strong potential to not be able to communicate in a written form effectively. Being able to write and spell is critical to getting a good job."

It is true that braille literacy has significantly decreased but that should not be equated with or somehow naturally imply that literacy or communicative skills of blind persons have diminished.

Nowhere in my article do I say that literacy has diminished, or that communicative skills have diminished. All I have written about is the ability of blind individuals to express themselves in the written word, either through Braille or without.

the fact that 90% of persons who use braille are employed should not be surprising. Since, given your own statistics, most of these adults have been of workforce age longer than those who do not learn braille, naturally they have had more of an opportunity to find stable, long-term, gainful employment. More generally, however, the fact that there is such a high unemployment rate among blind adults is, I believe, not attributable to their lack of braille usage. Rather, I believe that access to assistive technologies like screen readers and screen magnifiers in this information age significantly hinders opportunities in education, employment, and entertainment.

I cite these statistics in my article without further interpretation of the numbers. I lay out the numbers for people to digest, and have not offered further discussion on them other than to paint a fuller picture of the blind community. However, one sentence I wrote, “Employment statistics paint an even more powerful picture of how blind people live out their lives,” could have been more diplomatically worded.Can you elaborate further on what you mean about assistive technologies like screen readers and screen magnifiers, which “hinder opportunities?” How does this square with your achievements in utilizing those assistive technologies?

Also, since you are so interested in the differences among different groups of PWDS, consider that blind people still face a great deal of fear and ignorance in all walks of life. People still talk about me in the third person to my wife, still cower at my approach, and still speak to me as if I am deaf rather than blind. I do not believe that any other disability group faces more fear or ignorance on a regular basis and many (like your own) face much less. Finally, I find it a little odd that you, as a deaf person, would have so much to say about blindness and how best to cope with it. I would not think of making claims about the benefits of sign language for your community because I know so little about it and because signing is so foreign to me as a blind person. Regardless of the statistics you find so intriguing, perhaps you ought best to refrain from judging the quality of life of a group of persons so entirely different in their lifestyle and their everyday activities from your own.

It is presumptuous to say that the blind community “faces more fear or ignorance on a regular basis” than other disability groups, mine included. Each disability group has its own challenges in how it is perceived and labeled by the non-disabled population. There should not be, and never should be, any moral hierarchy among disability groups in terms of how they are negatively perceived by non-disabled people. It is enough to say that there should never be one single case of negative labeling or perception of any individual with a disability, ever.As you find it odd that I, “as a deaf person, would have so much to say about blindness and how best to cope with it,” I also find it odd that you take the moral road and say that blind people like you face more fear or ignorance than other disability groups, without knowing much about what other disability groups, including mine, face in their own worlds. Like Ana Rodarte, a woman featured on Oprah who has severe neurofibromatosis, a condition in which her face is so extremely disfigured that people scream and run away wherever she goes. Or a intelligent person in a wheelchair I met who has little control over the motor functions of his face and, as a result, drools into a cup – I have seen, to paraphrase your own words, “people talk in the third person about him, still cower at his approach, and speak of him as if he is deaf rather than mobility-impaired.” Or a child with dyslexia – people may think she is not intelligent and lacks attention, a perception that could do as much psychological damage to her self-esteem as someone who talks about a blind child in the third person and ignores him.No one should make a subjective moral determination that a group with a particular disability faces more fear or ignorance on a regular basis than another group with a different disability. We can make definitive moral determinations about individuals with disabilities based on their particular situation (i.e. a blind child in New Jersey was teased and made fun of by a group of boys, and then dragged and beaten up on the street, versus a child on a wheelchair in Texas who is just teased in the school halls but do not suffer physical abuse). But we should not make the same moral determinations about disability groups as a whole. Otherwise this invites labeling and stereotyping.Finally, in response to the comment that I “as a deaf person, would have so much to say about blindness and how best to cope with it,” where do I say in my article how blind people should cope with their own disability? I do not step on a soapbox and claim to be an expert on blindness, but instead try to draw on primary and secondary sources and comment as best I can on a disability I have no personal familiarity with. All the commentary in my article is based on information from different perspectives that are available on the web, including scientific articles, newspaper clippings, and the websites of the National Federation of the Blind (which according to the New York Times "frowns upon" reading print) and American Foundation for the Blind.Some blind and visually-impaired people, and their advocates, have written me to say it was a well-done article.  Yet I do not seek perfection -- I always seek out opposing viewpoints in an effort to promote diversity, original thinking and honest critique.  Thanks, Michael, for your insights and please feel free to comment anytime.

April Unemployment Rate for People with Disabilities: 15.2%

Earlier this week, I wrote here about the high U.S. unemployment rate among people with disabilities (PwDs) and spelled out some reasons -- obvious and not so obvious -- for the gap between this rate and the general U.S. unemployment rate.Today, the U.S. Department of Labor announced the unemployment rate for PwDs in April. The rate: 15.2%, a dramatic increase of 9% from the March rate of 13.9%. During the same period, the general U.S. unemployment rate rose from 9.7% to 9.9% -- a much slower rate of increase of 2%.Without access to specific data explaining the steep increase in the PwD unemployment rate versus the general population, I am refraining from making any conclusions on the disparity in the rate increases.  However, it is safe to assume that the underlying basic causes behind higher unemployment among PwDs, which I wrote about in my original post, can play a major role in accelerating the rate of increase in the PwD unemployment rate.I am interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

Let Your Fingers Do the Hiring: Blind People and Employment

In the disability world, there is often a difference of opinion on whether it is more appropriate to enroll a disabled child in a school specifically geared toward him or her, or to mainstream the child with non-disabled children in the general educational system. The decision on how to enroll a disabled child has major implications on the way the child spends his or her life as an adult, and importantly, the type of career the adult pursues.The degree of difference in educational approaches varies by disability -- those with serious developmental disabilities are usually placed in disability-specific schools, while paraplegics and quadriplegics are generally mainstreamed. Some types of disability, especially deafness, lend themselves to more complex debates on educational approaches. Generally, if a disabled child is put in a school that specifically educates children with the same type of disability, he/she would get an education geared toward accommodating the disability, but at the expense of forgoing educational opportunities otherwise available to mainstreamed children. On the other hand, while the disabled child who is mainstreamed may develop a strong education and interact on a regular basis with non-disabled children, this would be at the expense of social development, especially where the non-disabled peers are not appreciative and accommodating of the child's disability (up to the point of bullying, deliberate ignorance, or just an innocuous lack of awareness of the disabled condition). Technology has, particularly in the last decade, become a very strong influence in the decisions parents and professionals make in the education of disabled children.This debate has been surprisingly consistent across all types of disabilities, including the deaf, the blind, the mentally challenged, etc. What is very interesting about this debate is that, depending on the disability, the benefits of one educational approach is more obvious, while with other disabilities, the benefits of either educational approach (mainstreamed and non-mainstreamed) are not as clear-cut and often result in very spirited and emotional discussions on the fate of the child. As a deaf person, I have often experienced a high level of tension in the dialogue between those who champion sign language as a primary mode of communication in education (usually requiring schools well-trained in sign language, or sign language programs within mainstreamed schools), while others emphasize the auditory-verbal method (which is used to a great extent in mainstreamed education and at oral schools for the deaf).In the blind and visually-impaired community, however, there is stronger and stronger evidence indicating that as more blind children are mainstreamed, they are increasingly becoming divorced from Braille, a mode of communication that is essential to their ability to understand and interpret the written word. As a person who values the appropriateness of different modes of education for different people with the same disability, I tried over the years to find information on blind people who were able to lead quality lives without the use of Braille, and have come up almost empty in my research. Looking at the available statistics on employment and education for the blind, it is patently evident that the blind community has been very ill-served by the lack of use of Braille in education in the last three decades.In 1973, Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability in Federal programs, and in programs that receive assistance from the U.S. Government. Among the more well known sections of this act are Sections 504 and 508, which requires these programs to provide reasonable accommodations to children and adults with disabilities, using technologies that enable these people to have functional equivalence to those in the non-disabled population.The passage of this act had a major impact on the education of people with disabilities, as it made it possible for PwD's to receive an education in mainstreamed settings, increasing access to educational, professional and social options. Over the next few decades, however, the application of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 has been uneven, as many PwD's saw their quality of life increase, while other PwD's suffered. For the blind community, the 1973 Act has been an unmitigated disaster, with across-the-board declines in blind people's quality of life. For many decades before the 1960's, the blind and visually-impaired relied on the Braille system to help them read, and express themselves through writing. In an age where the written word, aided by the Industrial Revolution and its impact on book publishing and world literacy, became a crucial part of a person's life, Braille enabled the blind to better understand and express the written word and keep themselves on a par with the seeing world. In schools for the blind, teachers used the Braille system to help blind children learn English.Starting in the early 1960's, and accelerating after the 1973 passage of the Rehabilitation Act, the decisions to educate blind children increasingly resided with administrators in thousands of school districts, and less on schools for the blind. With the advent of new technologies that enabled blind people to utilize more diverse tools to understand the written word, school districts increasingly determined that if blind students could rely on these new -- and cheaper -- technologies, it did not make sense for the schools to pay for the more expensive outlay of braille devices. So, a whole generation of blind children grew up with little access to Braille.According to a study by the National Federation of the Blind, less than 10 percent of the 1.3 million legally blind people in the U.S. use Braille, compared to 50 percent a generation ago.  Other statistics show that among legally blind children, just 12 percent read in Braille, and Braille literacy rates are declining around the world.More interestingly, over 70 percent of blind adults are unemployed, and 50 percent of blind high school students drop out.Employment statistics paint an even more powerful picture of how blind people live out their lives:  90 percent of blind adults who are Braille-literate are employed, while just 33 percent of blind adults who do not use Braille are employed.Why the shift away from Braille? Budgetary reasons were the major driving force behind the school districts' decisions, fueled by the districts' perception that blind people would benefit from the new technologies that did not utilize Braille and render the raised-dot mode of reading unnecessary. Screen readers, raised print, and text-to-speech devices, especially in computers and the Internet, have widened the spectrum of selections available to blind people and given them powerful tools to read and interpret the written word. Unfortunately, all of these new technologies lack one essential ingredient that is very important to blind people: their ability to express themselves through the written word. Short of typing on the computer -- which makes it more time-consuming to correct their own typing mistakes -- there is no other technology short of Braille that enables blind people to accurately, expressively, and efficiently communicate in their writing style. While the average seeing person takes for granted the ease of picking up a pen and writing his or her words on paper, or pulling up a keyboard and typing away, this mundane but essential act of writing is not easily available to the blind person.Proponents of alternate forms of technology point to the fact that non-blind people cannot understand Braille and thus would have a hard time communicating with them on legal documents, literature, newspapers, and other expressions of the written word. By enabling blind people to communicate on a platform that is easily understandable by non-blind people, they can better interact in the world at large. That may be true, but it fails to consider blind people's ability to express themselves through the written word. The non-Braille technologies put the power of control in the hands of non-blind people. Braille gives blind people the ability to control their own flow of communication, and perform on the same functional platform as non-blind people.Fortunately there has been a strong push by advocates for the blind community to return Braille to its rightful, historic place in the annals of the blind. Braille readers that transmit text from a computer, such as a document or a website, have been developed, and blind people sometimes prefer to input their words in Braille than on standard computer keyboards which require not only the ability to type, but also a speech synthesizer and a screen reader to read back what is written.Nothing is more plain to the eye than a statistic that shows that 90% of employed blind people use Braille, while 2 out of 3 unemployed blind people do not use Braille.

Wanted: More People with Disabilities in the Workforce

Over the last three years, the Great Recession has been a major news topic in the United States, with the unemployment rate now running at nearly 10%. For people with disabilities (PwDs), unemployment has been a bigger story, with almost 14% of the PwD work force off the payrolls, according to March 2010 data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.And a double whammy: while over 70% of the U.S. population is considered part of the labor force, the same data shows just 22% of the total PwD population participates in the labor force.  With 27 million Americans classified as having a disability, this means that just over 5 million of them are employed. Ideally, even at the overall U.S. unemployment rate of 10%, 17 million PwD's, or 70% of the PwD population, should have a job. The 12 million missing PwDs, if they could actively search for, and ultimately land a job, could add 10% to the total U.S. work force -- not a small number when one is looking for potential sources of additional productivity and wealth.In reality, some of the PwDs are unable to hold a job for any reason due to their own specific disability, so the "12 million missing" figure is too optimistic. But there is no denying there are millions of PwDs relying on government subsidies, family support and other resources to get by, when they have specific skills, talents and expertise to perform satisfactorily in the work force when placed in the right role. Not to mention a unique outlook shaped by their almost daily efforts to resolve challenges which arise because of their specific disabilities. That they deal with adversity every day lends them the ability to work hard and develop creative solutions, which are two qualities essential to the success of any business.It is easy to scapegoat business as the reason for the relatively low employment of PwDs, because of the prevailing attitude among some employers that PwDs do not provide as much added value to a business as someone who is not disabled. This only tells part of the story. There are two other factors that contribute to underemployment of PwDs: a hiring process that is structured in a way that does not allow PwDs an equal platform upon which to market themselves for jobs; and an educational level among PwDs that is lower than that of the general population.Make no mistake, I am a true believer in the free market. People -- disabled or not -- should succeed and sell themselves hard on their own merits without the expectation of external assistance from the government. They should put into practice the values of working hard, overcoming challenges, and developing their own skills and experience to ultimately become indispensable to any employer requiring these credentials. A favorite quotation of mine, "The world always wins," from Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner, is not a fatalistic acceptance of your role in the whole wide world, but rather a Realpolitik appraisal of where you stand, and what you can do to make a major, but realistic, difference in your global community.This does not mean that businesses are exempt from addressing the issue of PwD underemployment. PwDs should compete on a fair, level playing field with those who are not disabled, so they can market their skills effectively and match themselves with employers who have a need for these skills. Yet, in reality, the prevailing myth that PwDs in the workforce cost too much and contribute little, a hiring process that limits access to PwD applicants, and the lack of educational opportunities for PwDs are three strikes against the ability of PwDs to be hired in the workplace, no matter how hard they work and how creative they are in getting themselves recognized.Within many business organizations, there is a reluctance to hire PwDs largely because of long-held myths that they cannot contribute as well as those without disabilities, and also because the cost of accommodating PwD's is thought to be prohibitively expensive. The current Think Beyond the Label campaign debunks these assumptions, and fortunately, more businesses and Fortune 500 companies are embracing the value of diversity in the workforce because it adds creativity, innovation and unique talent to their capabilities, providing them a critical competitive edge in a globalized world.Companies that incorporate diversity into their hiring strategies usually harbor work environments that are wonderfully diverse, very interesting to work in, and allow new ideas and solutions to incubate. This translates into greater awareness of the essential value of PwDs in the workforce, and enables companies to scour the entire labor pool for the talent and skills they need, instead of limiting themselves to the pool of people who are not disabled. When companies underutilize PwD candidates in their hiring practices, there is a tendency for these companies to be less aware of the work contribution value of PwDs, so they miss out on unique skills, talents, and traits that may be harder to find in the non-disabled talent pool.The current hiring process contributes in a way to the above problem. For most companies, PwD job applicants share with non-PwD applicants the same process for applying for jobs, interviewing, and receiving job offers. That is an issue, because the (mostly online) process assumes you can see, hear, talk, and walk. Find a job you like online? Click on the "Apply Now" button. Fill out the information: your name, your address, your phone number, your employment history. (Can you do this when you're blind?) Get a phone call from a hiring manager, asking for a phone interview. (What if you're deaf?) Visit the company for an interview. (What if you're in a wheelchair, and the building is not accessible?) The very nature of access to the online sites weeds out PwDs who otherwise have excellent skills and talents that any company would kill for.While there is no denying that PwDs are just as talented as those who are not disabled, the educational system in the U.S. has not been uniform in its ability to provide opportunities for successful careers for PwDs. Partly because some PwDs students are not valued in the educational system, but more so because of disagreements on how best to educate PwDs, some disabled students go on to incredibly successful careers, while others are held back because the educational system has not afforded them the opportunity to unlock their talents and skills. This is a complex issue that merits an entirely new article focusing on education, but it is worth noting that if PwDs are evaluated on a case-by-case basis rather than within a set of assumptions, their skills and abilities can be more easily identified. Then, based on this information, they can be more effectively placed in the appropriate educational and professional tracks.I do not knock the business world, particularly those companies I have worked with. Compared to 30 years ago, businesses today have been far more progressive in hiring, interviewing, and employing PwDs. More Fortune 500's incorporate disability hiring in their diversity practices today than ever before. Yet, there are still many companies who, at best, are unaware of the potential value of PwDs for their businesses, representing a huge opportunity cost measured in lost productivity, missing wealth and, ultimately, a greater competitive edge.Feel free to share your thoughts. If you would like to share experiences and stories that highlight the issues above, please post them here or send me an email.

Think Beyond The Label...Not? (UPDATE: TV ads ARE Captioned & Campaign has followed up with CNN.)

UPDATE (4:15 pm ET): I have communicated with Barbara Otto at Health & Disability Advocates and she assured me that all of the "Think Beyond The Label" campaign's TV ads and other videos, including those on YouTube, are closed-captioned. She has communicated with CNN and all other media outlets to ensure that future airings of these advertisements are closed-captioned.@BeyondTheLabel posted these two messages on Twitter:

3:19 pm ET: "We are committed to making our website and tv spot accessible, and we indeed made sure our spots were CC. We're looking into CNN's issue."

3:36 pm ET: "We have contacted CNN and all our media outlets on the TV CC issue--please DM us if you see non-CC running anywhere else!"

For what it's worth, another "Think Beyond The Label" advertisement on CNN aired at 3:45 pm and it was still not closed-captioned.It appears to be a problem with CNN. Please disregard my original post.Kudos to Barbara Otto and the "Think Beyond The Label" campaign on being so quick to respond to this issue. It shows their commitment to ensuring that everyone in the community is informed of the campaign and in particular the importance of accessibility for people with disabilities to ensure that they are as productive as, if not more so, those without disabilities in the workplace.======================UPDATE (3:00 pm ET): Barbara Otto of Health & Disability Advocates, which is leading the "Think Beyond The Label" campaign, has informed me that the TV commercial in question is indeed closed-captioned.  She is following up with CNN to find out why it wasn't captioned.==========================ORIGINAL POST (2:00 pm ET): I wrote this article earlier this week about the Think Beyond The Label advertising campaign, a $4 million all-media venture aimed at educating companies about hiring people with disabilities.  I was very pleased to see a campaign that used humor to dispel preconceived notions about the potential productivity of people with disabilities in the workplace.I was watching CNN this afternoon, as it started up its coverage of the advancing Snowmageddon of 2010, when it cut away to commercial. First up was a TV spot from Think Beyond The Label!  Delighted, I settled in to watch the spot -- when it hit me.  It is not captioned.  Or closed-captioned, either.  As a deaf person, I could not understand a word of what was being said.  I sort of got the part at the 0:20 mark about being "coffee-impaired," as a professional woman in the spot, upon hearing something that was said, immediately spit out coffee.  But that was pretty much it.For all the money they spent, and the effort they would have made in educating everyone about people with disabilities in the workplace, the people who ran the Think Beyond The Label campaign forgot the one fundamental fact: the accessibility of their very own TV commercials.  This isn't thinking beyond the label.

That Resume Looks Fantastic! (Psst...She's Disabled.)

Last December, according to Disability Scoop, the unemployment rate for the U.S. was 9.5%. Among people with disabilities, the unemployment rate was 45 percent higher, at 13.8%.There are many possible and sometimes conflicting reasons for the 45% difference, but we can generally agree on a significant cause of this disparity: negative perceptions on the potential performance of people with disabilities in the workplace. It is an unfortunate fact of history -- we would all be living in a perfect world if everyone would be completely tolerant of people with disabilities. As the Afghani character Rahim Khan said to Amir in Khaled Hosseini’s novel Kite Runner, “In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.” However, a subtle shift in perceptions makes a whole world of difference in improving tolerance toward this large and significant group.Someone thinks a blind person would not be able to lead guided tours in museums, a person with no arms cannot operate a forklift or other heavy machinery, or a person with Down syndrome cannot lead an independent lifestyle.Are these perceptions always true?  The problem with these perceptions is that they are all negative-oriented – he can’t, she can’t, they can’t. It may be true in some, but not all, cases that each of these people cannot perform these functions. But that misses the point.When you think about someone you are hiring for your business, consider: Can she do it? Can he get this done? What can that person contribute that others cannot?Can a person with an extremely severe hearing loss be an expert in music? Yes. He was Ludwig von Beethoven. Can a person with one hand become a top pitcher in Major League Baseball, and finish third in Cy Young voting in 1991? Yes. He was Jim Abbott.  Can a person with one leg finish a marathon in just over 3 hours?  Of course!  Amy Palmiero-Winters finished the 2006 Chicago Marathon with a time of 3:06. How did they achieve what they set out to do? Generally, those with disabilities who achieved their goals tended to show high levels of perseverance, originality and a determination to excel. Beethoven loved music, Abbott loved baseball, and Palmiero-Winters loved marathons (even ultra-marathons), so nothing was going to stop them. It was a matter of having the heart and energy to do what they loved. To have the passion to do what they enjoy, trumps any disability these people have.To address the issue of below-average workplace hiring of people with disabilities, an aggressive $4 million advertising campaign led by a coalition of states and non-profit organizations dedicated to people with disabilities was launched for the first half of 2010 in various U.S. media channels. Titled “Think Beyond the Label,” the campaign is running spots on television, in online and offline print, and National Public Radio to encourage businesses to consider employing people with disabilities. (Link to Abledbody.com story on the campaign.)“Think Beyond the Label” is not a typical staid, serious public service announcement. It is a witty take on the contributions that disabled people make to the workplace. A television commercial pokes fun at coffee-drinking-impaired colleagues, while eCards are sent to friends and family pointing to, among other things, a “pattern-impaired” woman who wears mismatched clothes.  Generally, the goal of this campaign is to inform and educate businesses on the value people with disabilities bring to the workplace. In other words, people with disabilities, given the proper skillset and experience, bring as much value as anyone with that skillset would bring to a specific job, so it becomes a matter of evaluating each person on his or her merits and credentials.“Think Beyond the Label” tackles popular myths that pervade the employment process for people with disabilities. In this list of myths is one popular belief: that accommodations for people with disabilities are expensive. In fact, according to “Think Beyond the Label,” a large majority of accommodations costs less than $500, which is less than a week’s pay for a person on a $30,000 annual salary.One intangible that is not mentioned in this campaign, but which is a major part of a disabled person’s approach to life, is the value of being creative in a world that is stacked against people with a physical, mental or cognitive handicap. Having endured a lifetime or near-lifetime of living with a handicap in a “world that always wins,” a person with a disability almost always comes up with an innovative, original way to cope with the handicap and make every effort to lead a high quality of life, no matter how severe the disability.No one would dispute that there are two things that accurately describe a successful person with a disability, but which are not found in his or her resume: that this person has perseverance and a never-say-die attitude.  Adapting to a disability, and coping in a world that is not always designed to accommodate this disability, takes a lot of effort and a lot of energy -- and the successful ones achieved what they set out to do because they loved their jobs and really wanted to make it work.  Those are not bad qualities to have in any job.