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Companies and advocacy groups are stepping up efforts to provide jobs for the rising number of unemployed people with disabilities
By Rachael King
AT&T (T), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Microsoft (MSFT), and a host of other big U.S. companies will meet in November with 60 prospective employees at an event in Morristown, N.J.
This is no ordinary networking schmoozefest. These would-be staffers are capable of handling a broad range of information technology jobs—from software programming to hardware engineering. Something else these people have in common: They all have disabilities.
Career Opportunities for Students with Disabilities, affiliated with the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, convened the summit to reverse what it considers a disturbing increase in the rate of unemployment for people who are battling autism, visual impairments, or other physical or psychological disabilities. "The point of these summits is to encourage students to see that there are employers out there seeking them, and for employers out there to know there are qualified job-seekers," says Alan Muir, executive director of the group.
Even as the disabled workforce shrank by 423,000 to about 4.9 million in the two years through May, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities increased to 15.6 percent from 13.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which began tracking the data in June 2008. The unemployment rate for people with no disabilities dropped to 8.5 percent from 8.9 percent in that same period.
Employment Struggle
The divergence shows that more than 20 years after the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which was designed to foster equal opportunities in employment, people with disabilities continue to struggle to find jobs. "The ADA and the special education laws have combined to produce the best-educated population of people with disabilities in U.S. history," Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Corporate Disability Employment Summit in April. "Now that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting regularly on the employment situation for people with disabilities, we have strong evidence that it has gotten disproportionately worse for workers with disabilities in the last two years," he said.
Some companies including Walgreens (WAG), IBM (IBM), and Lockheed Martin (LMT) are taking steps to improve hiring of people with disabilities. Walgreens, for example, opened a new distribution center in Anderson, S.C., in 2007. The center features simplified touchscreen computers and automated guided vehicles that could be operated by people with disabilities. The company began hiring people with physical and cognitive disabilities. Today, 40 percent of the workers in that center have a disability.
By the end of 2010, the company had hired about 850 such workers in all of its distribution centers. The aim is to increase hiring of people with disabilities to about 20 percent of its distribution center workers, from slightly less than 10 percent at the end of last year.
Creating accommodations for most of those workers cost less than $25 apiece, and they hold the same jobs, receive the same pay, and are held to the same productivity standards as other employees, J. Randolph Lewis, senior vice-president of supply chain and logistics at Walgreens, said in Mar. 2 Senate testimony.
Tech Challenge
When it comes to taking on people with issues such as vision or hearing loss, one challenge is that hiring managers may not understand what tools they’ll need to work productively. IBM has created a Web portal to help suggest specific technologies such as screen readers that blind employees may need or the type of telephone relay service that a deaf person might use. "It makes it really easy for employees to get help," says Frances W. West, director of the IBM Human Ability & Accessibility Center.
IBM hired its first blind person in 1914 and went on to develop technology for those employees, such as talking typewriters and Braille printers. The commitment to assistive technology has long come from upper management. Thomas J. Watson Jr., who became chief executive officer of IBM in 1956, suffered from depression and learning disabilities as a young man.
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By Rachael King
AT&T (T), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Microsoft (MSFT), and a host of other big U.S. companies will meet in November with 60 prospective employees at an event in Morristown, N.J.
This is no ordinary networking schmoozefest. These would-be staffers are capable of handling a broad range of information technology jobs—from software programming to hardware engineering. Something else these people have in common: They all have disabilities.
Career Opportunities for Students with Disabilities, affiliated with the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, convened the summit to reverse what it considers a disturbing increase in the rate of unemployment for people who are battling autism, visual impairments, or other physical or psychological disabilities. "The point of these summits is to encourage students to see that there are employers out there seeking them, and for employers out there to know there are qualified job-seekers," says Alan Muir, executive director of the group.
Even as the disabled workforce shrank by 423,000 to about 4.9 million in the two years through May, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities increased to 15.6 percent from 13.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which began tracking the data in June 2008. The unemployment rate for people with no disabilities dropped to 8.5 percent from 8.9 percent in that same period.
Employment Struggle
The divergence shows that more than 20 years after the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which was designed to foster equal opportunities in employment, people with disabilities continue to struggle to find jobs. "The ADA and the special education laws have combined to produce the best-educated population of people with disabilities in U.S. history," Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Corporate Disability Employment Summit in April. "Now that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting regularly on the employment situation for people with disabilities, we have strong evidence that it has gotten disproportionately worse for workers with disabilities in the last two years," he said.
Some companies including Walgreens (WAG), IBM (IBM), and Lockheed Martin (LMT) are taking steps to improve hiring of people with disabilities. Walgreens, for example, opened a new distribution center in Anderson, S.C., in 2007. The center features simplified touchscreen computers and automated guided vehicles that could be operated by people with disabilities. The company began hiring people with physical and cognitive disabilities. Today, 40 percent of the workers in that center have a disability.
By the end of 2010, the company had hired about 850 such workers in all of its distribution centers. The aim is to increase hiring of people with disabilities to about 20 percent of its distribution center workers, from slightly less than 10 percent at the end of last year.
Creating accommodations for most of those workers cost less than $25 apiece, and they hold the same jobs, receive the same pay, and are held to the same productivity standards as other employees, J. Randolph Lewis, senior vice-president of supply chain and logistics at Walgreens, said in Mar. 2 Senate testimony.
Tech Challenge
When it comes to taking on people with issues such as vision or hearing loss, one challenge is that hiring managers may not understand what tools they’ll need to work productively. IBM has created a Web portal to help suggest specific technologies such as screen readers that blind employees may need or the type of telephone relay service that a deaf person might use. "It makes it really easy for employees to get help," says Frances W. West, director of the IBM Human Ability & Accessibility Center.
IBM hired its first blind person in 1914 and went on to develop technology for those employees, such as talking typewriters and Braille printers. The commitment to assistive technology has long come from upper management. Thomas J. Watson Jr., who became chief executive officer of IBM in 1956, suffered from depression and learning disabilities as a young man.
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