Workforce inclusion has been a consistent theme from advocates for people with disabilities in their attempts to improve the quantity and quality of employment opportunities. Last week, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) formalized it as part of its official theme for 2012 National Disability Employment Awareness Month this coming October.

The “What Can YOU Do?” campaign has been effective in forwarding the idea that companies hiring individuals with disabilities are making good business decisions and not just providing a helping hand to an underserved population. The 2012 slogan, “A Strong Workforce is an Inclusive Workforce: What Can YOU Do?,” is a natural evolution promoting assimilation and acceptance of these individuals as having a beneficial impact on productivity and morale. As the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment Policy, Kathleen Martinez, says in the official press release:

Employers who ensure that inclusive workplace policies and practices are woven into the fabric and culture of the organization create an environment that encourages all workers — including those of us with disabilities — to work to their full capacity and contribute fully to the organization’s success.

Intuitively, a comfortable working environment is a more productive one; accommodating the needs of an individual with a disabilities through accessibility equipment and technology is only part of the equation. The emotional peace plays a role as well, and for some individuals with disabilities it is the more important factor.

Comfort is a two-way street: Co-workers need to be understanding and accepting of individuals with disabilities in the work environment for their own sake and for the sake of everyone else in the workplace. Expect much of the support materials created for the National Disability Employment Awareness Month campaign to focus on ensuring each organization foster a culture of inclusion that will encourage individuals with disabilities to disclose who are they are.

It should not be difficult to make the case. The same studies that have demonstrated making workplace accommodations are not a cost burden also point to the less tangible benefits of employing people with disabilities. Judy Owens points to a couple of them in her May 12 “Diary of a Start-up” blog post for Forbes. One by the Labor Department’s Job Accommodation Network cites “improving productivity and morale” as a benefit; while her quote from a DePaul University report, entitled “Exploring the Bottom Line: A Study of the Costs and Benefits of Workers with Disabilities,” elaborates on specific ways each of these are accomplished:

Participants noted low absenteeism rates and long tenures. They also described their employees with disabilities as loyal, reliable, and hardworking. An additional benefit to hiring people with disabilities was the diversification of work settings, which led to an overall positive work environment.

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Inclusion Is the Theme for 2012 National Disability Employment Awareness Month, originally published on American Training.

America’s largest drugstore chain continued its commitment to employing people with disabilities with Monday’s announcement of a new customer service training program, the National Retail Employees with Disabilities Initiative (REDI).

According to the press release, Walgreens has operated a pilot version of the REDI program in Texas for the past couple of years. Following its success there, the program expanded into New York and Connecticut. To date, more than 400 people with disabilities have acquired the various skills to work in a retail setting. Walgreens will now expand the program into a dozen more states, including here in Massachusetts, and plans to expand the program nationwide by the end of 2013.

REDI partners store managers with job coaches and employment candidates from community organizations and vocational rehabilitation agencies. When individuals with disabilities successfully complete the four-week program, they receive a “recommended for hire” status applicable beyond Walgreens, the press release explains:

The goal is to prepare qualified candidates for employment in store positions, as well as positions in any retail setting that requires similar skills. Responsibilities include cash register operations, customer service, merchandising, store inventory and maintaining store signage and displays.

Walgreens is already a model employer for people with disabilities. Earlier this year the company achieved a stated goal to have 10% of the total workforce in its 20 distribution center comprised of people with disabilities. When it announced the hiring or Rueben Slone as senior vice president of supply chain management last month, the press release pointed to his experience working with Aspire of Illinois as a key reason he was selected to take over the company’s logistical operations; where people with disabilities perform a variety of duties, including assembly, sorting, packing, and shipping. Now Walgreens will attempt to reach that same 10% number for the front of its stores, which number 7,855 in total across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

Retail environments require a different set of skills than warehouses. In addition to the interpersonal relations with customers, a cashier may have to collaborate more with a co-worker to help meet the needs of a customer. There may also be a greater variety of tasks to perform whereas a warehouse worker might do the same thing day in and day out.

As we learned yesterday, these interactions can be more of a challenge for some individuals with disabilities than others. But if you recall the story of Sofia Walz-Chojnacki from this post back in December, Walgreens has a knack for finding people who are ready for REDI.

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Walgreens Gets People With Disabilities REDI for Customer Service Jobs, originally published on American Training.

A new research study from professors at Washington University in St. Louis published last week in Pediatrics shows one in three young adults with autism are not prepared for life after high school; putting a spotlight on the lack of post-secondary job training and employment opportunities for these particular individuals with disabilities.

The abstract for “Postsecondary Education Employment Among Youth With an Autism Spectrum Disorder” on the American Academy of Pediatrics website says the researchers conducting the study compared participation in “postsecondary employment, college, or vocational education” among youth with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to those with other types of disabilities. In each instance, “youth with an ASD has the lowest rates of participation in employment and highest rates of no participation.” The conclusion calls for further research to better understand how transition planning can be improved for these individuals.

As the definition of ASD has expanded over the past 10 years, so too has the public attention it garners. As NPR’s Nancy Shute reported back at the end of March, improved diagnoses of ASD has led to a dramatic 78% increase in the number of children found to have some version of the disorder. So it’s no surprise to find coverage of this report spanning mainstream media and special interest outlets, seeking reasons why the disparity exists and what can be done about it.

Correspondent Molly Daly of Philadelphia’s CBS affiliate found solid answers to both questions in her conversation with Dr. Margot Burke of the Center for Autism. Burke says the social component of the workplace is typically the primary barrier for people with an ASD, who tend to have difficulty interpreting other people’s behavior in social settings, oftentimes resulting in an inability to engage with co-workers in a friendly manner. But the solution Burke proposes is probably a familiar one to those who help people with disabilities get the career and vocational training necessary to succeed in jobs. Daly writes:

Burke says training in interpersonal skills is key, since they generally don’t come easily to people with autism. And she says a technique called job coaching can offer trainees much-needed support until they settle in at work. ‘With job coaching, I’ve seen lots of adolescents and adults be very successful in a particular job.’

If a silver lining can be taken from the results of the WashU study, it’s that the training programs have evidently helped the other population subsets make the transition from high school to employment. MedPage Today staff writer Nancy Walsh offers some of the best number-crunching analysis of the report in her May 14 writeup, “Autistic Youth Face Hardship in Post-School Years,” including how the other three groups of people with disabilities fared:

Compared with the 55.1% of youth with autism spectrum disorders who reported any paid employment, those with speech or language impairment had significantly higher employment rates (86%), as did those with learning disabilities (93.8%) and mental retardation (68.9%).

While the national employment numbers say much more can be done to provide job opportunities for people with disabilities as whole; it will be interesting to see whether the same opportunities through contract services and vocational rehabilitation programs can provide a positive impact for people with ASD, just as they have helped make life matter for other individuals with disabilities.

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Study Shows More Job Training Programs Needed for People With Autism, originally published on American Training.

Buying American is starting to gain the same momentum that it had in the 1980s thanks to media focus on the issue from outlets like ABC and its “Made in America” series, plus “America Revealed” on PBS. A couple of recent stories by local media outlets are showing how people with disabilities in contract service organizations are doing their part to keep the products we buy made by American hands.

Reporter Connie Jo Discoe wrote an article for last Friday’s McCook Daily Gazette where a manufacturer of a livestock vaccination system calls Slap-Shot credits the longevity of his company to the work done by people with disabilities through the Southwest Nebraska Area Training Services organization, also known as SWATS. Discoe’s description of the assembly process for this equipment indicates the sophisticated level of training these people bring to their manual labor tasks:

Jerry delivers his raw materials to SWATS clients… trained to use the specially-designed equipment that measures and cuts the long flexible tubing, and snaps on ends and secures then tightly in place.

Discoe’s accompanying photos further illustrates the variety of manual labor tasks SWATS workers perform for clients, which include operating a packaging heat sealer, sorting nuts and bolts, folding boxes, and applying labels. Jobs that sound small in scope but play a big part in keeping these industries making their products in America.

Pennsylvania entrepreneur Lynn Elko cannot yet match the long track record of success enjoyed by Slap-Shot, but her bath products company is off to a great start thanks to its employees with disabilities. Scranton Times-Tribune reporter Jim Dino’s article talks about how the Emma’s Friends Soaps & Lotions began with Lynn making homemade soaps for the teachers and caregivers of her daughter — the Emma whom the company is namer after.

From that beginning, she had the brainstorm to give even more back to people like her Emma by starting a business where people with disabilities worked making the products. Elko tells Dino:

The whole idea behind Emma’s Friends is to creatively employ individuals with special needs…We have 12 individuals who wrap and package soaps, and make dry goods, bottle and label them.

America’s answer to its economic woes historically have included measures to stimulate consumer spending. How incentives like lower interests rates, tax breaks, or even outright cash rebates are blended to achieve this depends on the particular circumstances and preferred approach of our country’s leadership; but unless we’re buying American products made by American workers, any attempt at elevating the economy will be incomplete. Using contract services organizations keep products made in America and makes life matter for those individuals with disabilities working there.

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Contract Services Keep Products Made in the U.S.A., originally published on American Training.

A guest blogger on the Office of Disability Employment Policy website is urging businesses to promote a culture that would encourage employees with disabilities to voluntarily identify themselves as such, in an effort to promote workplace fairness and diversity, as well as encourage businesses to add even more individuals with disabilities to their payroll.

Mathew McCullough is the executive director of the District of Columbia Developmental Disabilities Council (DDC). He acknowledges that the title of his May 7 post, “From Awareness to Respect… And Paving the Way” on the Disability.gov blog is a conscious reference to a March 26 entry by Sharon Lewis, Commissioner of the Administration on Developmental Disabilities, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In that post, Lewis calls for discussions about inclusion of people with disabilities to move beyond the call for simple awareness to one that fosters a sense of “meaningful self-determination.” Acknowledging the accomplishments of these individuals and the contributions they make in our communities can shift the general perception from one of tolerance to one of acceptance, and instill confidence in other people with disabilities that they will also be treated in a fair and equal manner.

But all too often in the workplace, McCullough says, an individual with a disability still feels more tolerated than accepted. The feeling that a person may only have a position because of their condition rather than their abilities to perform the tasks at hand discourages people with disabilities to disclose their condition. McCullough identifies himself as a Filipino-American with cerebral palsy in the first sentence of his blog post, and suggests that the mindset should be to embrace the diversity of our co-workers both ethnically and otherwise:

… [A]pproximately 85 percent of all disabilities cannot be seen by the naked eye. These are known as hidden disabilities. Think about this for a moment. Based on this information, chances are that you already know an employee who may or may not disclose his or her disability in your office. But does it really matter? In the end, we’re one and the same; we’re all human.

McCullough says the onus is on the employer to create an environment that would make an individual with a disability comfortable to disclose their condition. The Americans with Disabilities Act prevents discrimination against individuals with disabilities by affirming their legal right to privacy, which has been at the crux of the current debate over the Labor Department’s proposal to institute a rule requiring government contractors to strive for 7% of their workforce to be comprised of people with disabilities. By creating a culture that encourages voluntary disclosure by employees, the entire workplace will be the better for it.

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Advocate Urges Culture of Disclosure for People With Disabilities Seeking Employment, originally published on American Training.

Think your small business is ready to make life matter for a person with a disability? There are lots of tools online to help you find out. (Photo courtesy of Paige Connors, American Training, Inc.)

Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy. Some variation of that sentence will be uttered approximately 14,926 times between now and Election Day in November. Keeping the entrepreneurial engine operating efficiently means keeping costs under control and maximizing the return on investment from every employee hired.

Awareness that both of these goals can still be accomplished while making life matter for an individual with a disability is a continuing process. Fortunately, the media outlets that entrepreneurs tend to pay attention to are taking up the case.

Forbes has been publishing the Diary of a Start-Up blog by Judy Owens since September, 2011. Owens’ company, Opportunity Works, Inc., provides individuals with disabilities temp jobs that can also evolve into permanent job placements in companies in and around St. Petersburg, FL. Her candor about the fear and uncertainty of making the move to go on her own no doubt appeals to the entrepreneurial audience following her story. Likewise, it probably appeals to the clients she’s trying to serve and gives credibility to the suggestions she makes to help business owners understand that hiring a person with a disability does not have to be a cost burden.

In her May 1 post, for example, Owens explains the Federal Medicaid Waiver program for people with disabilities. This program is a benefit to both her and her clients by filling gaps in services that would otherwise prove too costly for them to provide. She writes:

The waiver dollars can pay for programs that Medicaid won’t traditionally cover, like residential rehabilitation, transportation, meaningful day activities (otherwise known as sheltered workshops), therapy services or job support services.

Owens also goes on to discuss other avenues for support should the Medicaid Waiver wait list be too long in Florida. But for small businesses in other parts of the country, an organization called Health & Disability Advocates has developed an online tool that helps businesses locate the kind of support available. FOXBusiness reporter Cindy Vanegas covers its “Think Beyond the Label Campaign” in her May 8 article, “When it’s Time to Hire, Don’t Ignore the Disabled” found in the website’s small business section.

The Think Beyond the Label website provides fact sheets, links to job sites, and success stories about hiring people with disabilities. Vanegas focuses in particular on its Hire Gauge tool, which takes a user through a short series of questions about industry type, location, and size to help an entrepreneur find resources for hiring people with disabilities, which she says are plentiful:

The Hire Gauge determines if a business is eligible for the Federal Work Opportunities Tax Credit, the Disabled Access Credit, the Architectural Barrier Removal Tax Deduction, and any recoupment of recruitment and training costs, if a business owner hires through a vocational rehabilitation program.

With support like that, a business of any size can become a disability-friendly workplace with little to no overhead; becoming instead a more diverse company and one that is helping make life matter for an individual with a disability who is qualified to perform the job.

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Small Businesses More Ready to Hire People With Disabilities Than They Think, originally published on American Training.

Lost in the recent discussions about employment rates, workplace accessibility, and assistive technology was Rich Juzwiak’s thoughtful essay, “13 Hours, 42 Movies About People With Developmental Disabilities: Enduring Sprout,” published on, of all places, Gawker.

The “Sprout” Juzwiak’s article title refers to was the 10th Annual Sprout Film Festival, which took place at New York City’s illustrious Metropolitan Museum of Art during the last weekend in April; and “endured” is probably an adjective that Sprout’s founder, Anthony Di Salvo, would embrace. He tells Juzwiak that the selection committee favors realism over positive when reviewing films which to screen.

Accuracy is of paramount importance in Sprout’s attempt to provide programming intended to “empower” people with disabilities and “rejuvenate” the families and professionals who live and work with this population, while still getting outsiders “to see the potential and look at people with developmental disabilities in a different light.”

But as Di Salvo also notes, sometimes just getting people to see individuals with disabilities at all is a challenge. Sprout’s tagline is “Making the Invisible Visible,” and the festival’s website has a Sproutflix.org offshoot site that makes many of these films available to the public. One of the article’s commentators notes that none of the films shown at the festival are available at the online video vendor, Netflix, and Juzwiak is likewise “infuriated” at his own realization that the lives of people with disabilities do not have a voice in the pop culture landscape:

The reality TV craze may have dropped a few degrees from its fever pitch of yesteryear, but we remain as a culture fascinated by our own humanity and its extremes… In all of our recent discussions of representation and implicit bigotry regarding Girls, for example, has anyone even made a passing observation about the lack of people with disabilities in culture? I haven’t seen any. I don’t think that’s out of hatred, just raw ignorance: people don’t even think to think about people with disabilities.

After watching dozens of films, Juzwiak is to be forgiven for falling back on the movie critic’s “I laughed, I cried” cliche in his descriptions of the actual films. What’s important is that this individual who has lived his life largely outside the realm of people with disabilities was emotionally and intellectually stimulated by the experience, and ultimately came away with a sense of hopefulness. He writes:

… [T]he dialogue at Sprout was so impassioned and engaged and just plain correct that it feels like some kind of burgeoning -– with cultural sensitivity seeming to increase by the day, it’s inconceivable that this kind of fairness won’t break through… Sprout is the avant garde of tolerance discourse. This radical thinking requires no stretch of imagination, just a little heart.

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Film Festival Brings Stories About People With Disabilities Into Popular Culture, originally published on American Training.

Every week, the White House acknowledges American innovators through its Champions of Change program. Since the program was launched last year, it has put the spotlight on sustainability, renewable energy, youth violence, entrepreneurism, Native Americans, and volunteering, among other issues and special interests. This week, people with disabilities got their turn, as 14people were honored for their contributions to “proving that when the playing field is level, people with disabilities can excel.”

The Talking Points Memo website likes to tout its “Breaking News and Analysis,” and its Idea Lab tech reporter, Carl Franzen, had an article about the Champions of Change list on the afternoon of the announcement. Franzen focused primarily on Dimitri Kanevsky, a scientist in IBM’s Human Ability and Accessibility Center team, whose ViaScribe technology provides real-time captioning that can also integrate element of multimedia presentations. Designed for the classroom environment, IBM’s sell-sheet (PDF) describes its application in a variety of other settings:

… [B]usiness meetings and presentations, corporate training and other employee communications, shareholder meetings, conferences and even doctor-patient appointments are all events that could reap the benefits that ViaScribe provides.

Franzen writes of Kanevsky’s childhood in Kiev, Ukraine, and how his own disabilities nearly cost him the opportunity to get an education that would hone his mathematical gifts. Fortunately, his parents recognized his intelligence and advocated for him to get the opportunity to acquire a Ph.D. It’s a story that is repeated through many of the other profiles of these Champions of Change who are working to make life matter for individuals with disabilities.

In addition to the profiles on the White House website, some of the Champions of Change also contributed blog posts relating their personal experience. Henry Wedler, who is pursuing a doctorate in organic chemistry at University of California, Davis, writes about the confidence he gained early on through various programs for people with visual impairments:

With encouragement I received from attending science camps put on by the National Federation of the Blind, I founded and instructed an annual chemistry camp for blind high school students. At Chemistry Camp, we teach blind and low-vision students that their lack of eyesight should not hold them back from pursuing their dreams. Ultimately, we aim to teach our students that blindness is a minor nuisance and not a life-long detrimental problem.

Also, check out this article on the UCDavis website, which includes a photo of “Hoby” using molecular models to get mental images of how chemicals bond. His story, and Kanevsky’s and all the other Champions of Change, serve as an inspiring reminder of what people with disabilities can do when given the opportunity, as well have access to the tools and career training to make their dreams come true.

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Image by Yahoo! Accessibility Lab, used under its Creative Commons license.

Assistive Technology Developers Honored as Champions of Change, originally published on American Training.

“Lackluster,” “meager,” and “disappointing” are just three adjectives used in headlines reporting on the unemployment report released by the U.S. Department of Labor last Friday. If you are an individual with a disability, however, you may be picking a different description. Because the unemployment rate for this subset of the population bucked the national trend, improving by nearly a full three points, according to Shaun Heasley’s report, “Job Growth Seen For People With Disabilities,” on Disability Scoop.

The unemployment rate of individuals with disabilities has been slowly increasing since last November, when it dropped below 13% for the first time since 2009. It reached another apex in February, hitting 15.8% before decreasing ever so slightly in March to 15.2%. But now the April report shows the rate taking another dramatic dip, down to 12.5% while the overall figures remained stagnant.

Vocational programs for people with disabilities may be having an impact on employment opportunities. As noted in Arizona Republic reporter Eugene Scott’s article about the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center (SARRC), people with disabilities typically are the last hired and first fired; but SARRC is seeing success through providing career training for people with disabilities and preparing workplaces to successfully accept these people. Scott speaks with the organization’s employment coordinator, Erin Onacki, writing:

SARRC officials meet with companies to find out what they need from their employees and meet with job coaches to determine the skill set of a client… Preparing a company to hire an autistic adult is part of the process. ‘We offer an autism sensitivity training to the staff. It kind of empowers the employer partner to really take advantage of a person’s abilities vs. their disabilities,’ Onacki said.

Once an employer sees the success of hiring someone with disabilities it can open the door for others, as evidenced by Wanda Donald’s story on thebaynet.com about joining NAVAIR, a civilian logistics and contracts management company that supports air operations for the U.S. Navy. The Maryland native says she read inspiring stories from other individuals with disabilities on the NAVAIR website and then attended an arranged meeting putting people with disabilities in the same room with job recruiters. Donald offers these words of inspiration near the close of the article:

‘I think the best advice I could give any job seeker is that you only need one ‘yes,” Donald said. ‘I know after hearing so many no’s it can be discouraging, but I remember the one day someone said ‘yes’ to me, and I am working in the job of my dreams in a bad economy.’

Based on the latest jobs reports, more employers seem to be saying “yes” to people with disabilities when given the chance to meet them and learn what they can do.

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Meet-and-Greets for People With Disabilities Putting a Dent in Unemployment Rate, originally published on American Training.

New Jersey’s Daily Journal published an op-ed by Department of Human Services Commissioner Jennifer Velez following Governor Chris Christie’s announcement of the state’s new “Employment First” policy for people with disabilities, where “benefits become the safety net that will supplement employment, not the other way around.”

No one welcomes this shift in attitude more than individuals with disabilities themselves; who just want the opportunity to show they are dependable and capable. Velez acknowledges this in the op-ed title, “Changing People’s Perceptions,” and writes:

We know that competitive, integrated employment provides diversity, a sense of purpose, a sense of achievement, a level of financial independence and a sense of belonging. Work is a touchstone by which we often measure ourselves and measure others. The fullness of that experience is something to which we’re all entitled.

Velez goes on to outline goals focal for “Employment First,” one of which is dispelling the myth that hiring people with disabilities means spending an exorbitant amount of money on accommodations and accessibility measures. The Job Accommodation Network (JAN) has been conducting cost-benefit analyses on these types of issues since 2004, with more than half of the surveyed employers reporting that there were zero additional costs associated with workplace accommodation; and for those that did have to spend money on accessibility features, the average one-time expenditure was $500.

But for those who prefer their evidence in anecdotal form, Voice of America correspondent Mana Rablee filed this report about a Lansing, Michigan, sewing factory called Peckham, where 85% of the 1,200 employees are individuals with disabilities. The video shows how sewing machines were adapted so that even visually impaired people can safely and efficiently operate the equipment.

One would think the types of accommodations needed for manual labor tasks would be more onerous than an office job. But if a sewing factory that outputs 300,000 garments a month can afford to make the necessary accommodations that allow people with disabilities to work, then almost any size company should be able to provide an accessible workplace.

JAN of course has quantified all the direct and indirect benefits of accessibility, including employee retention, productivity, diversity, safety, and even profitability; all while making life matter more for individuals with disability, as Peckham’s Greta Wu tells Rablee:

You don’t get to work, you don’t get to enjoy that you are contributing to the society… But when you do have work your self-confidence is built up, your self-esteem is increased, you feel good about yourself.

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Image by Kheel Center, Cornell University, used under its Creative Commons license.

Sewing Factory Demonstrates Large-Scale Accessibility for People With Disabilities, originally published on American Training.