If you are born Hispanic you cannot become Black later in life. However, if you are born able-bodied, you can become a wheelchair user at some later date.  

It’s the club that anyone can join at any time and the club that many will join even if the disability is much later in life due to the natural aging process.  

Could it be that this hits so close to home that we completely block out the idea and therefore block out the incredible opportunities of hiring and marketing to the disability community?  

Perhaps for us TAB’s; and by that I mean temporarily able-bodied, not the drink, it’s just easier to think of accessibility related issues as legal requirements rather than an issues of inclusion.  

But remember, what’s easier is not always better.  Hiring, supporting and marketing to the disability community is not just the right thing to do, it’s a good thing to do for profitability and productivity.

Basically, what this means is that a person with a disability who is among the highest-rated candidates in a traditional competitive process, would receive “hiring preference” for the open position.

I believe this will send a very strong message to those with disabilities that if you have the required skill sets, they really want to hire you because of your disability, not in spite of it.  

I wonder if this is an idea that we are going to see replicated elsewhere.

In Think Beyond the Label, a new national advertising campaign using humor to encourage companies to hire people with disabilities, workers are shown as having quirky impairments.  Perhaps you have met the woman who is “pattern-deficient” or the man who is “copy incapable?” The theme of this campaign is that labels get in the way but disabilities rarely do.

This wonderful advertising campaign, spearheaded by Health & Disability Advocates, a non-profit organization based in Chicago, Illinois has a budget of $4 million for the first half of 2010.

Look for these ads to appear on Sunday news programs on ABC, CBS, NBC and even on cable channels such as ESPN and CNN.  There will also be print ads that will appear in The Wall Street Journal and Fortune.  

This is serious stuff and you know what?  It’s about time.

I wonder how our clients would feel if they knew they were potentially missing out on top legal talent just because the prospective employee, who happened to be disabled, was not granted an accommodation that would allow her to “fairly” take the bar exam?

I ask this question because on February 23^rd of this year, a San Francisco, California, law student who is blind will use a computer-assisted reading device (the accommodation), to take the bar exam.

This comes only after a federal judge made a ruling, rejecting the examiners’ arguments that the assistance was too generous and might let someone steal the test questions.  The typical accommodation for applicants who are blind or visually impaired, is a pencil-and-paper test with questions displayed on an enlarged screen, a human reader and twice the usual three-day testing period.

The judge in this case said, “”A disability should not prevent an individual from pursuing their dream, if that’s what it is, of practicing law”.  Thank goodness for a very smart judge.

As the parent of a Dartmouth student who has a disability, my friend has been most concerned about the school’s responsiveness to her daughter’s accessibility needs and accommodation requests and hopes this will help her daughter and others like her.  My friend says she does not believe in any way that Dartmouth deliberately tries to discriminate against students with disabilities.  

From my perspective it is no different than what we see in Corporate America; a general lack of awareness which can often be remedied with high quality comprehensive disability etiquette and awareness training and a solid disability Employee Resource Group.  It sounds to me like ABLE may become Dartmouth’s student equivalent to such a group. Stay tuned.

If you or someone you know is interested in forming or growing your companies Disability ERG or delivering Disability Etiquette and Awareness Training, contact Springboard today at 973-813-7260 or via email at info@consultspringboard.com.

The EHRC is a statutory body that has the responsibility to protect, enforce and promote equality across the seven “protected” grounds – age, disability, gender, race, religion and belief, sexual orientation and gender reassignment for the 60 million people in the UK. 

To date, Mike has served as the Chair of the National Centre for Independent Living. He is also a member of the board of Stonewall (2006 to date), the lesbian, gay and bisexual charity. Prior to this he worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers for 19 years, most recently as Director of Policy & Compliance.  Specifically, the Disability Committee of the EHRC is a decision-making committee with wide powers and responsibilities delegated by parliament. These powers include:

• monitoring and providing advice on disability law
• publishing and disseminating ideas and information, providing education and training, and giving advice and guidance on disability rights
• publishing and revising codes of practice on disability law
• monitoring and preventing crimes affecting disabled people
• arranging conciliation on non-employment Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) disputes
• providing or arranging legal assistance for DDA claimants
• conducting or intervening in disability-related judicial review proceedings

The “Disability Transport Regulations” cover trains, buses, coaches, taxis and vehicle rentals.

Translink, which is the main provider of public transport in Northern Ireland, said it welcomed the regulations and said all of its new vehicles already meet “the latest accessibility standards including low floor ramped access, dedicated wheelchair space and priority seats” as do their NI Railways trains.

What’s wonderful is that Ireland’s Equality Commission is launching a major advertising campaign to advise people of their new rights and “to make transport operators aware of the guidance available to help them comply with the law”.  

New legislation, of any type is only as good as the awareness, understanding and compliance around it.

The character, Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, uses a wheelchair in this wonderful film. Unfortunately, the many journalists talking about the film need to participate in Springboard’s Disability Etiquette & Awareness Training. The reason is the language these men and women have used to introduce the character from “crippled ex-marine” to “wheelchair bound soldier”.

They, like many others, need to keep in mind that the wheelchair is what enables the person to independently get around, giving them their freedom and that “crippled” is an outdated term.  

So what would have been a better way to refer to the character? “Jake Sully, an ex-Marine who has a disability”.

This settlement is the largest Americans with Disabilities Act settlement involving architectural barriers to date.

The complaint was made when an individual who is blind almost got hit by a car, thinking he was standing on the curb when he was actually standing in the gutter. Though a lawsuit was not planned, it is how the issue was finally resolved.

Unfortunately, it is how many of these types of issues get resolved.  You then have to ask yourself why; particularly, when the ADA clearly requires sidewalks to be safe for people with disabilities.  

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every street in the country had a curb ramp?