Question

July 26 2010 marked the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Though the ADA changed the game for disabled individuals, experts believe they’re still an underutilized resource in this country.

• Learn more about the impact of ADA by viewing this video from NBC Learn on youtube
• Find out how much further our country still has to go: View “Hiring Americans with Disabilities,” from CBS on youtube

Use the information you’ve learned from these videos to compose a discussion board post. In your post,

(1) discuss how this nation, businesses, and healthcare providers in particular, would benefit from hiring more disabled individuals.
(2) explore the particular challenges disabled individuals might face in the HIT environment. What might the HIT sector do to make our workplace more ADA-compliant?

Answer 1

What is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990. The ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public. The purpose of the law is to make sure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. The ADA gives civil rights protections to individuals with disabilities similar to those provided to individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, age, and religion. It guarantees equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities in public accommodations, employment, transportation, state and local government services, and telecommunications.

Benefit from hiring disabled individuals

1. People with disabilities are reliable employees and have an overall higher job retention rate.

Many studies have shown that people with disabilities take less absent days, and that they are more likely to stay on the job longer than non-disabled workers. Recently, The Chicago Lighthouse studied the retention rate of employees in its Illinois Tollway Customer Care Center, which employs people who are blind, visually impaired, disabled and Veterans (as well as people without disabilities.) On average, the employees with vision loss or other disabilities and Veterans had a retention rate of 1.7 years. In contrast, the retention rate for employees without disabilities or that were not Veterans was only 0.9 years.

2. Employees with disabilities are less likely to get into work related accidents.

Two studies, one from the Department of Labor Statistics during the 1940s and a more recent one from the DuPont company concluded that workers with disabilities had a significantly higher performance in the area of safety than their counterparts without disabilities. In other words, employees with disabilities are more aware and conscientious of safety in the workplace. Both studies looked at different types of jobs, including labor, operational, managerial, clerical and service areas.

3. Businesses that hire people with disabilities may receive tax credits or other incentives.

  Eligible businesses can receive certain tax credits to aid them in hiring and accommodating workers with disabilities. Many of these credits are awarded for expenses incurred in things like purchasing adaptive equipment for workers with disabilities, or covering the costs of any modifications needed to make the building accessible.

4. Workers with disabilities will increase diversity in the workplace.

Both workers with and without disabilities benefit equally from a diverse work setting. By working alongside employees with disabilities, individuals who are not disabled will become more aware about how to make the workplace and other settings more inclusive and accessible to everyone. They might consider things they had never thought of before, such as the accessibility challenges faced by people with disabilities. Employees with disabilities can also teach their coworkers about creativity and other ways to solve problems or accomplish different tasks.

5. People with disabilities are as capable as anyone else

  This is the most simple, but difficult reason for employers to understand about hiring workers with disabilities. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities has constantly hovered at or above 70 percent, even 26 years after the passage of the ADA. Unfortunately, employers often refuse to hire individuals with disabilities, simply because they believe we are not capable of doing the job, or because they are unaware about the many adaptive techniques and devices that are available and allow us to work. Like anyone else, we apply to jobs we believe we are qualified for and capable of doing. If employers have doubts about if or how we will do a particular task, chances are that we have already thought about it and found a solution.

Particular challenges for disabled individuals

There are plenty of people across the world living with one form of disability or other. The disability suffered by most persons includes mental disability, emotional, physical and cognitive.

Some people suffer a combination of these disabilities. Disabilities can occur at birth but in some cases, disability is acquired later in life. Common disabilities include physical deformities that affect the upper and lower limbs, manual dexterity problems, inability to coordinate body organs and others. The cause of the disability may be due to old age, a viral infection such as polio, a hereditary condition and paralysis or amputation.

Other disabilities include speech and hearing impairment. This category includes individuals suffering hearing impairment; some partially while others totally, a condition also known as deafness. There are a number of individuals who have problems with speech, where others cannot speak and are said to be mute. Sufferers of speech impairment may stutter and stammer while speaking while others may have voice disorders.

People suffering from disabilities face a lot of challenges everyday. Simple tasks that ordinary people perform on a daily basis as routine are extremely delicate and difficult to those suffering from disabilities. Thus accomplishing simple tasks such as taking a shower, dressing up, brushing teeth or even having a meal are tasks that may take much longer than normal and in many cases, may require the assistance of others.

Individuals with disabilities are faced with stigma and discrimination from the society where they live. Most people look down on them and treat them as special. Disabled people may find it hard to socialize with members of the society. This can lead to depression as well as self pity, if not checked.

There are plenty of activities that disabled persons can engage in, in order to develop mentally, socially and physically. Some of the activities that they can engage in include outdoor games, sports, exercises and the arts. These activities are believed to help in the total development of a person and should be encouraged from time to time. Indoor games such as board games can be a great form of sharing, fun and socializing. Music is an enjoyable form of art and can offer rich and rewarding experiences.

Nature is also a great way of exploring, learning and relaxing. Various activities can be formulated around nature, such as walks, fishing, campfires, bird watching and a host of other activities.

Developments in the management of physical and other forms of disabilities have seen major advances in recent years. It is very possible for disabled persons to lead a full life, acquire skills as well as develop a career. There are facilities that assist disabled persons in their everyday lives such as learning, traveling and many other activities.­

How to make our workplace more ADA-compliant

A disability — either physical or mental, from birth or developed later in life — should not be a limiting factor in your recruiting, hiring, or retention strategy. The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, yet nearly three decades later and only about 28% of companies have hiring goals around people with disabilities. Creating an accommodating, diverse workplace leads to many measurable benefits, such as increased innovation, and even a general morale boost within the whole team.

Physical accessibility within the workplace has improved to some degree for employees with disabilities, job prospects remain sparse. A U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report of 2017 data showed that the unemployment rate for people without disabilities was 4.2 percent, while the rate for people with disabilities was 9.2 percent.

A study by the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) shows that accommodations in the workplace provide consistent employer benefits over time with minimal costs. The study found that providing accommodations to individuals in the workplace resulted in such benefits as retaining valuable employees, improving productivity and morale, reducing workers' compensation and training costs, and improving company diversity. The majority of employers in the study (59 percent) reported that the accommodations they provided had zero cost, and when accommodations did involve costs, the amount typically was only $500.

Create an accessible workplace By-

1. Email conversations: all the emails sent internally are accessible. This can be done in many simple ways. For example, all images in the email have text alternatives (alt text). As emails are very critical in performing our day to day job, if these emails are not accessible, I would have been excluded in a critical part of my job.
2. Meeting Prep: distribute accessible presentations in advance to allow people with disabilities to digest the content before the actual presentation. It is commonplace for my company to have monthly meetings. Presenters should send their presentation to the meeting organizer at least one day before the meeting. The presenter or the organizer should ensure the presentation is accessible, and then distribute the presentation beforehand. This is especially helpful if the presentation includes complex charts, graphs, etc. This enables me to understand the intended meaning of the slide during the actual presentation.
3. Internal tools: Intranet, time entry systems, expense systems or other internal software must be accessible. At my company all internal software is accessible. Imagine what would happen if these systems were not accessible, I would not have the ability to productively or independently submit my time card, access important company information, or submit my expense reports.
4. Internal documents: SOWs, PDFs, Word Documents, Powerpoints, and Excel documents should all be accessible. In my position, SOWs are critical for me to properly do my job. At the beginning of every project, I must be able to understand the scope, critical information, and timeline of the project. If these documents are not accessible, I am severely limited in my ability to do my job.
5. Online meeting tools: meeting software such as GoToMeeting, Webex, or Zoom need to be accessible. In my role, I am constantly attending client and internal calls. Accessible versions of this software allow me to mute, turn off my camera, or chat using my assistive technology without getting trapped in inaccessible navigation. Additionally, it is best practice for large staff meetings should have live captions for those who are hearing impaired.
6. Visual assistance: this is an area that some companies may not be familiar with. As part of my job, I need to perform accessibility audit on various sites. While auditing the site for accessibility, I may not be able to understand complete page as sites contain inaccessible elements. To help with this, a sighted person sits with me and explains the complete page, this is visual assistance. The explanation of the page helps us to visualize the page and this would also help us to raise the accurate accessibility issues. This way, I can be confident about the issues that I have reported to the client. Having dedicated visual assistance resources at our organization is vital for me to confidently and fully complete my job.
7. Accountability and equal opportunity: some organizations hire a person with a disability but are very scared for to give the accountability of the various tasks. People with disabilities should have the same accountability and equal opportunity as those without disabilities. Period.
8. External assets: our organization not only takes care of the accessibility of internal tools and documents but also requires that all external facing assets are accessible. For example, our website, invoices, proposals, etc are all accessible. This sends the message home that accessibility is non-negotiable and gives me the confidence that accessibility is important to my employer.
9. Building accessibility: I have been talking about how well digital accessibility helped me complete our job. The workplace environment is just as important in the digital workplace. Having carpet in a building allows visually impaired employees to navigate easier. The building also has a simple layout without any long hallways, ensuring that those who are visually impaired do not easily lose their way.
10. Transportation: Last, but not least, our employer provides our office with a transportation facility for employees with disabilities. Having an office transportation facility makes my commute smoother and easier.