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FBLN News and EventsDisability Employment ArticlesPosted September 18, 2002, Thr Orlando SentinelBy Harry Wessel | Sentinel Staff WriterA green light for workers with disabilitiesThe days of most disabled people spending their lives unproductively at home or in institutions are gone. Statistics just released by the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that people with disabilities are a force to be reckoned with in the workplace. However, those same Census 2000 findings also may underestimate the true number of disabled workers, possibly obscuring how much progress has been made in the employment of disabled people. "The disability concept is really difficult and hard to define," says Sharon Stern, a Census Bureau statistician who specializes in disability statistics. She suspects, but has no way of knowing, that those with disabilities are underrepresented in surveys. "People who perhaps have a disability but don't have difficulty working [because of workplace accommodations] might have answered 'no' " when asked if they have a workplace disability, Stern says. W. Roy Grizzard, assistant secretary for disability employment policy with the U.S. Department of Labor, acknowledges that disability employment numbers are "a moving target depending on who's doing the survey." But one thing he knows for sure: Those with disabilities have a higher unemployment rate than the general population. According to the 2000 Census, there are 105,931 working-age teens and adults in Central Florida with disabilities, and nearly 70 percent of them -- 72,806 -- are employed. The Census Bureau earlier reported that there are 30.6 million working-age U.S. adults with disabilities, with 57 percent of them employed. Statewide, there are about 1.5 million Floridians with disabilities, about 526,000 of whom are unemployed, according to Kristen Knapp, spokeswoman for the Able Trust. The Trust in a public-private agency established by the Legislature in 1990 to promote and support the hiring of disabled workers. There is considerable anecdotal evidence that employment of disabled people is rising, with more employers coming to the conclusion that this underemployed group can be a boon to the bottom line. "Companies are desirous of a more diverse work force, and individuals with disabilities are a part of that," says Vinece Pastor, a SunTrust vice president and chair of the Florida chapter of the Business Leadership Network, which promotes the hiring of qualified job candidates with disabilities. The cost to accommodate a worker with a disability is typically less than $500, Pastor says, and because workers with disabilities tend to stay with companies longer than workers without disabilities, "their longer average tenure more than offsets any cost of accommodation." Jeannie Amendola has been with Walt Disney World for nearly 14 years. Her visual impairment precludes her from driving and she needs a cane when walking in unfamiliar territory, but her disability doesn't limit her as an administrative assistant. "When I first graduated from college I met with a lot of barriers trying to get a job," recalls Amendola, who is 52 and lives in a wing of her parents' home in Orlando. "People who interviewed me focused on the challenges I'd have with my visual impairment rather than my education and experience." She had no such problems getting a job with Disney, however, where she started as a secretary and was promoted to administrative assistant five years ago. She worked for years at a regular computer monitor and didn't complain. "I'm very proud," she says. "I like to be like everybody else, and I didn't say anything." Shortly before she was promoted, she received a large-screen monitor and found she could get her tasks done a lot faster. Amendola's other accommodations cost Disney little or nothing. Because she is sensitive to light, the furniture in her office was rearranged to keep sunlight at her back, and interior lighting was softened by using table and standing lamps rather than fluorescent lights. She mentions another accommodation: Her boss had to learn to say yes or no when she asked a question rather than just nod his head. As a member of CastABLE, a network of about 100 disabled Disney employees designed to increase awareness, Amendola says disabled workers usually are good employees. "We want to prove to ourselves and to our employer that we can do it," she says. "We're usually overachievers." Al Nuckols, a SunTrust vice president who oversees the collections departments for both the Orlando and Richmond, Va., offices, echoes Amendola's sentiments. "One thing I've found, people with disabilities are extremely dedicated. I think it goes back to people being grateful for their jobs. Everybody thinks you have to give special considerations to the handicapped. You don't." For an example, Nuckols points to Mike Metzger, 52, who started with SunTrust in the spring of 1998 as an office temp and has been with the company full-time since February 1999. Metzger, who has cerebral palsy, is one of the top performers in the collections department. He works a phone, calling SunTrust customers whose accounts are more than 45 days past due. The job requires a lot of personality and salesmanship, Nuckols says. Metzger has plenty of both. Metzger's job isn't easy. He averages about 800 phone contacts a week, and unhappy debtors occasionally swear at him. He appreciates the fact that his co-workers "don't see me as a handicapped person but as a person. I like that. You're judged by the work you do." He also appreciates the motorized wheelchair the bank purchased for his use at the sprawling operations center near Sand Lake Road. He drives to work in his 1987 Malibu, parks in a handicapped space and uses a walker to get to and through the front door. Once he passes the security gate, he folds his walker and plops into his recharged wheelchair. "The chair is quick," says Metzger, who is married and lives in Orlando. "It goes 6 miles per hour. The first time I used it I nearly ran down my boss." He could function without the chair, but it moves him around a lot faster than his walker does. Other accommodations at work include curb cuts to make it easier to travel to and from his car, handicapped bathroom stalls with grab bars, and doors that open by pressing a wall button. Such accommodations are standard features of the modern workplace, but there are many others available or on the horizon. "Advancements of technologies are allowing people with disabilities to do jobs that heretofore they would have had difficulty doing," says Grizzard with the Department of Labor. He reels off examples: augmentative speech devices that allow those with speaking disabilities to better communicate, JAWS (Job Access With Speech) software that converts written words to spoken words for those who are blind, wheelchairs equipped with ventilators for people with severe breathing problems, even wheelchairs "that are now able to negotiate steps." Grizzard's agency sponsors the Job Accommodation Network, a toll-free consulting service that provides information on devices, services and strategies for disabled workers (1-800-526-7234). Florida offers a similar service through the Able Trust (1-888-838-2253). "In general," says Grizzard, who has retinitis pigmentosa and is legally blind, "employers will find that for a minimal accommodation they can have a very good employee who will do a solid job." Harry Wessel can be reached at 407-420-5506 or hwessel@orlandosentinel.com. Copyright © 2002, Orlando Sentinel |
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