Looking to Light Dark Age Beliefs about Workers With Disabilities

by Dora Raymaker

Published February 09, 2009 @ 04:00PM PT

The unemployment rate for people with disabilities in the U.S. is high compared to that of people without disabilities (which, these days, is also pretty high). Only about 20% of people with disabilities are currently employed, compared to 65% of people without disabilities. To get at some of the "whys" of this, Department of Labor research has released a new report Survey of Employer Perspectives on the Employment of People with Disabilities (MS Word format). From that report:

The U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), conducted the 2008 Survey of Employer Perspectives on the Employment of People with Disabilities. The objective of this nationally representative survey was to inform the development and promotion of policy and practice by comparing employer perspectives across various industries and within companies of varying sizes. ODEP will use the data from this survey to formulate targeted strategies and policies for increasing employment opportunities for people with disabilities. This survey emphasized current attitudes and practices of employers in 12 industry sectors, including some high growth industries as projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Some barriers to hiring employees with disabilities were found to be employer shyness about the ability of workers to do their jobs, worries about the cost of accommodations, and fears about the cost of health care and other benefits for employees. These perceptions by employers exist beyond mere figures on a report page: Friday ABFH reported in her blog about a current court case involving a woman who "was illegally terminated based on her employer's perception that she was substantially limited in the major life activities of working and thinking."

Last year in Chicago, a smaller study asked the question, is there a basis for some of these fears? Are people with disabilities crappy workers? Are special accommodations costly and complicated? Do the costs outweigh the benefits?

While the study can't necessarily be generalized beyond what it was, it did find that workers with disabilities had comparable performance records to employees without disabilities, and accommodations were inexpensive (if they cost anything at all). For employees surveyed, a number of employees without disabilities reported also receiving workplace accommodations (i.e. accommodations are not always all that special, and are simply good for workers in general). To read the Chicago report: executive summary and comprehensive results, both PDF.

What will it take to dispel the myths surrounding employees with disabilities? How will DoL "formulate targeted strategies and policies for increasing employment opportunities for people with disabilities?"

Showing companies how hiring employees with disabilities will affect (or rather really not affect) their "bottom line," like the Chicago study did, is one strategy to use. It seems to me that no matter what else, a lot of education is clearly needed. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in the dark ages, for all the superstition and myth that surrounds how the mainstream views people like me. It's time employers modernized their conception of people with disabilities, methinks!