This leaves prospective workers with disabilities in a horrible dilemma. For
the majority of people with disabilities who cannot find entry-level work
that provides health insurance, government programs are the only option.
Yet, Medicaid’s asset and income limits prevent many workers with
disabilities from qualifying. Taking a job that pays enough to live on means
losing access to health care coverage. Even as we have attempted to open the
door to employment and community integration for people with disabilities
through laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), insurance discrimination and lack of
affordable health care serves to keep that door closed for too many.
The rest of the article is available
here<http://www.huffingt onpost.com/ ari-neeman/ the-disability- health-car_ b_265365. html>at:
http://www.huffingt onpost.com/ ari-neeman/ the-disability- health-car_ b_265365. html

—
Ari Ne’eman
President
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network
http://www.autistic advocacy. org
info@autisticadvoca cy.org
732.763.5530

———— ——— ——— ——— ———
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the Dan Marino Foundation at http://www.nomyths. org

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*At Illinois Wesleyan University*

*Employees with Disabilities:  An Untapped Resource*

*Aug. 13, 2009*

I want to thank Dr. Richard Wilson for that generous introduction and for
his outstanding leadership as president of this great institution.  Illinois
Wesleyan University is one of the real jewels of our state.  Thanks to the
university for hosting us today and to Carl Teichman for inviting me to join
you.

I also want to acknowledge my friend Mike Matejka with the Great Plains
Laborers District Council, his wife, Kari Sandhaas and Dr. Virginia Moody.  As
parents of young adults with autism, they’ve worked tirelessly to open up
doors of opportunity for their children and others with disabilities.  In
the process, they have helped to open a lot of minds.

And I want to congratulate MarcFirst and Country Financial for their success
with Opportunity W.O.R.K.S.  What an inspiring story.  I also want to
commend the Autism Society of McLean County for their internship program for
young adults on the autism spectrum.  I understand that Mike and Kari’s
daughter Loretta, and Dr. Moody’s son Alex, were the program’s pioneer
interns.  I hope there will be many more.

To all of the other advocates and employers of people with disabilities –
and to anyone who is *thinking* of hiring workers with disabilities – I
applaud you for your support and interest in helping to open new doors of
opportunity in America.

*America’s largest minority*

There are more than 50 million Americans with disabilities.  They are the
single largest minority group in America.  They are our children, our
parents, our siblings, our friends and neighbors.  And tomorrow, they could
include any of us.  Think about Christopher Reeve – Superman.  Like him, we
are *all* just one bad accident or medical diagnosis away from being
disabled ourselves.

*Helen Keller and vision*

Helen Keller was once asked by a newspaper reporter if she could imagine any
disability worse than lack of sight.  She replied, “Yes,” there is something
worse.  “Lack of vision.”

For most of our nation’s history, we lacked the vision to see that
discrimination based on disability was as unacceptable – and frankly,
un-American – as discrimination based on race, or gender, or any other
immutable characteristic.  Thank goodness, that it now changing.

*
Americans with Disabilities Act*

Two weeks ago, we celebrated the 19th anniversary of the Americans with
Disabilities Act.  I believe that the ADA is one of America’s greatest civil
rights achievements.  In its scope and intentions, it ranks alongside two
other major victories for equal justice – the Civil Right Act and the Voting
Rights Act

Nineteen years after the ADA became law, it is clear that this pioneering
law is fulfilling its promise in many ways.  You can see it in the physical
changes the ADA has brought about, like curb cuts, that benefit all
Americans, not just those with disabilities.

Because of the ADA and IDEA – the federal Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act — thousands of Americans with disabilities like Mike and
Kari’s daughter, Loretta – have gone to good schools, received good
educations  and graduated from college.  Those are achievements we should
all be proud of.

*Employment – the unfulfilled promise of the ADA*

But 19 years after the ADA became the law of our land, its promise of equal
employment opportunity for people with disabilities remains largely
unfulfilled.  Listen to these numbers:

·      More than 60 percent of working-age Americans with disabilities are
not working.  That was before this recession.  The numbers are worse now.

·      In addition, Americans with disabilities who *do* work tend to be
concentrated in lower-paying jobs.  As a result, they are three times as
likely to live in poverty as individuals *without* disabilities.

·      And here’s the real kicker:  In both public and private workplaces,
employment of people with disabilities is actually lower today than it was
when the ADA was signed 19 years ago.  We’re actually*losing* ground when it
comes to employment of people with disabilities.

*AN UNTAPPED RESOURCE FOR EMPLOYERS***

Here is what enlightened employers – like Country Financial – know:  Hiring
employees with disabilities is not an act of charity or social justice.  It’s
good business.  People with disabilities are an untapped resource for
employers.*
*

**

*DisabilityWorks, Chicago:  Equal justice is not expensive*

The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce commissioned a three-year study of the
workplace performance of people with disabilities. They called their
initiative “Disability Works.”  Good name.

They commissioned researchers at DePaul University to conduct the study.  They
collected information on more than 300 people who were already employed in
the private sector in three growing industries:  health care, retail, and
hospitality.  About one-third of the workers had disabilities.

This is what the study found:

On their annual performance reviews, employees with disabilities rated
slightly higher than their co-workers without disabilities. Employees with
disabilities took fewer scheduled and unscheduled days off work – just the
opposite of what many might assume.

In addition, the average cost of accommodating the workers with disabilities
– modifying the workplace to meet their needs – was $313.  As investments
in good, dependable workers go, that’s a bargain. And you know what the most
frequent request for “reasonable accommodation” was?  Flex time, which costs
nothing.

*A challenge we have never seen before*

Because of the success of the ADA in advancing educational opportunity, we
now have a challenge in America that we have never had before:  We have more
potential employees with good educations, including college degrees, that we
have ever had at any time in our nation’s history.

We also have an aging workforce.

As I said, hiring workers with disabilities is not an act of charity. The
companies that learn first how to recruit and retain talented employees with
disabilities are going to have an advantage in the marketplace.  They are
going to have a wider choice of employees to choose from when it comes to
filling critical vacancies.

*IMPRESSIVE EXAMPLES*

The executive director of DisabilityWorks is a woman named Karen
McCulloh.  She’s
a registered nurse.  She is also legally blind, has profound hearing loss,
and has M.S.  And she is a dynamo.  I don’t know how many Karen McCullohs
there are in America.  But it would be a real loss if America were deprived
of the contributions of even one of them because of old myths and fears and
stereotypes about people with disabilities.

I know that Mike and Kari, Dr. Moody and others here are especially
concerned about employment opportunities for people who are on the autism
spectrum.  So I decided to do a little research on people with autism in the
workplace.

In 1997, Tim Page won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his work as the
chief classical music critic of the *Washington Post – *work that the
Pulitzer board called “lucid and illuminating.”  Three years later, in his
mid-40s, he was diagnosed with autism.

Vernon Smith won the 2002 Nobel Prize for inventing the field of
experimental economics.  He says that his capacity for deep concentration –
a characteristic of his autism – contributed to his ability to win the Nobel
Prize.  More importantly, his autism helped him think “outside the box.”

As he says, “I don’t feel any social pressure to do things the way other
people do them, professionally.  And so I have been more open to different
ways of looking at a lot of the problems in economics.”

A recent Harvard Business School case study examined a Danish company that
tests computer software.  The company has a little over 40 employees.  More
than 30 are on the autism spectrum.  It was started by a man whose own son
has autism.  The company owner said he had read all kinds of books about
autism.  “But,” he said, “there were too many books describing what people
CAN’T do.”  He wanted to show what people with autism *can* do.

By the way, psychologists have noticed clusters of people with Asperger’s –
a mild form of autism – wherever there is a concentration of high-tech
companies.

In fact, Hans Asperger, a Viennese pediatrician who first identified the
disorder in 1944, once wrote, “For success in science or art, a dash of
autism is *essential*.”

And then there is Alan Turing, a British mathematical genius who was, by
most accounts, the inventor of the electronic computer. During World War II,
he worked on the “Enigma Project,” the top-secret effort by the British
government to crack the German code.

Like many people on the autism spectrum, he was hyper-sensitive to sensory
stimulation.  So he locked himself in his room for days – lowering a pail
out the window for meals.

On his own, over a two-week period, he invented the basic design of the
electronic computer.  Once the computer was built to his specifications, it
was able to crack the German code – and plans could be made to counter
German tactics and win the war.

In 1999, *Time* magazine named Turing one of the100 most important people of
the 20th century for his role in creating the modern computer, stating, “The
fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or
a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of the Turing
machine.”

*Taxpayers, not dependents*

Clearly, not everyone on the autism spectrum has the potential to become a
Nobel laureate or invent a world-changing device.  But millions of Americans
with autism and other disabilities do have talents and contributions that
our nation needs.  And in this economy, with government at all levels facing
budget cuts, doesn’t it make sense to try to bring more people into the
workforce rather than leaving them to rely so heavily on public programs?  That
is all people with disabilities are asking for: the chance to be full
members of our society, to make the most of their God-given talents, and to
work to the best of their abilities.

*National comprehensive autism strategy*

I have introduced a bill that would increase vocational opportunities for
people on the autism spectrum.  Specifically, it would fund demonstration
programs to test new ways to provide vocational training, employment
assistance, transportation, and other services to adults with autism – so
they could find productive employment and improve their quality of life.  The
bill is called the Autism Treatment Acceleration Act.  It is co-sponsored by
Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, and
14 other Senators.

Here’s what else our bill would do:  It would fund autism care centers where
families could find quality medical, behavioral, and educational services
for their autistic children.  And it would end the insurance discrimination
that too many autistic individuals face today, by establishing nationwide
the law we now have in Illinois that requires health insurers to cover the
diagnosis and treatment of autism, including behavioral therapy.

*Disability rights is part of the civil rights struggle*

Vernon Smith, the Nobel laureate for economics, compares the struggle for
disability rights to the struggle for civil rights.  He says: “We’ve lost a
lot of the barriers that have to do with skin color and various other
characteristics.  But there’s still not sufficient recognition of mental
diversities.”  He adds, “We don’t all have to think alike to be communal and
to live in a productive and satisfying world.”

I think he is right.  And just as our society and our economy is stronger
because of the progress we have made in incorporating minorities and women
into the workforce, we will be stronger still when we fulfill the ADA’s
still-unmet challenge of employment opportunity for people with
disabilities.

During the Great Depression, a man in a wheelchair helped a broken nation
get up off its knees.  America needs all the talented minds we can find to
rebuild today’s economy.  We can’t afford to let old stigmas, myths, and
fears about disability deprive us of people who can help build a stronger
future.

—
Ari Ne’eman
President
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network
http://www.autisticadvocacy.org
info@autisticadvocacy.org
732.763.5530

————————————————
Take a look at our innovative new Public Service Announcement produced with
the Dan Marino Foundation at http://www.nomyths.org