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Employers Increasingly Face Disability-Based Bias Cases
November 20, 2001
By REED ABELSON, The New York Times

For five years, Philip Lanni, partly disabled by dyslexia and other neurological impairments, worked as a radio dispatcher for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. And from his early days, the rangers Mr. Lanni sent to their jobs made him a target of pranks and ridicule, according to a lawsuit he won against the department in 1999.

The rangers highlighted his spelling mistakes in his log book, he said, and tried to blame him for errors that were not his fault. "We become the scapegoat," he said. Eventually, the harassment began to escalate. "It jumped from verbal to physical," he said. One ranger brandished a gun at him, and another sprayed his face with Mace. When he complained, the suit contended, Mr. Lanni was told he worked in a "locker room atmosphere" and should not be "so sensitive." The department declined to comment.

Mr. Lanni is in the vanguard of an issue that has emerged with full force only recently: the harassment of disabled employees at work. Federal courts and juries are starting to treat it just as seriously as traditional cases of sexual or racial harassment.

But many companies are still slow to respond to the challenge, according to lawyers involved with the issue. "There has been a great deal more time spent educating people on harassment on the basis of sex and race," said Margaret Hart Edwards, a lawyer with Littler Mendelson in San Francisco who advises corporations.

Employers, said Claudia Center, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center in San Francisco, "have not even gotten it on the radar screen yet."

According to the complaints - some 2,400 are now filed annually with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - many disabled employees say they are constantly berated by co- workers and managers who accuse them of faking their injuries. Others say their colleagues gang up on them as they would in the schoolyard. Still others say they are shunned by managers, who try to force them to quit.

Disability-based harassment is now the fourth most frequent claim behind racial harassment, sexual harassment, and claims for harassment based on national origin, according to preliminary figures from the E.E.O.C. for the year ended Sept. 30. But lawsuits under the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act have proved extremely difficult to win, according to legal experts. "The standard of proof is made so high that almost no one can meet it," said Ruth Colker, a law professor at Ohio State University. Employers prevailed in more than 93 percent of cases reaching the trial court level from 1992 through mid-1998 and 84 percent of the time on appeal, according to her research.

Moreover, many disabled employees facing harassment do not sue at all for fear of losing their jobs. They may depend on their employer for health insurance or worry about their ability to find another position. "Folks who are disabled have enormous external pressures," said Jill L. Craft, a plaintiff's lawyer in Baton Rouge, La.

While that makes it harder to show a repeated pattern of discrimination and harassment, several highly publicized lawsuits have recently overcome these hurdles. Mr. Lanni, who was represented by the law firm of Wong Fleming, won a six-figure jury award for disability-based harassment. Two cases that were appealed in federal courts earlier this year were affirmed.

Those decisions are the first instances since the disabilities law formally went into effect in 1992 that appellate courts have explicitly recognized this kind of harassment as a form of discrimination, just as other harassment is viewed under the 1964 civil rights act.

As disabled employees gain greater access to the ordinary workplace, they face many of the same obstacles experienced by other members of a minority.

"Kids with disabilities are harassed all the time," said Andrew J. Imparato, the president of the American Association of People With Disabilities in Washington. "Why wouldn't it go on in the workplace?"

Despite recent progress, only 29 percent of people who are disabled and are of working age are employed, compared with 79 percent of those who are not disabled, according to a recent survey.

"There needs to be more follow- up," said Annela Soran, a senior recruiter for Just One Break, a New York nonprofit organization that helps people with disabilities find employment. "A lot of people land jobs, but they can't keep them." Many consultants recommend that companies broaden their diversity efforts to include people with disabilities explicitly. J. P. Morgan Chase (news/quote), for example, has an employee network for people with disabilities that meets monthly. It alerts the company to issues it may not have considered, like the difficulty of navigating carpet with a wheelchair.

"If you're speaking about diversity, this is yet another culture," said Joan Imperiale, a company vice president.

Harassment of people with disabilities takes different forms, but it can sometimes be a matter of sheer cruelty. The equal employment commission recently brought a lawsuit against the Olive Garden, a chain of Italian restaurants owned by Darden Restaurants (news/quote), on behalf of a former employee, Jody Terrio, who is mentally retarded.

"Examples of the physical abuse," the commission claimed in its suit, "include putting Terrio in headlocks and other physically painful wrestling positions, pulling down Terrio's pants in front of co-workers, and hiding or riding around on Terrio's bicycle because they knew it would upset Terrio."

Olive Garden said it could not discuss the case, but defended its record in employing people with disabilities and reaching out to disabled customers. "We're looking forward to getting all the facts on the table," said Steve Coe, a company spokesman.

Sometimes the discovery of a condition can ignite an outbreak of hostility. Sandra Flowers, for example, worked as a medical assistant at a doctors' office in Baton Rouge for six years. But as soon as her office manager discovered that Ms. Flowers was infected with H.I.V., "her whole attitude and demeanor changed," Ms. Flowers said.

Although the two were once friends, the office manager told colleagues not to touch the food Ms. Flowers brought to an office gathering. She repeatedly cleaned Ms. Flower's telephone with rubbing alcohol. In a single week, according to the lawsuit Ms. Flowers brought against Southern Regional Physician Services, she was forced to take four random drug tests.

After Ms. Flowers was accused of mistreating patients and was the subject of written complaints about various infractions, she was fired.

In 1998, a jury awarded Ms. Flowers $350,000 for disability-based harassment, and the case was appealed. The federal appeals court in New Orleans affirmed the decision, although it ruled that Ms. Flowers should receive minimal damages because the harassment did not cause substantial enough injury. Her lawyer, Ms. Craft, is currently asking the court to award her lawyer's fees, which she says she will give to Ms. Flowers.

Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, which owned Southern Regional, said Ms. Craft's termination was unrelated to her H.I.V. status. The hospital would not comment further on the case but said it took allegations of harassment seriously.

Many of the people bringing complaints have disabilities that carry considerable stigma, like mental illness. Others confront questions about whether they are truly disabled. About 40 percent of the complaints involve mental disabilities or back injuries, according to federal statistics.

In some cases, supervisors are frustrated at having employees who are restricted from performing all aspects of their jobs. Robert J. Fox, for example, injured his back, limiting him to light-duty work at a General Motors (news/quote) plant in Martinsburg, W.Va. A supervisor there routinely referred to disabled employees as "911 hospital people," according to Mr. Fox's lawsuit. He said he was frequently asked to do work that could further injure his back. When he refused, one manager asked him how he was supposed to take someone "with these restrictions," according to the suit.

A jury awarded Mr. Fox $200,000 in damages; an appeals court affirmed it this year. G.M. has paid Mr. Fox, who still works for the company, according to a spokesman. The company says it has various initiatives to help disabled employees feel more comfortable.

Someone who has a psychiatric disability can also become vulnerable to the hostilities of co-workers. Eric R. Stewart worked for Bally Total Fitness when he suffered a breakdown and was diagnosed with bipolar illness. When Mr. Stewart returned to work, his colleagues called him "psycho," "wild man" and "freak," according to a lawsuit he filed against Bally in 1999. He was eventually fired.

A federal court in Philadelphia ruled last year that the case could proceed to trial. While Bally said it could not comment on the litigation, the company said it did not tolerate any kind of harassment.

Advocates say employers' efforts to make the workplace more hospitable are more important than their attempts not to run afoul of the disabilities act. "The spirit of the law," said Matthew Sapolin, co-executive director of the Queens Independent Living Center, "is much better than the letter of the law."

Article online at:
NY Times Website

Finding her way
Los Angeles Times
August 26, 2001
By Deepa Bharath,

You did it, Sharon! You just did it!"

Sharon Matson turned her head in the direction of the exclamation from her instructor. Her face momentarily bore an expression of shock and disbelief. Then, in an instant, she made a fist and let out a whoop of joy.

"I guess that was it," the 52-year-old Costa Mesa woman told her fellow trainees at the Marriott employment program for the visually impaired. "I made a reservation. Yes!" It is a job easily done by people with normal eyesight. But for someone like Matson, it's a complex task -- one that must be learned, understood and studied meticulously for several weeks because of the challenge it presents to a person who cannot see or read a computer screen.

Matson is one of 11 trainees selected by the Marriott from the Braille Institute in Anaheim to attend the Pathways program, which trains and prepares visually-impaired people for a career at the Marriott's international reservations center in Santa Ana.

The class has students with varying levels of visual impairment. Matson says she is almost blind. She lost her right eye when she was 5 years old because she was born premature and her eyes did not develop enough. Her left eye has been plagued by a host of problems including cataracts, glaucoma and scar tissue.

Matson can see light and very blurry images and shadows, but says she is blind for all practical purposes. She uses a cane to walk outside her home. She utilizes Orange County Transportation Authority's Access service for the disabled, which she uses to schedule bus rides in advance.

Matson says she is beginning to accept the fact that she will soon be plunged into a dark world. And it's not easy. "But that's OK," she said smiling. "I'm thrilled to be doing what I'm doing."

That pride, self-esteem and enthusiasm is exactly what the Pathways program hopes to instill in its participants, said training supervisor Lori Warner, who teaches Matson and other trainees to use computer programs specially designed for the visually impaired. The Pathways program itself teaches students "life skills as well as occupational skills," she said.

"We introduce them to Marriott as a company, teach them the terminology widely used in the hospitality industry," she explained.

Kellie Perez, who coordinates the program, said the program is equipped to give people who are visually impaired what they value the most -- independence. The Marriott collaborates with the Braille Institute and the state Department of Rehabilitation to run the program, she said.

"It's not just an incredible opportunity for the visually impaired," she said. "It also opens a whole new world for our sighted employees who get exposed to a whole different issue."

Marriott now employs several blind people full time. The company has hired from the Braille Institute since 1999. Also included in the curriculum is learning how to project a professional image, write and build a resume, take job-related responsibilities and manage personal finances.

But that is not the most challenging part of the program. A blind person who makes a reservation uses a program called JAWS -- Job Access With Speech -- that essentially reads out what is on the computer screen. So, the person who is making the reservation wears headphones and hears the computer talking in one ear and the caller in the other ear.

"It's like this sensory overload," Warner said. "It's exactly like listening to two people talk simultaneously and responding to both of them."

Matson says she has been yearning to meet these challenges for a long time and was thrilled when the Braille Institute selected her for the program. Matson and her husband Dan, who is also legally blind, were no strangers to the Braille Institute in Anaheim. Both had attended the Institute's programs and classes for visually-impaired youth several years ago.

But Matson went back to the Institute earlier this year with a renewed energy. She enrolled in a computer class, her first ever. She started to use Zoom Text, a program that literally enlarges the type. Soon, the large type was not large enough for Matson. So, she had to switch to JAWS.

The hardest thing in the program, she says, is the fact she cannot see the cursor.

"You tend to get lost," she said with a laugh. "But I'm learning to depend on the guy in the computer that does all the talking."

There are days, Matson says, she has walked out in tears. Frustration is part of the exercise. The ultimate goal, however, was to overcome these obstacles and "make myself a better person," she said.

"I wanted to improve my abilities, sometimes to just get out of the house," Matson said. "And I've learned through my experience at Marriott that people appreciate what people can do in spite of their blindness. It's great to be looked at as a person rather than as a handicapped person."

The world outside has not always been that easy. She has had to put up with widespread misconceptions.

"Many people think that if you're blind, you're retarded," Matson said. "That's not true. Our brains work -- they work very well. All we need is a chance, an opportunity."

And she has constantly proved that to herself and those around her. Despite her limitations, Matson is active in her neighborhood church. She is a member of their council and teaches Sunday school. She took several courses in Orange Coast College and even got her bachelors degree in liberal studies from Cal State Long Beach, graduating in 1989.

The living room of her Costa Mesa condominium is crammed with her collectibles and items she crafted. A framed wooden quilt pattern hangs on the wall. She won second place for that piece of work at the Orange County Fair two years ago. Matson is also resourceful when it comes to crafts.

"See that angel on the shelf?" she said, pointing to the doll. "Her head is made with Styrofoam and her body is a one-liter soda bottle."

Matson lives with Dan, her husband of 12 years, and mother Betty Roach.

"She's achieved remarkable things," said Roach. "She raised her son all by herself."

Her son, said Matson, is 30 years old now and is in the construction industry. Roach finds it hard to accept her daughter is going blind.

"I see that she deals with it, and she's a lot braver than I am," she said. "But it's hard because she enjoys life so much."

She says the Marriott's program has worked wonders.

"She's getting compliments from people," Roach said. "She knows she can do things."

At home, Matson and her husband, have started using Braille extensively in day-to-day activities. They use their Braille typewriter to label compact discs, audio and video cassettes.

"We even have the Bible in Braille," said Dan Matson.

He also marked up their microwaves and ovens with silicon bubbles they bought from the Braille Institute's store.

"Sharon loves to cook and oh yeah, she can cook," he said. "She makes great tacos and enchiladas."

People like Matson are an inspiration to younger people who have lost eyesight or are in the process of losing eyesight, said John Zamora, coordinator of youth and career services at the Braille Institute. He said Matson had the basic capabilities, and teachers at the Institute merely prepped her and acted as a catalyst in her success.

"As someone who had been pushed around emotionally, it took Sharon a lot of courage just to show up," Zamora said. "These success stories send out a message to others like her."

Recently a group of blind children, who took a tour of the Marriott reservations office, was inspired, he said.

"It means a lot to a blind child to know that they have a future ahead of them," Zamora said. "That they have the possibility of being gainfully employed."

It is that freedom that Matson says she is struggling to achieve.

"I'm still striving for independence," she said. "It's important for me although it's hard to get. That's why I need to stay positive. Because, if I lose that independence, in my mind, I've lost everything."

The Blind Physicist Who May Find ET
Business Week Online, May 12, 2001
John Williams

Kent Cullers, who has been blind since birth, has never glimpsed the Milky Way or witnessed a full moon on a clear summer night. But the 51-year-old physicist is no stranger to star-gazing. As a senior researcher at the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) in Mountain View, Calif., Cullers has been for decades a guiding light in the quest for life in the cosmos.

Perhaps you saw the 1997 movie Contact, which had a character modeled after him. Since 1985, Cullers has led SETI's Targeted Search Signal Detection team, where he develops, evaluates, and implements complex algorithms that allow scientists to sift through radio signals originating from distant star systems. He was the first blind student to earn a doctorate in physics in the U.S. Cullers is also a leader in the rarified field of envisioning and designing advanced radio telescopes that scan wider and wider swaths of the skies.

When it comes to communicating on terra firma, Cullers uses a variety of assistive technology devices to get his ideas across and keep open his lines of communication with the sighted world. His example proves yet again that the best way to employ assistive technology is to have a healthy mix of old tools that work with newer ones that add abilities.

RUBBER BANDS AND WAX.  To get his ideas across graphically, Cullers uses a simple, raised-line drawing kit developed for blind people. These kits could be made up of small stakes and rubber bands or thin lines of wax. He has used these drawings to convey ideas for designs of new telescope systems. Some of Cullers' diagrams are 30 years old, and they're wrapped in tightly sealed plastic bags to prevent them from fragmenting.

He also uses a decades-old system called Optacon, which consists of a photocell camera attached to a electronically controlled matrix of 144 vibrating pins that move up and down to represent letters. As the user slowly moves the camera across the page, letters from words are translated into vibrating raised pins that cover about half the index finger. People with impaired vision can scan the camera over a document or computer screen and piece together an image in their mind. "The Optacon is a bit slow, but it's very accurate," says Cullers.

On the other end of the spectrum, Cullers loves "carrying around technologies." He uses two computers: a portable Windows laptop and a BrailleNote, a small computer the size of a mini-notebook that runs on WindowsCE and has a tactile input and output interface. "I can do all of my word processing, mathematics, e-mails, and other activities," says Cullers.

DOWNSIDE.  The BrailleNote can connect to other Windows computers via serial or parallel ports as well as through PC cards and infrared ports. It has a built-in modem that makes it easy to log on to the Internet through a standard phone line. The device also easily converts to a Braille terminal for a standard PC. "It has great communications capabilities, so I can connect it to the Windows machine. Once connected, I have a display identical to what is on the Windows box," he points out.

The downside? Using the BrailleNote as an input/outpout terminal allows Cullers to read a standard screen one line at a time, so he has to move the display around to get what he wants if the Braille translation of the display doesn't fall to the right place. Cullers also likes using a text-to-speech program on his Windows laptop. But sometimes software conflicts cause the program to read text Cullers isn't interested in. When this occurs, he goes back to the BrailleNote.

To do his number-crunching, Cullers uses a Braille code of mathematics, called the Nemeth Code. This system allows any print mathematical representation to be mapped into a tactile format. Cullers often builds his own specialized computer programs to help determine what type of computer system will be required to analyze radio signals and build radio telescopes.

While he does lots of math on computers, much of his computational innovation takes place in the gray matter between his ears. He moves easily from the old to new technology and vice versa. "I could not be as effective as I am without the old and new technology," he says. Effective is an understatement. He has penned 50 articles using assistive technology products.

INSPIRATION.  Cullers' achievements illustrate how using assistive technology can allow a person with disabilities to break into a rigorous, intellectual field. His example has clearly had an effect in the blind community. "I heard Dr. Cullers at Georgia Tech in 1999, and he was awe-inspiring. I was so glad he talked about using Braille in his work. He convinced me to return to it," says 25-year-old Caroline Devine of Miami, Florida. Devine is studying mathematics at Florida State University and computer programming at a state-sponsored program for the blind.

For Cullers, blindness is a small obstacle. "My blindness isn't a disability for me. It is an annoyance," he says. "I may not be able to drive a car, but that's insignificant compared to my work and my family." Insignificant indeed. Few have done more to further the search for intelligent life beyond earth. His story shows the spectacular potential for assistive technology to give a clearer, stronger voice to many people whose disabilities, in another era, might have masked their brilliance.

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Deaf Techies are a Valuable Untapped Resource
San Francisco Chronicle, Dec 17, 2000
Bob Weinstein

Todd Hlavacek had a tough time getting a job before he was hired by Lucent Technologies. The 31-year-old software engineer, who has a master's degree in computer science from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, NY, never expected he'd have to endure 10 job interviews before finding a company that would hire him. On paper, he looked like a perfect candidate.

But Hlavacek had one strike against him: He is deaf. And the first nine companies that interviewed him, Hlavacek claimed, didn't want to risk hiring a deaf techie—no matter how talented he was.

He's not alone. Deaf techies from RIT and other schools are facing the same challenge.

Allen Vaala, director of college recruiting at the Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, said that employers searching for IT workers are overlooking some of the top technical schools in the United States. He claimed that RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), where Hlavacek trained, is one of the best technical schools in the country, yet only a dozen employers visited its campus this year.

That's pathetic, when reportedly half of all the technical openings in the United States are unfilled, and employers are pressuring Congress to increase the H-1B quota to 250,000. Meanwhile, RIT could be a tremendous IT talent pool for companies, boasting 12,000 students—1,100 of whom are deaf.

Not all follow Rochester's example Rochester is a unique city where no distinction is made between deaf and hearing people. It boasts a "deaf culture," according to Vaala. "Virtually all the high-tech companies in Rochester, which include the Xerox Corporation, Bausch & Lomb, and Paychex, Inc., are 'deaf friendly,'" he said.

That's not the case with many high-tech companies. "Most interviews ended when they found out I was deaf," Hlavacek said. "I'd call them through a relay (a service enabling deaf and hearing people to communicate via a dual-party phone system), and when they discovered I was deaf, they'd say the position was filled."

Hlavacek claimed that an interviewer from an international corporation became hostile when he discovered he was deaf and couldn't enunciate words. "Not surprisingly, I never heard from them again," he said. "For the most part, the attitude of employers toward deaf technical graduates is deplorable."

Bruce Jones, Kodak's IS manager of information systems for Rochester area operations, agreed with Hlavecek. "Company concerns about hiring deaf people revolve around communication and safety," he said. "Both can be easily dealt with. You can communicate with deaf people by e-mail and through interpreters, which are easy to find. Many deaf people are excellent lip readers. As for safety, there are two-way pagers and visual alarms."

Many companies have shied away from hiring deaf techies because of perceived stumbling blocks. The reality is that it's easy to accommodate their needs. Besides Rochester companies, there are others, like Lucent, that go out of their way to accommodate deaf employees and those with other special needs. "The interview at Lucent was a total reversal of what I experienced elsewhere," Hlavacek said. "Rather than a wall of ignorance and resistance, I was welcomed, and no one looked down on me because of my deafness. They saw me as an equal regardless of my handicap." Additionally, the interviewer was able to communicate in sign language.

"Employers don't understand that the people they ought to be speaking to about accommodations for deaf workers are the deaf candidates themselves, by simply asking them what they need to do their job," said Lynn Morley, senior employment specialist at NTID.

According to Morley, the mistake deaf techies make is not being open about their deafness. "If the interviewer doesn't raise the issue, the deaf person should," she advised. "Employers are not comfortable asking questions about deafness. So put it right on the table. Sooner or later, you'll have to deal with it."

Hlavacek's advice to employers: "Deaf/hard-of-hearing candidates are just like any other hearing techies. Each has unique skills. The oft-used quote by Gallaudet University president, I. King Jordan, sums it up perfectly. "Deaf people can do anything but hear." That's especially true in the Internet age, where email is the primary means of communication between workers.

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CEO Rises above Severe Dyslexia
Del Jones
MONEY, COVER STORY
07/19/2000, USA Today, FINAL, Page 01B, (Copyright 2000)

DEARBORN, Mich. -- As simple as this sentence is, the new CEO of Ford Motor Credit couldn't read it out loud without stumbling like a 6-year-old.

Don Winkler, 52, has what the experts call "deep" dyslexia , more severe than the mild or surface varieties. More than 60% of prison inmates have learning disabilities. " Dyslexia is a disease," Winkler says, and he figures most adults afflicted this badly are behind bars or living with their parents, dysfunctional products of being dismissed as slow or retarded since first-grade reading class.

Winkler, driven to success by the daggers of his childhood and the desire to prove to dyslexic children that they can succeed, heads a 19,000-employee company that makes more auto loans than GMAC or any other.

The price he pays is a 3 a.m. alarm each morning, a head start on a world that thinks so differently. Winkler's day begins with 20 minutes of mental "warm-ups" that could be mistaken for first-grade homework.

He tunes his focus by staring at squares on his computer screen, zooming in and out, changing the background back and forth from white to black. He stares at the letters "C" and "F," clicking his mouse to flip them sideways and upside down. He excelled in calculus in school, but one of the math problems he does at 4 a.m. is 4 + 1 = 5. He studies a long list of "trigger" words, such as "get" or "it" that he stumbles on because he can't visualize them like he can more difficult words such as elephant.

Winkler has a reputation for making great speeches, but he can't make a simple one without exhaustive practice. E-mails arrive written entirely in uppercase because he reads block letters more easily. Without speed dial he would constantly be calling the wrong number. Contractions are roadblocks to his mind, so "can't" will be the last one that appears in this story.

Tears well in Winkler's eyes aboard a corporate jet as he recalls being 7 and unable to spell the word "red" in front of big brother Dickie's friends. He says he still hears snickering in the sanctuary of the First Presbyterian Church in Phillipsburg, N.J., when he sang "praise dog from whom all blessings flow" instead of "praise God."

The memories, 45 years old, will keep him awake tonight, he says.

About 25 million Americans have dyslexia . Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill were among the D-students whose minds would stumble on the letters "b" and "d," and silent vowels.

Many dyslexics, including Tom Cruise and Whoopi Goldberg, gravitate to the arts. But a new era of intellectual property in business is unearthing creativity from the dyslexic minds of CEOs Craig McCaw, Charles Schwab and Cisco Systems' John Chambers.

Though they have never met, Chambers shares a bond with Winkler. "I tried to read in third grade and everybody laughed," Chambers says. Like Winkler, he wants "to let people know they are in charge of their own destiny."

Strategies for focusing

It is 4 a.m. when Winkler arrives at his Dearborn, Mich., office. There is a video camera mounted in front of his desk, the kind other executives use for teleconferencing. For Winkler it is a tool to keep his mind from racing in a thousand directions. When talking on the phone he projects a live video of himself on a big-screen TV and looks himself squarely in the eye.

Eye contact is crucial to focus, he explains, even when face to face. Later on he demands "a little eye contact here" at a breakfast meeting over a mushroom omelet with Ford Credit North America President Greg Smith when Smith loiters over his notes.

An innocent consequence of lost focus is the monologues Winkler habitually launches into, think-alouds that are laden with insight about everything except the subject at hand. "Quite a walk down the garden path," says communications Vice President Walter Jennings, who says it is acceptable to interrupt the boss and steer him back on course.

A less innocent consequence is what Winkler calls his debilitating slides into "the world of insecurity, or worse, the world of anxiety."

When he is at the top of his game, Winkler is the ultimate CEO - coach who wins healthy productivity from the troops, says Ken Clark, Winkler's chief of staff. Beth Acton, Ford Credit's chief financial officer, says she has received more useful advice from Winkler in the eight months he has been on the job than she has had in 17 years at Ford.

But when Winkler slides, and everyone around him has seen it, he loses confidence and "rants and yells" in anger like the definitive insecure boss, Clark says.

"If you do not keep the discipline, you tend to go off into other worlds," Winkler says.

The best way to handle Winkler, Clark says, is to let him blow off steam. "Then I ask for some coaching" on what seems to have angered him because, above all, Winkler sees himself as a teacher, Clark says.

Winkler requires a lot of attention from his troops. At a recent board meeting, Acton says she was concentrating on her part of a presentation and failed Winkler by not providing enough eye contact and nods of support as he spoke.

"He became very nervous and talked way too fast to be clear," Acton says. "He needed feedback from me."

Ford Credit officers say Winkler often does not "get it" until they go reluctantly to an easel to draw pictures so that, for example, Winkler can visualize what Ford customers experience when their leases expire. MBA types are usually linear thinkers and have not so much as doodled since grade school. But they say a few crude stick figures can switch light bulbs on in Winkler's brain, and he then takes their ideas to depths and angles never considered, a process he calls "upgrading."

"Don's brain has created a compensatory pathway," says Sam Marks, an organizational psychologist and longtime friend. "He has changed his brain."

Help from technology

A drive from Winkler's office to his 4,000-square-foot condominium is short. "2.7 minutes," he says, long enough for a quick story about how he met his second wife, Deborah. "I dated her 18 times over 18 weeks before we kissed for the first time."

"I had to ask," Deborah says.

"I had never dated before," Winkler says. He fell in love with his first wife, Carol, at 13. "She was my best friend, my high school sweetheart," but the marriage collapsed under the weight of Winkler's high maintenance. Carol was a straight-A student who gave up college and career ambitions to put Winkler through Northrop University, raise two children and be his one-woman support system. She proofread every report and letter he wrote on his way up.

Winkler says he remains close friends with his first wife and is determined not to lean on Deborah the same way. Technology is his nanny, and he owns the latest in gadgetry, from the most expensive PalmPilot to a Quicktionary reading pen that scans written words, defines them in writing and speaks the pronunciation into an earpiece. His house is littered with recording devices into which he dictates ideas.

"He will give you 100 ideas. Your job is to pick out the best three or go crazy trying to do all 100," says Barrett Burns, Ford Credit's executive vice president of global risk management, who worked with Winkler at Banc One Credit and Citibank.

Winkler joined Ford Credit in October, recruited by Ford CEO Jacques Nasser. Winkler replaced Phillipe Paillart, who was forced out after 13 months. Paillart became caught up in the transitional crossfire when Nasser replaced former CEO Alex Trotman, Winkler says.

"Don is enormously creative and has that rare ability to mobilize people to come up with new ideas that generate results," Nasser says. "In just eight months, Don has engineered new initiatives that have increased our customer satisfaction as well as our revenues."

Organizing daily life

Aboard a hotel treadmill at 5 a.m., Winkler says his pre-dawn regimen fills him with confidence, and "as the day goes on, I get more stable, more powerful." Waking at 3 a.m. means he must get to sleep by 9 p.m., and he makes an art of disappearing at dinner functions.

Winkler charts everything. He inputs into a computer program today's breakfast: skim milk, coffee, raisins, a half cup each of Cheerios and Special K. He inputs his body temperature, cholesterol level, hours of TV. Today he judges his mood, self-esteem, anxiety level, even his sex drive to be all above average.

"They call it anal-retentive," Winkler says, but it allows him to see his life visually and plot graphs to see if, say, what he eats might be influencing his focus.

His daily calendar is mapped out three weeks in advance by Clark, and the first block of time -- 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. -- is always set aside for thinking about a single business challenge. Never two things. "It is always one," Clark says.

One day recently between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. he thought about his first face-to-face meeting in eight days with Chambers, the dyslexic CEO of Cisco Systems. Winkler will plan 3 a.m. thinking sessions as much as a year in advance when he considers it important, and he hopes to get Chambers and Schwab together in January for a dyslexic "summit to help kids."

Winkler is a casual dresser, and acquaintances tell him he looks like actor Jackie Gleason. He blames the resemblance on his weight. It has ballooned from 185 pounds to 250 since he got married and gave up running five years ago.

Winkler's two grown children are both dyslexics. Winkler himself never knew he had dyslexia , had never even heard the word, until he was a 19-year-old electrical engineering student studying twice as hard as his classmates to keep from flunking out. Today he has his own Web site ( http://www.cyberwink.com ) largely dedicated to helping dyslexic children.

His boyhood friends remember him for his perseverance and creativity, sometimes suggesting trick plays to the high school football coach, says Joe Lissi, now a special education teacher.

Winkler had his electrician's license at 16, and Phillipsburg parents started pointing to the slow learner as someone whose future was secure because he would always make a good living. Winkler could fix anything and admits to tapping 200 phones about town. His favorite eavesdropping target was the quarterback and his girlfriends, Lissi says.

He grew up with four brothers, all at least 10 years older, in an apartment above the family-run Dick's Store in Phillipsburg.

Winkler says he is unable to read a list of names at a graduation ceremony. Yet, using pictures for notes and reading from a TelePrompTer marked with backslashes for \\\emphasis\\\, underscores to alert him to trigger words and punctuation like "!!!" and "???" at the beginning of sentences, he often emotionally moves audiences.

In his days as a banking executive, he says he transferred more than $300 billion a day on the job, yet has no recollection of his dyslexia ever causing him to make a costly mistake.

Really?

He promises to think about it. The next morning at 5 a.m. he confesses that "those ballistic missiles I launched" had slipped his unconventional mind.

Alexis Herman on Expanding Employment Initiatives
A Talk with Labor Secretary Alexis Herman 
(Comments on race and disability bias and how to get people with disabilities into the workforce.)
JOHN M. WILLIAMS, (Business Week) JMMAW@aol.com

Alexis Herman is the first African American to hold the position of U.S. Labor Secretary. Since she took the post three years ago this May, she has focused the Labor Dept. on two major goals: better preparing the workforce for the New Economy and improving the quality of workplaces across the country -- which also means addressing the concerns of the disabled. She believes people with disabilities will provide a larger share of the future workforce. Recently, I sat down with Herman to discuss her initiatives. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation:

Q: What are your major initiatives for benefiting people with disabilities?

A: We've looked systemically at what keeps people with disabilities out of the workforce and asked what can we do to eliminate those barriers. We know that, in spite of today's strong economy, about three out of four people with disabilities who want to work are not working. How do we make it happen for them? The result, largely from recommendations by the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities, is the most comprehensive national-employment agenda ever.

Q: For example?

A: We passed the Work Incentives Improvement Act, which allows states to provide Medicaid benefits for people with disabilities who go to work and allows those with Social Security Disability Insurance new options to work without losing benefits. Workers with disabilities shouldn't have to choose between their health and their job.

The President also directed the federal government to become a model employer of people with disabilities. We will set the example for the private sector. Under the Rehabilitation Act of 1998, the federal government has to ensure that its Web sites, software, and hardware are fully accessible. The government buys huge quantities of software and hardware -- more than any other purchaser -- so this will help to change the whole industry, and as a result, accessibility will improve dramatically in the private sector.

Q: What's next?

A: In the budget for fiscal 2001, we have asked for funding of a new Office of Disability Policy, Evaluation & Technical Assistance. This office -- at this high level -- will ensure that every opportunity is made available to people with disabilities throughout the employment and training system. I think from these key examples you can begin to get the picture of just how comprehensive our efforts have been. We want to ensure a workplace where people with disabilities are the familiar faces we work with everyday.

Q: How effective have these initiatives been?

A: They're brand-new, so it's too early to say. But we will evaluate them. That will be one of the functions of the new Office of Disability Policy, Evaluation &Technical Assistance, along with monitoring the employment rate of people with disabilities. We're even developing new statistical tools to do so. We know that the issues and barriers to employment are complex and require a comprehensive and collaborative approach from all federal agencies.

Q: How key is access to this collaborative approach?

A: People with disabilities know that inclusive mainstream employment leads to greater economic and social inclusion. So that's our focus - access, making sure that people with disabilities have the same access to training, to employment services, the same access to the state-run one-stop career centers that are becoming the essential bridge to jobs for everyone.

Q: What are the weaknesses of these initiatives?

A: As is often the case when you're trying to solve a long-standing problem, there is no single, surefire solution. But we've been fortunate to have the support of President Clinton and Vice-President Gore and widespread support in Congress. We expect the new disability office to be funded, and that will give us the means to evaluate what we've been doing and where we're going.

Q: But what happens after you leave office?

A: I think these initiatives will continue, because the need to include people with disabilities in our workforce is great and the reward for doing so is too large to be ignored. We've made it clear that people with disabilities must be a part of the workforce of the future.

Q: Why are you so concerned about this? Often, people become involved in the field of disabilities if they have someone in their family with a disability. Is that the case with you?

A: No, none of my family members has a disability. But I understand that people with disabilities have experienced a history of prejudice and discrimination that has nothing to do with their ability. As a black woman who grew up in the South, that's something I know about. It's only natural that I would care as much about ending discrimination against people with disabilities as I do ending discrimination against women and minorities.

Q: I understand that the 11 million unemployed people with disabilities are not included in the monthly unemployment numbers released by the government. Is this true?

A: It isn't that they're not included, but they're not identified as a separate category. The monthly unemployment figure represents all people aged 16 and over who are not employed but are looking for work or are on layoff. We think an employment measure for people with disabilities would be helpful for policymakers, analysts, advocates, and others concerned with their labor-market status. We don't know how many people with disabilities are represented in the monthly employment number. And we need that information. Several federal agencies, including our Bureau of Labor Statistics, are working to develop a reliable way to measure the employment rate of people with disabilities.

Q: With everything that is known about the abilities of people with disabilities, why is it so difficult for them to be hired?

A: In many ways, it reminds me of my experience and the experience of other African Americans -- doors were closed simply because of your race. Too often, doors are closed to Americans with disabilities simply because of their disability. And because they have not had the opportunity to be in the mainstream, other people have not had the opportunity to learn from them. We must continue to work to change that pattern.

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The New Workforce
A tight labor market gives the disabled the chance to make permanent inroads
By Michelle Conlin
BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : MARCH 20, 2000 ISSUE
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.

The Gap's ( GPS) emporium of affordable chic in midtown Manhattan throbs with New Economy action. Salesclerks sporting headsets race across the store to wait on tourists and time-starved New Yorkers. Stockboys heave huge boxes overflowing with clothes. At the center of this retail hubbub is Gap's ''wild man in a wheelchair,'' supersalesman Wilfredo ''Freddy'' Laboy, a fast-talking, goateed 36-year-old who lost his legs when he fell off a freight train at age 9. Freddy dances across the store, popping wheelies and spinning himself around to the bouncy pop music. Little kids stare as he hops off his chair and onto the floor to grab a tangerine-colored T-shirt and then pulls himself up on his stump to reach for another pair of khakis. Instead of using the elevator, he prefers to horrify colleagues by scooting himself down the stairs. ''It's faster,'' he says.

Freddy loves the Gap, and the Gap loves Freddy. But just six months ago, the story was altogether different. An amateur wheelchair basketball star who pulled himself through the New York City Marathon, Freddy was used to letting nothing stand in his way. But even with New York City's unemployment level at record lows, he couldn't find a job. Once prospective employers caught sight of his legless torso, they lost interest. Still, on a whim, Freddy wheeled himself into the Gap last October. To his astonishment, they hired him. ''I finally got accepted somewhere because they didn't just see the wheelchair,'' says the married father of three. ''They saw me.''

Freddy may well be at the cusp of a huge change rocking the world of the workplace, marking the first time in history that people with disabilities have been poised to enter Corporate America en masse--many of them with the help of wheelchairs and seeing-eye dogs.
Facing the worst labor shortage in modern history, recruiters are tapping the kinds of workers they would have easily blown off just 10 years ago: prepubescent wireheads, grandmothers--even convicted murderers. Next up are the disabled, who may prove to be the last great hope--if only because they're the only labor pool that hasn't been completely drained. At the same time, groundbreaking technology is creating ways for people with disabilities to better perform jobs, helping to erase the deep divisions that once existed between them and everybody else.

HELPFUL COMPUTERS
Sure, a few companies have a long record of hiring workers with disabilities. In the 1980s--still the Dark Ages of the movement--Marriott International Inc. ( MAR) was doing the unheard-of: paying adults with Down's Syndrome $7 an hour to work 40 hours a week cleaning rooms and sweeping floors. But that was the exception. Despite the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), passed a decade ago this July, only 25% of the country's 15 million disabled who are also of working age are employed. Of the 75% who aren't working, Harris Polls
indicate that two-thirds of them wish they could be. Says Paul H. Wehman, director of the rehabilitation research center at Virginia Commonwealth University: ''The dirty little secret of the welfare-to-work movement is that people with disabilities got left out.''

That may be about to change. Never before has it been so easy and made so much economic sense for companies to invest in workers with disabilities by making accommodations for them. ''We can use new technologies to contribute to society in ways that weren't really possible when I started 25 years ago,'' says Michael Coleman, IBM's ( IBM) vice-president for global operations. Coleman, who lost both his hands in Vietnam when he was trying to defuse a bomb, is IBM's top-ranking disabled worker. He is also chairing the company's task force to find ways to employ more workers with disabilities.

Crestar Bank has already found ways to make that happen. New-fangled voice-activated technology means that callers to the bank never know that customer-service representative Chris Harmon is a quadriplegic. He is so disabled that the recruiter who hired him had to stick a pen in his mouth so he could sign the employment application. At the company's Richmond (Va.) call center, he simply tells his computer what to do and the information appears on the screen in a flash. Crestar is one of a growing list of businesses that is mining the ranks of the disabled to solve labor crises they say would otherwise have been catastrophic. Turns out that what began as a last-ditch maneuver to stem this worker draught has yielded an unexpected boon that veteran employers of people with disabilities have long known about: The disabled are often more proficient, productive, and efficient than ''normies,'' according to researchers.

A 30-year study by DuPont ( DD) revealed that job performance by workers with disabilities was equal to or better than fully functioning peers. The disabled had a 90% above-average job performance, with safety and attendance records that were far above the norm, too. Perhaps most enticing to human-resource heads pulling their hair out over the dot-com-induced worker exodus is the fact that people with disabilities can often be far more loyal to the employers who gave them a break and are therefore less likely to be lured away by a boss dangling a bigger paycheck.

''AT A LOSS.''
But until recently, the disabled were actually penalized for finding a job because even a minimum-wage gig flipping burgers or mopping floors meant the automatic loss of Medicaid benefits. That huge barrier to employment fell in December when President Clinton signed the Workers Incentives Improvement Act, clearing the path for states to change Medicaid laws to let the disabled hang on to much-needed benefits while entering the workforce.

The move comes none too soon. Already, temporary agency Manpower Inc. ( MAN) is raiding the ranks of the disabled to fill its employee rolls. The National Disability Council reports a 50% jump in requests for workers with disabilities from companies as diverse as Merrill Lynch & Co. ( MER) and Microsoft Corp. ( MSFT). In fact, Microsoft is so eager to hire such workers that the software company is spearheading the Able to Work program, a consortium of 22 businesses scrambling to find the best ways to place disabled people in jobs. Says Microsoft's director of diversity, Santiago Rodriguez: ''Until now, the whole country has been at a loss as to how to do this.''

To many advocates for the disabled, this confusion is a disappointment. The ADA was passed with great hopes of creating jobs and access for America's disabled population of 54 million. It prohibited employers from refusing to hire qualified applicants who also had disabilities. It also mandated that the disabled have access to telecommunications equipment and public transportation.

But the barriers standing between most people with disabilities and a good, solid job haven't exactly been wiped out by employee sensitivity training courses and curb-cut accessible sidewalks. Those and other strides have helped, but problems still abound. Cities such as Chicago and New Orleans face lawsuits for failing to bring their public transportation systems into compliance.

There are also, disability advocates say, still too many lawsuits like the one brought on behalf of a mentally retarded janitor, Don Perkl, who loved scrubbing toilets for Chuck E. Cheese ( CEC) in Madison, Wis. A district manager, a lawsuit alleges, fired him after saying ''we don't hire people like that.'' The pizza parlor's local manager and two other employees quit in protest because they claimed the perennially upbeat Perkl was doing such a stellar job. Last year, a jury in federal court in the Western District of Wisconsin agreed with them, slapping the company with $13 million in punitive damages--the largest ADA award ever for a single plaintiff. A judge is still reviewing the jury's verdict. Chuck E. Cheese claims that Perkl ''wasn't dismissed due to his disability but because he couldn't perform the job,'' says company spokesman Jon Rice.

LAWSUITS ON THE FRINGE.
Plenty of other lawsuits brought under the ADA have caused critics to question its scope. Some worry that the act is not broad enough, pointing to a recent Supreme Court ruling that established that people with treatable disabilities don't qualify for protection. Others say the ADA is straying into the realm of the absurd, noting such cases as the employee with bad body odor who argued she should be protected
from getting fired because her glandular problem qualified her as disabled.

But most of the country's workers with disabilities face challenges that are far more clear-cut: They are deaf, blind, paralyzed, or emotionally impaired. Some have been burdened with disabilities since they were born. Others, like Booz, Allen & Hamilton Inc. principal Jeffrey Schaffer, are new to the minority--a group that one in three people will be a part of during their lives. Three years ago, Schaffer's car was in a head-on collision with another vehicle that swerved into his lane on a windy back road in West Virginia. It took paramedics
an hour to cut him from the wreckage. After learning he would be confined to a wheelchair, Schaffer says, the thought of returning to work was the thing that kept him going. ''Getting back to work was critical to my sense of well-being,'' says Schaffer from the bed of a hospital where he has just undergone his sixth operation since the accident. ''Work ends up being a defining characteristic for self-worth.''

For worker-starved companies, spreading that kind of self-worth around is looking more and more like the only answer to today's labor-shortage woes. Still, the real test will be when the economy cools and companies can afford to get picky about choosing between applicants with disabilities and everyone else. By then, though, it may be a lot harder to tell the difference.

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Tight Labor Supply Creates Jobs for the Mentally Disabled
By DIRK JOHNSON, New York Times, November 15, 1999

ADISON, Wis. -- A bit fretful about joining the work force, Virginia Andrajewski, 56, turned to a fellow employee on her new job at the Crowne Plaza Hotel and whispered, "Am I doing all right?"

Told she was doing splendidly, Miss Andrajewski, who has mental retardation, broke into a broad smile as she stood behind a laundry table, neatly folding pillowcases into a tall pile. As a flourishing economy exhausts the nation's labor supply, more employers are courting disabled workers like Miss Andrajewski, whose talents were long overlooked.

"I'd like to say we hired Virginia because we're just a good corporate citizen," said Bob King, the general manager at the Crowne Plaza here in the Wisconsin capital, where the unemployment rate is less than 2 percent. "But the truth is, we hired her because she's a good, loyal and dependable worker, and our business needs her."

On the job less than a month, Miss Andrajewski recently earned a wage increase to $6.65 an hour, which surprised and delighted her when she opened her check. "This is all new to me, but I sure do like it," said Miss Andrajewski, whose warm manner and dry wit have made her popular with colleagues in the hotel laundry. "For a long time, I was just floating along."

Charles Lakin, the director of the Research and Training Center on Community Living in Minneapolis, said, "There has been incredible growth in the number of people with intellectual disabilities going to work for pay." "We've gone from just getting a job for these people to sitting down and asking them about their career aspirations," he said referring to the center, a government-supported group that studies the integration of people with developmental disabilities in the larger society. From 1988 to 1996, employment increased more than 300 percent among people served by state mental retardation agencies, Mr. Lakin said. Some 337,000 adults with mental retardation hold jobs, about 17 percent of the more than 2 million Americans of working age who have cognitive disabilities. Of those working, nearly half have jobs in competitive employment, while the others work in jobs subsidized for people with disabilities.

While the severity of developmental disabilities varies widely, Mr. Lakin said, the vast majority of disabled people can work, and almost all of them want to. Despite the increasing movement into the job market, people with developmental disabilities still have a high unemployment rate. The level of employment is highest among young adults with mental retardation who have left school in the last five years, with about 23 percent holding "competitive," or unsubsidized jobs, according to Arc, an advocacy group for people with mental retardation.

Just last month, President Clinton directed government employers to aggressively recruit workers with disabilities. And a bill pending in Congress would sharply increase the ranks of disabled workers by allowing them to keep their Social Security health benefits if they take jobs. Fear of losing benefits has been a roadblock to increasing employment among people with disabilities.

The changing fortunes of people with mental disabilities are part of a trend, experts say, reflecting a broader change in societal views of the mentally retarded, especially among younger people who were raised in what are called mainstreamed classrooms, where disabled children learn with other youngsters, and were taught that diversity means more than different races or religions.

The self-image and expectations of the mentally retarded, and their families, have been enhanced in recent years, as advocacy groups for disabled people have become a potent political force. Notions of the proper role for the mentally retarded were far different when Miss Andrajewski was young. She was kept at home most of her life by her parents, a custom of a time that called for the retarded to be sheltered, but rarely challenged. Moreover, people with retardation were not always welcome in public.

"In those days, if you were retarded, that was that, and there was nothing more to be done," said Miss Andrajewski's older sister, Victoria Peetz, who farms in Prairie du Sac. "My mother simply took care of her. Virginia never used the telephone. She didn't even know how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich." Now Miss Andrajewski is taking dance lessons, learning to swim and calling relatives on the telephone. She soon will join the choir at St. Bernard's Catholic Church. "My sister has come alive," Mrs. Peetz said. "It is so wonderful to see."

After her mother died in August, Miss Andrajewski was placed in a home with another woman with mental retardation and a caretaker. Her caseworker referred her to a job broker for people with disabilities, Successful Work Options, which promptly found several employers looking for help. "Virginia said she wanted to fold clothes, since that's what she did at home," said Doug Quinn-Gruber, a manager at the job broker. "So I called the Crowne Plaza, and they were very receptive."

While more employers are willing to hire disabled people, the unemployment rate remains very high among the nation's adults with mental retardation, said Steven Eidelman, the executive director of Arc.

Some corporations have been recruiting workers with mental retardation for years, including McDonald's and Marriott. Several studies of such workersshow they tend to be at least as productive as their fellow workers. "Employers have finally figured out this isn't charity, it's good business," Mr. Eidelman said. For all the talk about highly technical jobs, he said, employers desperately need workers willing to complete simple tasks dependably. "I don't care what company it is," Mr. Eidelman said, "if you show up, you're eager to work and you get along with your co-workers, you're going to keep your job."

People with mental retardation are working as janitors and gardeners, grocery clerks and office receptionists, toll collectors, farm hands and short-order cooks, among many other occupations. In some cases, they are rising to supervisory jobs. 

Young people with mental retardation today receive much better education and job training than in earlier times, which makes them more valuable to employers, he said. But people with disabilities still face barriers. A janitor with mental retardation who worked at Chuck E. Cheese here lost his job recently after a company official visited the restaurant and told the manager to discharge the man, a suit filed against the restaurant says. A group of people with mental retardation, People First, recently held a protest march at the restaurant. Workers are so hard to find in Madison that the Crowne Plaza pays a $100 bonus to any employee who makes a reference that results in someone's being hired.

A supervisor in the laundry room, Diane Kasuboske, acknowledged that she was initially skeptical when she heard that a woman with mental retardation was going to work in her department. But then she saw Miss Andrajewski work. "She did 120 pillowcases today," said Ms. Kasuboske, arching an eyebrow with admiration. "She's a perfectionist. She rubs her fingers across each pillow case, so any hint of wrinkle is gone."

Besides being a good worker, Miss Andrajewski has helped lift worker morale, her colleagues said. Along with being warm and kind, it is clear she cares about her laundry mates, and admires their skills. One recent afternoon at work, she spoke several times about her worry for a co-worker named Jesse, who was absent because his sister was having surgery for cancer that day. "I wonder how Jesse is doing," she said with a look of concern, shaking her head slowly.

Another day, she turned to a fellow worker and confided, "You know, I've never been so close to so many people."

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Court to Rule in ADA Case
Disabilities Debate Hinges on Right to Sue States Under U.S. Law
Joan Biskupic, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, January 22, 2000; Page A11

The Supreme Court said yesterday it would decide whether state workers are covered by a watershed federal law that protects people with disabilities from discrimination. The case, likely to have wide ramifications for the nation's handicapped, raises the stakes in a court term that already is one of the most significant in years.The specific dispute concerns whether states, like private employers, can be sued under a section of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) intended to prevent bias on the job. But an eventual ruling also could determine whether states can be sued under the ADA for excluding the disabled from services or limiting their access to public facilities. As such, the case--brought by a Florida prison guard who says he was denied a promotion partly because of a heart condition--could produce one of the most important rulings to date on the law passed a decade ago to open doors and economic opportunities for disabled persons.

Like the abortion and gay rights cases recently taken up by the justices, the disabilities dispute will be argued in April; a ruling is expected by late June, when the court usually recesses.The case could offer the Rehnquist majority another opportunity in its drive to pare down the power of Congress and boost state autonomy. A five-justice majority has repeatedly struck down federal laws that allow individuals to sue when they believe states have violated their rights. The court has held Congress to a high standard in determining whether lawmakers validly lifted states' usual 11th Amendment immunity from being sued in federal court.

Just 11 days ago, the majority ruled that state workers who were discriminated against because of their age could not sue their employers under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act. That decision in Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents arose from a trio of cases, including one brought by the Florida prison guard in yesterday's case.

Wellington Dickson said he lost out on the promotion because of his age and because the department refused to accommodate his heart condition. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which looked at the scope of both the age discrimination and disability rights law, ruled against Dickson on the age question and for him on the disabilities issue. In its 1998 decision, the 11th Circuit said Congress properly used its power to enforce civil rights by specifically determining in the ADA that "individuals with disabilities are a discrete and insular minority . . . faced with restrictions [and] subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment."

Yesterday the high court accepted the agency's appeal of that ruling in Florida Department of Corrections v. Dickson.

(Source: Fred Fay, Chair, Justice For All http://www.jfanow.org )

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Disabled IT professionals: Better equipped yet shortchanged
Computerworld, 09/07/1998
Gary H Anthes

Information technology that helps people with disabilities succeed on the job has made huge advances in recent years.

Fortunately, employers generally are willing to make it available to their workers. Unfortunately, the hiring of people with visual, hearing, mental and motor impairments hasn't kept pace with the march of technology. In fact, a recent study suggests that employers are increasingly ignoring that huge pool of job seekers - people who could help ease the IT skills shortage.

And employers often underestimate the capacity and competence of IT employees with disabilities. As a result, employers fail to nurture their careers.

"There's a tendency to not think of the person with a disability as promotable in the same sense as someone without a disability," says Jamal Mazrui, a legislation specialist at the Washington-based National Council on Disability. "It's like, `Oh, we figured out a way for this person to do this job, so why complicate the picture by talking about other things?'" Mazrui, who is blind, knows from experience. Formerly a database administrator at Harvard University, Mazrui says, "I found that when there were new projects that came up, I just wouldn't be someone that was thought of." He should have been more aggressive in demanding new responsibilities, he says.

Wade Churchfield lost the use of his legs in an accident I3 years ago, when he was a systems analyst at Duquesne Light Co. in Pittsburgh. He became the company's first IT employee with a disability, and his use of a wheelchair was careerinhibiting at first, he says.

Duquesne was "very willing to make whatever accommodations I could identify," he says. aThe problem was, I was reluctant to identify them; I was just so happy to have a job.

al let them make decisions for me that really were not good for me," Churchfield says. "They overprotected me." For example, he wasn't allowed to go to computer conferences in other cities because it was deemed unsafe and too difficult.

MORE INDEPENDENT

"Everyone can benefit from IT, but people with disabilities have benefited. more than any other group because of the increased independence and improved quality of life it gives them," says Larry Scadden, director of programs for persons with disabilities at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va.

Scadden, who is blind, cites several breakthroughs that revolutionized his use of computers. He uses speech synthesis and output for some applications and a braille output device for others. He also listens to paper mail and documents after reading them into his PC via a desktop scanner. Scadden hails recent developments in graphical user interfaces, which are becoming accessible to the visually impaired via speech synthesis and braille. He also cites major progress in the accuracy of speech recognition - at very affordable prices - as a boon to people who are unable to use a keyboard for input.

Speech recognition has made the workplace fully accessible to Mark Harmon, who was paralyzed below the neck when his motorcycle struck a tree in I975.

An independent living specialist at Unum Corp., a Portland, Mainebased insurance conglomerate, Harmon runs a service that offers advice to people with disabilities via E-mail, telephone and the World Wide Web.

Harmon uses the accessibility options in Windows 95 plus the voiceactivated DragonDictate from Dragon Systems, Inc. in Newton, Mass., to control his PC and navigate among his applications. He uses Dragon's NaturallySpeaking to create E-mail and documents. "There's incredible technology out there now," Harmon says. "I stopped writing in 1975. Last October, I got DragonDictate and started writing again."

Mazrui uses screen-reader and speech-synthesis software as his interface to word processing, E-mail and various online services. He says employers today generally are willing to make the investments in those IT tools for people already on the payroll.

But he says employers are much less inclined to seek out and hire people with disabilities.

"The employer often will assume the person couldn't possibly do the job because employers don't know what technological solutions exist," he says. "Or they may say, 'If I hired this person, I'd have a start-up cost buying this equipment of $1,000 or $2,000.' "

According to a I995 Harris Poll, 81% of employers said they had made accommodations for employees with disabilities, up from 51% in 1986. But in a Harris Poll published in July, the National Organization on Disability reported that although 79% of nondisabled adults of working age are employed, only 29% of those with disabilities have full- or part-time jobs. The trend is troubling; a similar survey in 1986 showed a 34% employment rate for people with disabilities, or 17% more than are working now. There are an estimated 54 million Americans of all ages with disabilities.

People with disabilities say companies are doing better in providing for their needs, possibly because of the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. The July Harris Poll showed a decline from 49% in 1994 to 40% today in the number of disabled workers who say employers are insensitive to their needs. Still, four in 10 said in the most recent poll that they have encountered job discrimination. One-third said they have encountered "unfavorable attitudes" toward their disabilities on the job, virtually unchanged from 1994.

"In general, expectations are not as high as for a nondisabled employee, so employers may not challenge the [disabled] person," Churchfield says. "If you are not happy with what you are doing, you have to speak up."

Seeing his career stall after his accident in 1985, Churchfield finally did speak up. "Once we came to an understanding that I needed to make the decisions on what I could and couldn't do, I got promoted three more times," he says. "In fact, they actually created a senior-level technical position just so I'd have a career path."

A lack of career development for people with disabilities may be reflected in figures from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, which reported in 1995 that men without disabilities made on average 21% more than disabled male workers. That gap had widened since passage of the ADA. For women, the disparity was 16%.

EMPLOYER RESISTANCE

Employers sometimes resist hiring people with disabilities out of fear they won't be able to do the job yet will be impossible to fire, Scadden says. "There's this tremendous shortage of IT professionals. But the IT managers are afraid the head of human resources or an insurance company will object to hiring someone with a disability," he says. "It's much easier to just hire someone else."

But some employers don't see it that way. Three years ago, Joyce Bender started Bender Consulting Services, Inc., a for-profit outfit in Pittsburgh, with 3 employees, 28 of whom are programmers or network engineers with disabilities. Churchfield now manages a staff of seven in Bender's company.

What's needed in the workplace, Bender says, is education for the nondisabled. "Sometimes people with disabilities are excluded out of fear or ignorance," she says. She also advises employers to establish mentoring programs for entry-level employees with disabilities.

For the disabled job seeker, Bender advises surfing the 'net. In particular, she recommends the Web site of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities ( www.pcepd.gov ), which has links to some 6o large organizations that have expressed interest in hiring people with disabilities.

Scadden advises employees with disabilities to stay abreast of the fast-changing marketplace of accessibility tools. And he stresses not to hesitate to demand them from employers. "I put the burden on the employee as much as the employer to know what to buy," he says.

Gregg Vanderheiden is the director of the University of Wisconsin's Trace Research and Development Center, which is exploring ways to make computing/communications technology accessible to all. He acknowledges that people with some disabilities can't physically work as fast as those without disabilities. "The thing to do is not to compete with quantity, but with quality," he says. "Quality and reliability are so valuable that employers will be less concerned with volume. I expect to work a little harder than anyone else, but I don't begrudge that," Harmon says.

"I'm glad I have the opportunity to do it and a company that 

gives me the opportunity to do it," he says. 

Copyright CW Communications/Inc. Sep 7, 1998

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