ILRU Webcast No. 6 May 22, 2002 LAUREL: good afternoon. This is Laurel Richards with ILRU in Houston, and welcome to a session of the ILRU Webcast. And today I'm very pleased to present Susanne Bruy‚re with Cornell University who is going to address the subject of employment of people with disabilities specifically employer policies and practices that promote nondiscrimination. First I want to acknowledge the support of NIDRR for this project, and it's due to NIDRR's initiative to promote research utilization and use of all kinds of information coming from research projects to those of us who are not researchers. The rank and file service providers, folks with disabilities, family members, disability organizations and so forth. So much thanks to NIDRR for their support and for their recognition of the need for this research on our part. No. 2, I want to recognize this project which is called Research Information for Independent Living, and we at ILRU are in partnerships with our colleagues at the Research and Training Center at the University of Kansas, Jim Budde, Glenn White and their colleagues. And finally a part of this support for the for this project was provided by Cornell University the School of Industrial Labor Relations Extension Division. This is an important subject that we're addressing today and so Susanne, without any more waste of time we'll turn it over to you and welcome to the program today. SUSANNE: thanks very much, Laurel and I'm very happy to be here. This is a terrific opportunity for us to get input from our listeners out there about what are their burning issues to refine our thinking about what is needed and I'm pleased to have a chance to share what we've been doing at Cornell University. Would you like me to go ahead and proceed now? LAUREL: I would love that. SUSANNE: all right, terrific. You have available to you I believe both some prereading which we provided with ILRU's assistance that has been an article that we wrote for Diversity Magazine for the Society for Human Resource Management, which will detail some of the information that I'm going to share with you today. In addition, I'm going to work my way through a set of Power Point presentations that will highlight some of the things we've been finding in our research at Cornell University on employer policies and practices that promote disability nondiscrimination in the workplace. The first slide is a presentation as an outline of some of the things -- the reason why we're doing this and what we hope to accomplish in sharing this information with you and there are six different highlights for this purpose. First is to -- is to share with you what we believe to be the role -- a very important role in the human resource professional in workplace disability nondiscrimination. This is important to us because it is I think an important pressure point for applying information and making change to the workplace. And we'll talk more about that later. Second to learn about what employers have done to date to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act employment provisions, and since I know you have had different presentations about that in the past, we are not going to focus on what the law is, but more what employers are telling us their response is here. Third, to identify the remaining barriers that employers tell us they perceive to the hiring and advancement of people with disabilities and, fourth, to identify ways to address these barriers. Fifth, to talk about your roles, centers for independent living in delivering relevant training, technical assistance and information dissemination to employers based on what they have told us from this inquiry we've made at Cornell are their most burning issues. And lastly, to share a few resources with you that we hope will help you in delivering your services to employers in the future. First, I'd like to tell you a little bit about the study itself and how -- what our interest is and how we proceeded in this. Laurel mentioned the funding that is supporting this particular Webcast to you and it is also the funding agency for our employer research here over the past five years here at Cornell University. NIDRR has funded us to do an inquiry of private sector workplace es across the whole size spectrum and we did in collaboration with the Society for Human Resource Management using a sample from their membership. This is a membership organization of over 140,000 practicing HR professionals, mainly from the United States, but they also do sometimes subscribe to this professional affiliation from other countries as well. The participants, therefore, the people we asked our questions of were human resource professionals and that was very purpose full on our part and bee conducted our telephone survey from Cornell University. It was a telephone survey, not a paper pencil inquiry. We had a terrific response rate, we had a lot of interest and a lot of enthusiasm when we conducted the study and great participation of the people we asked to help us out. We also feel good about the fact that it was representative across the size industry. We were pretty sure that smaller employers behaved differently than large ones and made a real effort to make sure that they were representative amongst the people we talked to and indeed 43 percent of our businesses were from employers of 500 employees or less. And we also had large employers, about a third of our respondents were from businesses of over 2500 employees. Now, I mentioned we focused on HR professionals very purposefully and we did that because when we thought about what's happening in the workplace and how can we make an effective change to make the use of the ADA and compliance with it even more effective, we thought about who was the appropriate pressure point person in the workplace, and we know employers are certainly important, but hard to reach and supervise ores are even more difficult to reach because they're often buried in the organization and it is one of the reasons why we picked human resource professionals. They represent in the U.S. about one person to every 100 employees. So there is a good sprinkling of them in most organizations, particularly organizations of over 100 employees. We also know that HR professionals touch upon all parts of the employment process from recruitment and pre-employment screening and test go through career advancement, staff development, and even discharge and termination kinds of issues and these are all places in the employment process where disability discrimination can occur. So we felt that the lens of these folks who touch upon all these processes would be very helpful in helping us to understand where issues occur in employment. The HR professionals are also the persons where most personnel issues are addressed and we know that includes accommodation requests. Our folks told us that either they alone or they with another individual make the decision in accommodations which included about a third of the time, and so that's pretty significant point person when one is talking about accommodating an applicant or an employee with a disability. Now, I'm going to pause for a second and see if we have any questions. Mark or Laurel, do we have questions I need to respond to? LAUREL: Mark, are we in a pretty good place right now? Susanne, I think you are so clear. SUSANNE: okay, that's great. I will continue on. Now I'm moving to the slide or Power Point piece that has a graph that says percent of our respondents reporting what their organization does to meet the needs of employees with disabilities. And the particular perspective includes 11 different types of possible accommodations, but it also gives us information on how different size employers responded to each of these. And I won't read all of the 11, but I'll give you examples, made existing facilities accessible, restructuring work hours, modifying equipment or work environment, transportation, et cetera. And what we found when we asked this question is that the organization's most commonly reported making changes to facilities, flexibility in HR policies, restructuring jobs and work hours, and also modifying the work environment and making transportation accommodations. They were less likely to make modifications on training materials or change supervisory methods. Now, also worthy of note here is that there were differences between the size of organizations and how likely they were to have responded to any of these 11 different kinds of accommodations. With smaller employers, particularly those of under 500, less likely by anywhere from 10 to 20 percentage points to have made these changes than the mid size or the larger size organizations. And in some cases, they told us that that was a function of never having been asked and it could indeed be, although we don't know that for sure, that just by virtue of being a smaller organization and having less employees that it was less likely that a request for accommodation did occur. I'm going to now talk a bit about the organizational structures that we found were more likely to contribute to accommodation occurring and later on we'll talk about the importance of engaging these if you're encouraging employers to up the ante and do a better job of responding. First of all, we found that employers often used data collection and for what we thought to be worthy reasons, one is for future -- for understanding better what future accommodation needs might be, and secondly, also for reporting requirements usually attached to the family medical leave act or worker comp since we all know that the ADA doesn't itself require that, it was usually attached to some other regulatory requirement that they were keeping those kinds of data, but it also could be used for more quickly and rapidly responding to requests for accommodations in the future. We also found that in unionized workplaces that the unions were involved often in accommodations requests and responding to the needs of individuals that were covered by a collecting bargaining agreement, and being from the School of Industrial Labor Relations, I heart I wholly agree that that's the appropriate approach to take and encourage you if you are consulting with workplaces that are unionized to encourage them to involve their union representatives in those discussions. And lastly, and then I'll elaborate a bit more on this, we also asked our organizations did they have disability management programs, and the impact that had on promoting accommodations. By a disability management program, we mean a program that is a proactive approach to helping people who go out either because of work-related injuries, and it's usually an aggressive work program to help that individual navigate the medical services that they need and to come back to work with the type of accommodation that they might need that might make it possible for them to do that even on a part-time basis. And our premise was -- our hypothesis was that because of their design and because of the organizational structures they put in place can be very helpful to supporting and facilitating the intent of the accommodation provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act and indeed we found that that was true. The next slide which shows a graph of -- by employer size, the percentage of respondents reporting that they saw a disability management program supporting the ADA and various pieces of ADA requirements a great deal were reported by either a half to four out of five or more of our respondents specifically across four different questions we asked in terms of increasing supervise or awareness of accommodation, contributing to the creation of an organizational structure for accommodation, for increasing the likelihood of supervisors and co-workers understanding the importance of confidentiality around medical inquiries and in general for raising acceptance of both accommodation and of individuals with disabilities in the working place. So we saw that as a very important contribution of these programs and why we like to see them in place and encourage employers to try to make linkages between these structures and understanding that that's supportive of the ADA and in compliance with ADA requirements. I'll pause there for a second again and see if I need to stop for questions. MARK: well, you do. This is Mark. We got cut off here, I'm sorry. SUSANNE: I did hear you come in and out. That's quite all right. MARK: In fact, one of the questions we have -- I'm not real sure if you answered just a few minutes ago because that's when I was cut off, but the person -- I understand there was a recent Supreme Court decision regarding accommodations for people with disabilities to unions -- oh, to unions or seniority based systems. I think the case was U.S. Air vs. Barnett. Does this case mean that union agreements take precedence over the needs of people with disabilities for accommodations? SUSANNE: We have a very informed audience and indeed you are correct that there was such a case and it does confirm that the seniority requirements of collective bargaining agreements can be used by an employer to supercede an accommodation request if it is for a light-duty job that is given -- that usually preference for those positions are given to union members with seniority. That does in the mean however -- indeed, however, your understanding of that court case and its outcome is correct, but that does not mean that employers can't write their collective bargaining agreements for negotiations to occur nor that negotiation can't occur within a particular workplace for an individual and then an accommodation request could be made that supercedes the seniority requirement. What it says is if the employer chooses to use that seniority clause as a way to not respond for a particular individual because they do not want to bend that agreement, they see it as problem attic in terms of their relationship with their union that they would be supported in doing that. So I would still encourage people to work with their unions and when collective bargaining agreements are written, to build in an understanding of flexibility that to retain workers with disabilities in the workplace, it might mean negotiating the seniority provisions and accommodation requirements for a particular individual. MARK: all right, and I have one more that I think I'd like to ask at this time. SUSANNE: certainly. MARK: I would like to know if there are any formal documents that show employers about accessibility and if the approach the accommodation or universal accessibility? SUSANNE: that's an interesting question. I don't know of any particular documents that flag workplace accommodation as universal design kinds of requirements per se, but I would say this about this: you see, that terminology used much more in Title III kinds of issues around public accommodation kinds of requirements. So that language I think particularly relates to that. What I will say, however, is that we often when we talk about effective human resource practice emphasize the fact that workplaces accommodate their employees day in and day out across many different kinds of requests that require workplace and policy and procedure flexibility. And in that regard, I do consider it -- similarly, a universal design kind of request to ask employers to accommodate workers with disabilities with a reasonable accommodation request, and indeed, Cornell has designed brochures for human resource professionals that is on our website and I'll mention that toward the end of the presentation that takes that approach in its presentation and in that regard probably could be perceived to be encouraging employers to use what we perceive to be a best practices approach to human resource management or perhaps a universal design kind of consideration. LAUREL: Mark, perhaps we can post that question on the website that will be affiliated with this presentation, and then get from Susanne the URL for those resource materials. That sounds excellent. SUSANNE: And I do have that and include it at the end, Laurel, so I can give you that pretty easily. LAUREL: Don't we like fully prepared people. Susanne, I've got a question for you about the disability management program that you were just discussing. SUSANNE: yes. LAUREL: did you say that four out of five organizations had such programs? SUSANNE: yes. Approximately -- well, I wasn't giving you that reference, but it was approximately three-quarters to four fifths of our respondents had either a formal or an informal program. LAUREL: didn't that surprise you? SUSANNE: in larger programs, in larger employers, no. In smaller employers, yes. What we see increasingly, and again, I think this is helpful to us who are promoters of the ADA, one of the biggest cost considerations for employers is health care costs and worker compensation costs. LAUREL: yes. SUSANNE: so increasingly we see employers looking for ways to try to do cost containment and often they see either in-house or contractually related disability management programs as a way to more aggressively try to deal with lost work time. So we do see it very popular to have these programs, at least at some level in businesses these days. LAUREL: it's very, very smart and is it a fairly recently implemented program? Did it much exist before the ADA? SUSANNE: yes, it did. In fact, I would say employers over the last 25 to 30 years have -- particularly large employers and now increasingly into smaller, mid size and smaller employers have been increasingly using disability management programs. They have been contracting with outside vendors to provide that service and only more recently I think in the last ten years really developed stronger in-house programs. Although the designs change from year to year. LAUREL: incredibly smart. Mark, any other questions at this time? MARK: no, I think I've got some for later on because Susanne was talking about giving the uRL at the end. So I'll wait for a while for these other questions. SUSANNE: okay, that's great. All right, I will go on then. Another question we asked our folks was the kinds of training they had done across many -- about a dozen ADA related topics and these topics are presented on the next transparency that you have and we had 12 of them represented, including such topics at recruiting, accommodation, equal access, mental health accommodations, defining job functions, confidentiality, limitations to health benefits plans, disciplinary process, conflict resolution, disability awareness, interaction with other kinds of employment legislation like collective bargaining or the NLRA family medical leave, et cetera, and just a general question about access to print resources. And what we found is that most of the training that was reported at least by our contacts had been geared toward the human resource professionals and from that gleaned what we thought to be important information that we would like to encourage employers to target information deeper into the organization, such as toward supervisors and even health and safety and disability management professionals. We also found that one of the areas that our respondents were interested for further information was mental health accommodations. It was an area that universally across the board they said they'd like more information on. So that's an area that if anyone is providing consulting service to employers, I think it would be important for you to get more information in your pocket to take along with you when you do your on site visitation. Another area that we asked about was barriers to employment. We were encouraged to find that many accommodations had occurred and a lot of training had occurred, but as we all know, there is still -- we are still far from equal access to the workplace and equal employment for people with disabilities. So we wanted to find out from the employers' perspective why is that? What is going on that's an ongoing barrier? And interestingly, even though this was much of the discussion in late 80's as the ADA was being passed, employers did not perceive cost of accommodation, cost of training or cost of supervision as the predominant problems. Rather within their organization, they saw the supervisor knowledge of how to accommodate as a bigger issue as well as continuing attitudinal and stereotype issues of persons with disabilities amongst supervisors and co-workers. Sadly, that continues to be perceived as a barrier, and one that they report working on, but that remains as a difficulty in the workplace in terms of integration of people with disabilities. They also talked about what I think could be perceived to be a policy issue, but that they felt that there was not adequate preparation of people with disabilities to be candidates in the workforce in a comparable way. They discussed -- lack of related workings pier yens and the requisite skills of training as again one of the barriers, a significant barrier for people with disabilities. Now, we also talked -- we also asked them about some of the changes they've made and the degree of difficulty in making these changes, and I want to mention it here because it goes hand in glove with what I just mentioned about the perceived continuing barriers. And that is amongst -- six different things we asked them about, we asked them about the percent of difficulty in making changes like changes the leave policies, adjusting medical policies, changing co-workers, supervisor attitudes, creating a flexible management system and modifying return to work policies. Any of these six changes in response to the ADA, and what we found is the bulk of those were anywhere from 5 to 20 percent were perceived as difficulties, whereas it was the changes of co-worker and supervisor attitudes were found in one in three of our organizations across the size spectrum reported a little less amongst the smaller employers, but again, I think sadly this continues as an issue and one we really need to gear up to try to help workplace es deal with. This may be one of those services that CIL's can gear itself up to respond to. Another area that I wanted to mention when we are discussing remaining barriers is that our HR representatives reported having greater difficulty and less familiarity with communication access kinds of issues or accommodation requests. And this information came about -- came to us as awareness that this was a recurring problems from two different questions we asked on our survey. One was we asked the degree of difficulty in making certain changes for those who made changes across a number of different accommodations. And interestingly, there was little difficulty reported for things like making medical tests, putting their medical tests after an offer was made, making orientations accessible, making interview locations accessible. What was perceived as being more difficult was -- there was some degree of difficulty, one in seven reported rest room accessibility, but the greater issues, one in four reported information -- making information accessible for persons with hearing impairment and one in three reported making information for those with visual impairments accessible as being difficult or very difficult to make these changes. So that was interesting to us because we perceive that as something that probably employers commonly have to deal with with an aging workforce, and yet something that they are ill prepared to deal with. And this consideration came up again when we asked our HR representatives how familiar they were with a variety of different issues in the applicant interviewing process, and here again, they showed the less degree -- least degree of familiarity with such potential accommodations for people with visual and hearing disabilities such as accessing sign language interpreters, using TTY's to set up interviews, using a reader for a person with a visual impairment or adapting print materials for a person with a visual impairment. That was approximately only one in two or one -- I'm sorry -- one in ten to one in five were familiar with those kinds of accommodations as compared to others like restrictions on medical tests and framing questions when the bulk of our respondents, eight or nine in ten understood about those requirements for accommodating in the applicant interview process. So again, here is an area that is ripe for assistance and employers need help there and these are accommodation areas that are -- I think one that is we can readily provide information and tell them about the cost effective ways to deal with these accommodations, and since we have an aging workforce in the united states, employers we know are going to have to deal with diminished visual and hearing acuity in their workforce and we will be doing them a great service not only for their existing aging workers, but for preparing the workplace to be more friendly to the persons with visual and hearing impairments. We would like to get an opportunity to get into a workplace in this applicant interview process to begin with. Now, I'll stop for a second and see if we have any questions. MARK: Susanne, I have a couple along that line. One of them is I'm aware of that for deaf employees working in the private or public sectors, there may be times when the employer would be required to provide interpreter services, sign interpreters, et cetera. My question is how often -- under what circumstances generally and how much does an employer have to spend? SUSANNE: there is no dollar requirement or dollar cap laid out by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Again, we have to fall back to the language of the accommodation requirement, which is reasonable, and that really depends on the requirements of the position that the person is in, and the culture of that workplace, how much communication would be necessitated for that person to get their job done, and the resources of the employer. So it is very much dependent on the specific situation. There are no dollar guidelines from the ADA to help us with putting parameters on that. MARK: I have a couple of questions about psychiatric disabilities. Do you want me to hold off on those or do you want me to ask them now? SUSANNE: no, we can put them anyplace and we did talk about accommodations for people with mental health as being a continuing need for employers. Let's by all means take them now. MARK: the first one is I am with a CIL. We get requests to do training or consultations on accommodations for people with mental health disabilities. Do you have material we can use to supplement and improve our services, and along the same lines, what are the most common accommodations for people with mental health disabilities? SUSANNE: that's a great question, and on the website that I'm going to give you, one of the three dozen informational brochures on this website is targeted specifically to accommodating workers, applicants and employees with psychiatric disabilities. So that is a resource for you, and within that resource, we have also named a number of other resources. Three of the Research and Training Centers -- Laurel mentioned the research and training centers devoted to independent living issues that NIDRR funds and NIDRR also funds three centers that are excellent resources specifically on the topic of psychiatric disability. So I believe those are mentioned in our brochure, but I'm also happy to give that information to Mark and Laurel to put up on the website if people would like it more specifically flagged. And examples of some of the accommodation requests often for this population are flexibility in work hours perhaps to attend counseling or therapy, perhaps more frequent breaks if the person -- or flexibility in time I might say -- if the person finds continued work stressful. Sometimes it is a differing approach in terms of supervision, and it might be that the supervision is a little bit more at arms length or it might be that the supervision is closer in so that the person -- if the person needs more supports or guidance. So it is usually low cost or no cost kinds of accommodations. It's more flexibility in time or super advisory kinds of approaches. MARK: well, that leads directly to my next question. I know that EEOC suggests that flex time may be one of many options considered in accommodating employees with disabilities. I am also aware that any number of disabilities may make it difficult for an employee to meet a particular time schedule, i.e., kidney dialysis takes a long time, several days a week, and scheduling may interfere with employment or the fact that is other medications used to treat physical or psychiatric disabilities may interfere with sleep and thus impair timeliness and performance. My question is this: in many workplaces, being there on time and most every day is essential, and if it weren't, most employers would contract and out source, wouldn't they? How reasonable is it for the average workplace to build flex time schedules for some employees with compelling needs? SUSANNE: well, my personal feeling is that it is reasonable, and that it occurs all the time. You know, we see employers more progressive employers exploring flex time and flex place as a way to accommodate the worklife balance of many individuals and this also -- we're talking about universal design -- is an accommodation that can assist those with health care needs that may mean that they want to work diminished work hours or flex work hours to accommodate a medical intervention requirement. So I think it indeed is a reasonable request. And what we find is particularly if the individual is already in the workplace, it is easier to negotiate. I think it's more difficult to negotiate those kinds of modifications if you're coming in to a workplace, although not impossible, but it's very reasonable to ask the employer, if you're not asking for paid time off to flex the schedule to accommodate a medical requirement. Now, whether the employer is able to do that is certainly dependent upon the nature of that work and there certainly are going to be some jobs to necessitate the person to provide coverage at a work station for a defined time period that it may not be reasonable. But I think that the request is always a reasonable one to make, and depending on the nature of the job, it may be very appropriate to be able to flex that kind of -- to be able to flex a job as the accommodation. MARK: what about workplaces that trade on personality such as sales and those workplace, are employers supposed to consider someone with an obvious psychiatric disability as potential sales or support staff when image is currency in these workplaces is that corrects a reasonable request? SUSANNE: that's a great question, and the EEOC's guidance does indeed give us backup for discrimination that may occur on the basis of a perception or a preference of customers. The EEOC is very clear that it will not consider a protection or a reason to discriminate the biases or preferences of customers. That is not what the EEOC considers good reasons for an employ to discriminate against a person with a disability. However, that person does have to be competitive in the skill requirements of the particular job. So if a certain type of demeanor in terms of customer friendliness or assertiveness or openness to customers is a requirement, then it would be necessitated -- it would by necessity mean that the individual -- even the individual, any individual, but even our individual with a disability has to be able to relate to and promote a product to that customer. So that would be the capital or the characteristic that the individual employer could require even of our individual with the disability in that job -- in that particular job. MARK: okay, well, why don't we go on. We've got a couple of more questions right now but I can hold those. SUSANNE: you want to hold them? Okay, all right, let's do that. We'll go on. Now, before we broke for questions, I was speaking about some of the continuing barriers that we had inquired about to our HR sample and mentioned some of the responses that told us what are the continuing problems that employers perceive create difficulty in responding to individuals accommodation requests. We also asked employers to help us with that and we asked them to tell us what were good ways to address these barriers. And some of the things that they told us were ways to help was, first of all, top management support, and this shouldn't have been a surprise to us. I think whenever you ask the workplace what are ways to make change, they always say top management support, but it was a great reminder to us that that's imperative, that educating the employers at the top about the importance of hiring and retaining employees with disabilities is imperative if we're going to make change in the organizational culture as a whole. They also told us that staff training, mentoring the individual with a disability and on site consultation and technical assistance can be very helpful in making sure that there is compliance to the ADA, and that accommodation is understood and accommodation requirements of the ADA complied with. So, again, here is very helpful information to those of us who are providing services to employers, things that they are telling us that they need: the ability to have on site consultation and perhaps assistance in staff training and maybe even designing mentoring programs for their new employees with disabilities. And I have amongst your transparencies a graph that shows categories of potential ways to reduce barriers. Visible top management commitment was 82 percent or four out of five people said that that was very effective or effective way to address or reduce barriers compared to about two-thirds of our population between 60 and 63 percent that said mentoring, on site consultation or staff training. They were less enthusiastic about -- only 40 percent reported that they receive short term outside job coaching and least popular was employer tax incentives. LAUREL: really? SUSANNE: only one in four saw that as an effective barrier. We did see it more popular this smaller employers than larger because they see those resources as more advantageous. It is my guess that larger employers perceive potential paperwork involved with things like this as a disincentive, but we didn't probe why. Which we thought was interesting. We also asked about the resources that they currently used to help resolve their ADA issues and we got feedback by organizational size on this as well. And we think it's interesting to know that legal counsel is their top resource. Now, we talked about resolve ADA issues, not where they take their accommodation requests. So indeed I suppose this makes very good sense that when there is an issue that is one that there is a potential conflict, that they seek advice from their legal counsel and that was true across all sizes of organizations, most in the large organizations, nine out of ten, compared to 72 percent in the smaller organizations, and likely that is because there is an in-house legal counsel in larger organizations that is a red I resource to address these things. Used less, but used quite a bit were disability staff. I had mentioned disability management programs and that was true in almost three-quarters of the larger employers, half of the mid size employers and one in three of the smaller employers. And safety staff about the same proceed portion I just mentioned for disability staff. Also used quite a bit was professional societies as resources and interestingly there was a flip flop here with more of the smaller employers using professional societies, two out of three, compared to the larger which was at 59 percent. It's pretty even, but what was interesting about that is it was so high, and I think that's worthy of note for two reasons: one is smaller employers don't have the same internal resources like legal counsels and are more likely to send their HR person or their HR person seeks the free consultation of the professional societies like the Society for Human Resource Management in helping them to address these problems when they occur and they don't know how to respond. And I think that's good inform know because I think those of us providing information on the ADA may want to get to these professional societies as a resource to help them because they are being sought out to help to address accommodation and ADA related questions. Now, I did probe a little further because amongst my list of organizations, and there was 11 of them, I did include state agencies and centers for independent living and other related organizations and what we found is that internal resource organizations were more heavily used than external organizations, which probably shouldn't be a surprise, but I think it's important for us to know that we are not the first organization that is sought out, but what we did find is when sought out, we were found to be helpful. Centers for independent living and other disability local organizations were not as well known, but they were used by one out of five or 22 percent of our respondents. And when they were used, they were found to be helpful by almost two-thirds of those. LAUREL: well, hey. SUSANNE: yes. So that's good to know. What we know from this is we need to make ourselves more visible to those internal resource persons and again I would encourage us to consider targeting what are used as the internal resources. Because if we can get to them, they will call us when they need us and that's the HR person, the disability management person and the health and safety types of people. So they like us when they get to us, they just need to find out more about us. I'll pause again before I go on, are there other questions I need to respond to? MARK: well, one directly was you spoke about employers seeking legal counsel as a resource. SUSANNE: yes. MARK: do you know whether legal counsel is generally well informed about the ADA and do you think that people with disabilities are at a disadvantage if employers are using lawyers? SUSANNE: that's a great question, and I think I am concerned about the level of awareness that our legal counsels might have. I think -- I think legal counsels, like all of us, try to do the best job they can, but what I can tell you is that legal counsels have many, many things to prepare themselves for on behalf of their employer organizations, and I think the ADA is one of just so many things that they are probably not near as well informed as we would like them to be. There are many pieces of employment and labor legislation that employers are required to respond to, OSHA, FMLA for example and my guess is that those pieces of legislation get more of their attention than the ones we would like to have them addressing like the ADA or the rehab act provisions that protect discrimination considerations. So I think we could be disadvantaged by that and I think the thing to do again is to educate, educate, and including educating legal counsel when we get a chance to do that, but more importantly, educating people who are dealing with the day to day accommodation inquiries, because the questions that more than likely get to the legal counsel are the ones that are unresolved issues. So if we can help people like the supervisors and HR professionals to resolve accommodation requests easily and without contention, then those issues will not get booted upstairs to the resident legal counsel. Any other questions, Mark? MARK: not at the moment, no. Thank you. SUSANNE: okay, you bet. Now, I'd like to summarize what I see more generically as from what we have learned in this research as ways we would like to encourage employers and encourage those of us who are responding to employer information needs to address the remaining barriers to equal employment for people with disabilities from what we've learned. And I have in the next couple of power points, approximately nine or ten bullets that summarizes the key points and then I'd like to talk about its implications for U.S. deliverers of service from centers of independent living and then we'll leave some time to do some more questions. First of all, from what we've seen, encouraging employers to create a data collection mechanism on accommodation requests is a useful tool. Employers have asked us, should we, or shouldn't we, and we always tell them it's not a requirement at least for the ADA, but that used appropriately, it can be a very helpful tool for employers to create an organizational memory of what kinds of accommodations have worked effectively in which kinds of situations, and it may be software for enhancing print on a screen, or an ergonomic chair for a person with a musculoskeletal difficulty or other kinds of accommodations, but creating that list helps that organization to respond more readily to the next request that might be similar in nature. Secondly, we encourage organizations to have a process for accommodations. Sometimes we see accommodations don't occur just because people do not understand that it's a legitimate request, and by lack of knowing how to respond to the accommodation and what would be a good accommodation to make, the accommodation doesn't get made and the person is left hanging. So we encourage organizations to think about educating their HR people and their supervisors and making a safe place for them to inquire about resources that they don't have to feel silly or foolish and that they can ask and get answers to their questions so that they can respond competently when an individual employee or an applicant asks them for a particular accommodation. As I mentioned, we also encourage unionized places to involve the union and its representatives in the accommodation process. What we have seen is when that is done, the likelihood that a seniority provision in a collective bargaining agreement will be used to thwart an accommodation request is minimized. When the union feels it's a part of the partnership in the accommodation process, it is far less likely to throw its weight in the direction of trying to protect a union member who is nondisabled against a union member who is a person with a disability. And so we think that that up front education is a really important part of the process. I also mentioned disability management programs and again I'll go back to that. We think that they absolutely help the ADA compliance of any organization. If they're done correctly, they encourage accommodation because the whole design of the program is to get people back to work and often people come back at part time or needing flexor restructuring of job tasks, and that's what the ADA is all about. So it really supports the whole conceptualization that accommodation is a legitimate part of the workplace. So we like disability management programs and encourage those of us who are supporting ADA compliance to get to those disability management case managers and educate them about that. We also want employers to use local disability organizations like centers for independent living. We know that CILs and other advocacy organizations know about accommodation and can help with identifying software and some of those -- and making accommodations to print materials, some of those very things that employers told us they don't understand, they don't have familiarity with and they perceive now to be difficult like for persons with visual and hearing impairments are the very things that centers for independent living have wonderful resources that they can contribute to help with this process. The disconnect is that often employers don't know enough about us to really readily access us as resources. And so an important part of our responsibility is to make our services known to the point persons within the employer organization that need this information. MARK: Susanne, I just had a question come in about that. SUSANNE: okay. MARK: how can CILs and other disability organizations best outreach HR professionals? SUSANNE: I'm going to -- I will answer that question, but it is a part of my -- the next few slides. I will say right now that there are, again, 140,000 members of the Society of Human Resource Management nationally, and these members are organized into state and regional chapters. At the end of my presentation I'm going to share with you contact information for the SHRM and the chapters are on their website and I would encourage you -- they are always looking for speakers at their monthly meetings. They have monthly breakfasts or lunch meetings and are looking for 30-minute presentations to fill those meetings. So that's a wonderful opportunity for you to offer yourself to talk about ADA compliance and community resources that can help employers to meet their accommodation requirements under the ADA. MARK: that's great. Thank you very much. I'm sorry to interrupt. SUSANNE: no problem. Educating supervisors about accommodation is another important niche and it is harder certainly to reach supervisors since they are buried within the employer organization, but there again, getting to your HR managers through the SHRM chapters and telling them you're available as a resource to do supervisory training and again we encourage training that is short because that seems to be what employers prefer, but they willing them if they do annual supervisor training, that you're available to do a 30-minute, 60 minute disability awareness training as a part of their annual supervisor updates. So find out how they train, what they need and accommodating to their schedule, but getting yourself in front of supervisors is really important. As we mentioned, attitudinal issues continue within the workplace and employers have been very frank with us that that's a problem that they struggle with, and that those biases are there and that that's a continuing barrier. So we see one way of addressing that is disability awareness training as a part of supervisor training, but workplaces routinely do diversity training and so if you can't get into your supervisory training you may also explore with your HR point person, do they do diversity training, and do they include the concept of disability as a facet of diversity in that training? Because we certainly see that as a way to punk wait existing staff development with disability kinds of consciousness building. So, again, finding out what kind of training is done and offering yourself as a resource to contribute to a diversity training so that disability is represented in that programming is a nice way of getting yourself in front of the employer or the employer representatives. It's important that we become aware of organizational and community resources that can assist accommodation and network employers to them. Employers know of their own internal resources for the most part. We need to understand what those are, get to them and make sure that those point people know who we are as community resources that can assist in accommodation. We also encourage employers to think about when they do significant workplace changes that they think about the impact that that might have on their applicants and employees with disabilities. And an example that we are now working with is many workplaces are moving toward electronic recruitment or web based applications, and that could present a whole host of new barriers to applicants with disabilities who are persons with visual impairments and so when those kinds of modifications are being made, we encourage employers to continue to think in every phase of change that occurs in their organization about what new barriers they may be putting up for their applicants and employees with disabilities. And again, when those changes occur, it's important that those of us who are community resources are equipped to be able to help them and in this case it would mean for us being equipped to help to be able to addressee electronic accessibility or web accessibility considerations for employers. Because they are now very much dealing with these issues as they design new systems. Now, I want to talk specifically and certainly we've addressed this a bit, but I'll go back and talk through the role for centers for independent living in meeting these information needs and how to do that. And first and foremost I would encourage you to get to know the human resource managers within the organizations that you are trying to become a resource to. They critical focal persons in the accommodation process. They are universally the resource persons for any kind of personnel problems or labor relations or employee relations problems that surface and so they're excellent resources for us to become more knowledgeable about that particular industry or employer and to get ourselves in front of to be seen as a potential resource when that HR manager has an accommodation question come to them. So we need to get to know them and going to the SHRM chapters is one good way of doing that. Otherwise, one can just call the employer and ask for the HR person. Promoting our training and consultation services through HR managers and other internal resources, whether that be health and safety, supervisory training or diversity training as I mentioned. I already mentioned seeking out your local SHRM chapters, so I won't go through that again. I would urge you to consider focusing on what we know from this research being the articulated information needs of employers, and again, that's accommodations for persons with visual and hearing impairments and you could use as your entry the fact that this employer is going to be dealing with an aging workforce and really needs to know how to accommodate their workers who will have diminished visual or hearing acuity as well as being able to accommodate persons who are blind or deaf who want to enter their work fores. We also mentioned mental health disability accommodation as an area that employers have told us they would like more information, and I did not discuss with you, but I can tell you from other questions that we asked that employers continued to be confused about the interaction of the ADA with other employment laws such as the Family Medical Leave Act, the National Labor Relations Act, Workers' Compensation Legislation and the extent that you are equipped and can help them to work their way through the complexities of those sometimes apparently competing pieces of legislation or conflicting pieces of legislation. You will do a huge service for advancing the ADA and you'll be seen as a critically -- critical resource amongst employers if you can help them. I can tell you that that is the interplay between the Family Medical Leave Act and other leave considerations is the number 1 question that comes into the Society for Human Resource Management Hotline. So apprizing yourself of the FMLA and the ADA would be a really good thing to do to make sure that you're savvy about what are considerations or concerns for employers. I would encourage you to think about how you can get into workplaces and provide your training services behind the HR people, including supervisors, but collaborating with HR, and if you haven't become familiar with other internal resources of organizations, I'd encourage you to do that, like employee assistance programs. Many employers now contract with EAP's to provide counseling service to their employees and what we're finding is employees with disabilities go to them to troubleshoot some of their own disenchant. Or difficulties when trying to get accommodations. So making sure EAP's understand the ADA's requirements and helping them to find out what community resources will help these employees that come to them is a wonderful resource for us to provide. I mentioned occupational safety and health, and I also would like to mention or reaffirm union representatives. If you can get to legal counsel, that would be great. I think they are tougher to reach, but again, legal counsels have state and regional professional associations. I would encourage you to look into the phone book, finding out what those local state bar or other legal professional associations are and offering your services as a potential speaker at those events. A nice way to help educate these legal counsels as well. Now, with that, before I talk about resources, I'm going to pause and see if we have anymore questions from our audience. MARK: well, yes, we have two. You brought up a topic -- this person says you brought up a topic we hadn't considered before, web based applications. Do you know of a good resource for making websites accessible? SUSANNE: There are some excellent resources, and I would encourage you to go -- and I can give Laurel and Mark this resource to the WC 3 website. I don't know it off the top of my head, but I think it actually might be www.w3.org. We can certainly get Mark and Laurel that information. There are a number of websites that are useful and we'd be happy to share that with you. This is an area we know more employers are moving into to provide -- to do easy, low cost recruitment and we see it as a significant impediment for selected groups of potential applicants with disabilities and any kind of consciousness raising and information you can provide would be very, very helpful. MARK: all right, the second question is -- oh, well, that was it. LAUREL: I've got one if I may. SUSANNE, I'd like to return to a point you made rather earlier, which had to do with employer perception with regard to the job readiness of people with disabilities. SUSANNE: yes. LAUREL: that one of the comments you received was perhaps the lack of preparedness of people with disabilities with regard to knowledge and skill and experience base. SUSANNE: yes. LAUREL: now, I'm trying to relate this to services provided by voc rehab, which organizations we know working extremely hard and this is their field. Were you to provide consulting services with a VR agency, what advice would you recommend based on this finding from your study? SUSANNE: are you asking Laurel what advice would I give to CILs who are working with LAUREL: no, I think voc rehab agencies. If their duties and responsibilities had to do with preparing folks with disabilities or assist tipping them to become job ready and employers either -- and employers are saying they can't find enough folks, where is the disconnect there? SUSANNE: well, I think the disconnect is probably in several places, but I am afraid that we don't do -- those of us who provide training and job placement services, I don't think we do as good a job as we should in our local communities understanding what the labor market needs are. It's not a new problem. I think it's an old one and one that's being revisited as we struggle not only with the vr services, but with the new provision of services with the one stops. And I think it's critical for us to really look at what the local labor market needs are, and to look out in front of current needs to what are future needs. We know the technology and that's why we're interested at Cornell on technology, we know that will become more and more a port of the workplace and it's imperative I think that we start early with people with disabilities in our elementary, secondary and postsecondary education to make sure that young people with disabilities are equitably prepared for the workplace and that adults with disabilities have a chance at low cost training to retool and keep our skills up. It's absolutely imperative for us to be competitive in this current work environment. LAUREL: yes. And it sounds as though from your study that the employers are pretty well ready for folks who have the training and preparation to move in and to be fairly comfortable in their work setting. It's just that -- or it could be just a perception of lack of job readiness. SUSANNE: you know, I am confident -- although we have no way of confirming this right now, that it is likely both. When I think that -- I think we all know that there is a disparity in equity of preparations for young people with disabilities in some of these needed skills for the workplace. I think we have not done as good a job as we could and hopefully we're moving toward doing better, but we also know from self-reporting employers that attitudinal issues continue and it's for us to sort out how much of what is the perceived disparity of requisite skills and training among applicants and employees with disability issues a real disparity and how much of it is a perceived disparity based on continuing biases and attitudes. I think we have to assume that both is operating and not relax our vigilance about either. We need to pursue equal access to training for young people and adults with disabilities and we need to hammer away the natural issues of the of perception of issues even when there is none. LAUREL: that's excellent. SUSANNE: now, I just double-checked one of my resources on web access and I want to go back to that. There is an excellent resource from the federal government who does have a requirement of web accessibility these days and I'm going to send any of you who are interested to their website. It's www.section508.gov and you'll see a lovely list of what a really wonderful ways to make websites accessible that the federal government is required now to do and we are using that as a suggested prototype for private sector even though they do not fall under the same requirements right now. So I would encourage you to look at that website and get some ideas from there. And MARK, do we have other questions? MARK: no, actually, you've been so thorough and we've had more questions than we normally get. I think I have one more that I'd like to hold off to the very end if possible. SUSANNE: all right, then I'm going to talk a bit about the resources I'd like to encourage people to follow up on. First of all, I know ILRU is one of these centers as is Cornell, so you're getting an in-house bias here, folks, but a great resource for you on ADA-related information is of course the disability and business technical assistance centers and the 1-800 number for them is 1 800-949-4232 and that's both voice and TTY. And they also have a website that is www.adata.org. Now, I also wanted to share with you that these centers have been funded this year to try to address some of these disparities on information technology access that we just talked about. So they're going to be increasingly equipped to be a great resource to you on information on how to make websites accessible and their focus is specifically trying to encourage school systems to make school system IT accessability accessible to young people with disabilities for the very reasons, critical reasons that we just talked about. So I do encourage you not only for ADA information but for web access information to seek out your DBTAC's. I mentioned that Cornell has a website that can be helpful to you and that's what I would like to mention now. Certainly on the slides I have given you, you have our voice and tty fax and e-mail information, but the tip of the day from Cornell is to go to our website called HR tips, and it is www.hrtips.org and on that site you will find approximately three dozen informational brochures we have targeted to human resource professionals. You can download them, copy them and take them with you when you do your marketing pitch. They cover approximately two dozen specialty sort of brochures on accommodating workers with specific kinds of disabilities, and we do have accommodating employees or applicants who are deaf and blind on there as well as psychiatric disability, and we have approximately a dozen brochures specifically on HR processes, like pre-employment screening, testing, promotional opportunities, dealing with family medical leave, occupational safety and health, workers' compensation, those legislative ADA interplay questions that we told you weren't the only ones for employers. Do look at the website, feel free to download the brochures, there is also a glossary and a list of other resources that you can get off of that site as well. We would encourage you to seek out the EEOC. I'm sure your DBTAC would send you that direction, too, but on the eeoc.gov website, are all the primary publications that give you more specific further information on the ADA, and if you're serving as a consultant to employers, you'll want to be sure that you're up to speed on all of those current guidances that the EEOC has offered us and I think many of them are pretty user friendly and I would encourage you, if you haven't, do review them before you start marketing yourself as a consultant to employers on employment discrimination issues. And a few more resources, I think many of you know about the job a come e indication network but I'll just mention it for any of you who might not. They have a voice and TTY that's pretty easy to remember, it's 1 800 ADA work and they also have a website that is www.jan.wzu.edu and they provide a lot of free consultation and if you get thrown a question you don't know, you can go to them and have them fax you tons of good information about specific accommodation like vendor information for chairs or software that you might not have readily available at your fingertips. And lastly, I want to tell you about the society for human resource management. I did mention them and I would encourage you to look at their website. You do have to get -- be a member to get deep into their website, but you certainly can look at it on a surface level and I would encourage you to become friendly with your local chapter. If you wanted a full copy of the report from the survey results that I just mentioned to you, the SHRM actually sells that and you can get a copy from them and I've given you the 1-800 number in those power point. It's 1 800-444-5006 or if you just wanted an executive summary you can get it free from the Cornell website and with that I want -- I'm going to leave you with the contact information for myself. My e-mail is smb23@Cornell.edu and our website is www.ilr(for industrial and labor relations).Cornell (and that's two l.'s).edu/ped (for employment on employment disability) www.ilr.cornell.edu/ped And if you want to go to a training center, you eliminate the ped and put/rrtc That's mostly economic related research at that site. If you want more general information, the first url is the one to go to. And with that, I will pause and make sure we've addressed all the questions from the audience and from our sponsors here before we have to close for the day. MARK: well, I had one question, but you answered it with the resources, and I think you answered fairly thoroughly. If not, you know, questions can be posted and answered on the website and for the next month I believe. LAUREL: if they return to the calendar and click on Susanne's name, it will take them to the site where the discussion forum will be posted or handled. MARK: okay. LAUREL: Susanne SUSANNE: that is the procedure; is that right? You're confirming with our audience that that's how they can get there. LAUREL: I made it sound like a question so I was sharing opportunity to look smart with... SUSANNE: okay, that is' great. LAUREL: SUSANNE, are we ready to wrap? SUSANNE: I have completed everything I have to share unless people have a question of me I guess I just want to give one last final pitch and encourage all of you who had enough interest to come to this particular presentation today to really see yourself as a valuable and needed resource to employers on accommodation and I encourage you to seek out employers particularly their HR representatives and offer your services in their local xluepbt. They really need you and you have wonderful expertise to bring to bear on the problems that players have told us that they have with accommodating effectively. So please do so. LAUREL: thank you Susanne. I must say in the circles I've traveled in in the last 30 years, there is occasional -- very occasional criticism of folks who do research as being too academic types and never having practical information and it's a real pleasure and a joy to find even a ph.d. type, Susanne, who is just so full of useful information and can -- and is doing research which has such hugely practical application to our field now. And I must tell you, I'm seriously considering a change of occupation to a disability consultant and filling the needs of these HR people. I think I can make a fortune. SUSANNE: I would encourage you to consider it. LAUREL: meanwhile, thanks very much to Susanne. One last thing before we close and give the acknowledgment for our great support. Susanne was talking about the unions and the possibility of folks with disabilities making in roads there. Reminded me of a recent news release we received from ADAPT, in which they were discussing their efforts to make connections with a major union. I believe it was teamsters, but I can be corrected on that, with regard to the nursing home industry and the unions were loathe to support the mi casa position because of the perceived risk of some of their union members being put out of a job. The ADAPT folks went to headquarters and staged a protest, and within a very short period of time, made connections with the union heads and they have endorsed the mi casa position and in walking out in a very friendly way with the adapt guys told them it was the best demonstration they had ever -- best sit down and demonstration they had ever seen and if that's not high praise, I can't imagine. SUSANNE: it's very high praise coming from the unions who usually do a pretty good job of that. LAUREL: they know when they see good and when they see bad. SUSANNE: you bet. LAUREL: hoo ray for the ADAPT guys. So in closing, I want to say a couple of things: one is Susanne had done a variation of this study for a recent publication of ours, the SCI Life issue. And Susanne had drawn from your research, didn't you, Susanne, on issues related to the impact of ADA on the health -- on employers' cost with regard to health benefits for the employees. SUSANNE: yes, that's exactly right. LAUREL: using the same set of subjects which are the HR professionals and it was extraordinary results. I was extremely surprised at -- I wouldn't say it was negligible, but I would say it was very encouraging to see that the cost did did not sky rocket by any means and tended to be pretty manageable. SUSANNE: that's correct. We were surprised they were not perceiving this as an issue. LAUREL: so that's in the most recent issue of SCI Life, and if you don't have that we have copies we can send you and we're going to post it on line. The whole issue is excellent and Susanne's is just about one of a dozen gems in that piece. The introduction is best, but I think that's because Lex and I wrote that. Let me close by thanking, again, and acknowledging NIDRR's support for these kinds of activities whereby we in the service delivery fields and we who have -- who are people with disabilities and family members can learn about research which is being funded in the area of disability and can understand how to make application of the findings. It's just a remarkable opportunity. Also, our colleagues at the Research and Training Center on Independent Living at the University of Kansas. It's been a good collaborative relationship and we're real, real pleased with it. And finally I want to acknowledge our Webcast team. Two individuals are Rob Dickehuth and Marie Bryant. They are located at the Baylor College of Medicine site and they are the technical aspects. Marie is the one who is doing the realtime captioning and Rob is the technician which makes everything happen. And on our team and doing all the logistics and setting up the organized Webcast include Marj Gordon, Sharon Finney, Dawn Heinsohn, Rachel Kosoy and Mark Richards and so on behalf of those of us at ILRU, thank you very much for joining us and we'll see you at the next Webcast. Good afternoon.