Human Resource Practices, IT in the Workplace. Presenter: Susanne Bruyere >> LAUREL: Good afternoon. This is Laurel Richards with ILRU in Houston, and we're having a webcast presentation today on the subject of information technology in the workplace. And this is an initiative that is supported by NIDRR, the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research and they are funding projects such as the one we're operating now as part of its initiative to promote the use of research findings by those of us who are consumers or family members of consumers or service providers like people working at independent living centers and statewide IL councils as well as disability organizations and just rank and file folks who have a stake in the findings but who aren't researchers and we have these experienced researchers come in and discuss their research projects, the latest findings and invite questions so that those of us who have such a high interest in these topic areas can ask questions or learn a bit more about the subject. Today's subject is just terrifically relevant. All of us have been, no doubt, amazed by the changes in our worklife that have occurred, even just at the last five years or so with the arrival of E-mail and the use of Internet and the fact that so much information is at our fingertips. The important subject that we're covering today by Susanne Bruyere who is the director of the program on employment and disability at Cornell University has to do with access issues related to the web and information technology as well as ADA aspects of employers using this. We've got a method here of making the presentation, and as you can see on one side of the screen, if you have the RealPlayer up on your monitor, is there is captioning that's going on. This is realtime captioning, and if you wish, you can minimize that so it doesn't show, and then of course the audio is being streamed through the speakers, et cetera, of your computer. Down at the bottom of the RealPlayer section, you can see if you have a question, send it via E-mail by clicking here, words to that effect. Now, this is preaddressed if you want to make a comment or ask a question or in any way get the attention of the speaker, you click on that. It brings up your E-mail provider, Eudora or outlook or whatever you use, preaddressed. You enter your question and push the send button and people at ILRU will handled that and take it to the question asker who today is Rachel Kosoy, and then Susanne will knock us out with the answer. >> SUSANNE: Let's hope so. >> LAUREL: Today's presentation is supported by the project which is the research information for independent living project that we at ILRU do in conjunction with our colleagues at the research and training center on independent living in Kansas. It's also sponsored by our ILRU's disability and law resource project, we're the southwest area DBTAC, which is the technical assistance project on the ADA. And Susanne, not the least of which, it's also supported by the program on employment and disability which is part of the school of industrial labor relations at Cornell. We've worked with Susanne for just -- gee, we must go back at least ten years or more. >> SUSANNE: I would say so. >> LAUREL: And it's just a real pleasure. Susanne's area of expertise tends to be in employment, all aspects of employment, and before we leave the webcast today, we'll want to bring your attention to a webcast that Susanne did for us earlier, a remarkable webcast that followed the study of a survey of people in human resource departments, you know, personnel type departments and their assessment of the impact of the ADA and employing people with disabilities has had on their insurance programs. Susanne, it's one of the most remarkable and surprising findings that we've had. So I invite people to get that off our archives. Meanwhile, before we go much longer, here we are in Houston -- Susanne, it's a gorgeous day in Houston. It's a fool the Yankee day where folks come down and think this is the most beautiful place to live, but you're in Ithaca. >> SUSANNE: It is a cloudy, rainy day and we hear of foreboding of snow in the mountains within the next few days. So you guys enjoy that sunshine for us. >> LAUREL: We may enjoy our heat when its comes back again. We have folks all around the country who are listening, but we get folks from overseas as well. It's a diverse audience and welcome to today's presentation and please let me turn it over to you now. >> SUSANNE: Thank you so much, Laurel. And it's always a pleasure to work with my colleagues from ILRU and to be a part of any of these conference webcasts. They're always impeccably run and I enjoy the array of topics that are carefully selected and I'm pleased to be a part of that menu this fall. Laurel has given you a great background about us and about our efforts, and so I won't spend much time telling you about that, except to tell you that what we are talking about today is a part of a bigger project, and that it has evolved out of -- as Laurel mentioned -- our increasing concern that the computer is such an important part of the workplace and that we might have missed in earlier inquiries about employer practices some pieces that only now are surfacing. So we have been funded by NIDRR since 1997 to do employer research and came back at that employer research in the last year to try to find out how in that five years the workplace had changed. And so this is very new information and we're pleased to have a chance to have a forum that ILRU is affording us in sharing this with our colleagues in CILs around the country. The topic, as you know, is human resource practices and information technology in the workplace. And one of the things I want to start out with is just telling you what we're going to cover, but also talk about why we think this is important, both the human resource component of it and the information technology emphasis. And I am going to walk you through those pages that you have as a part of this presentation, and I'm now on Page 2. So I'm going to talk a bit about why an interest in the IT and the HR process and I'm going to talk specifically about what I have to share from our own inquiry here about what we see happening in the workplace, with an emphasis on some -- what we've learned in human resources processes, specifically in both e-recruiting, but also across a wide survey that we've done and all HR processes that are becoming computerized today. We're going to talk toward the end, and that's where certainly I would like to welcome your inquiry or questions throughout the whole process, but I would really encourage you to let's have a healthy dialogue on talking about the implications of this for CILs and how we can work together to try to address what we think is a pretty significant information need out there, and to equip you or further equip you because I think many of you are probably already have a lot of information on this, and we hope to tap that, but for those of you who might not have explored in this area, we'll discuss some resources for future reference for you, hoping we can encourage you to become resources on these topics. Pair. >> RACHEL: Susanne, this is Rachel. I just want to jump in for one second. I do do it a lot. We do have a very varied audience today, so I wondered if you could just explain to people who might not know what a CIL is. >> SUSANNE: Oh, of course, I'm sorry. I'm glad that you reminded me that we have a broad audience. I was targeting my comments to the functioning of centers for independent living around the country providing services to individuals in their local communities, which includes consultation on accommodations which could indeed be workplace as well as other broader accommodation requests. So I am thinking of the potential contribution and information an consultation in which centers for independent living can offer in their communities. Does that provide you think enough, Rachel, background? >> RACHEL: I think so and if people have questions about that, please do go ahead and send them in and we'll seek further clarification. >> SUSANNE: Absolutely. And I think if there are other service providers on behalf of individuals with disabilities out there, the comments that we'll make and the discussion certainly is broad and for any employer folks, I hope you'll jump in and let us know what you're currently doing or would like assistance in doing on the issues that we're going to -- I think that our research illustrates are things that need or worthy of employer serious consideration at this point. Rachel, please don't hesitate to stop me if you think that I need to clarify. That's very helpful. >> RACHEL: Okay. >> SUSANNE: Thanks. All right, now, moving onto why we at Cornell have had a concern about this, and we are not alone at all. There is certainly increasing concern in the disability community as well as in employers about accessibility and the increasing use of information and communication technologies and computers. More broadly, we encourage employers to think about this because I think often employers don't think about what a significant part of the American population, people with disabilities actually are, and the numbers vary, but it's anywhere from one in six to one in five in the United States and as the workforce ages, we know that it will be an even greater problem, the estimation is that 40 percent of the American workforce in ten years will be over 50 and as we get to that age, we have increasing visual and hearing disabilities as well as mobility impairments; and we want to be sure that people stay productive and engaged in work as long as they would like to and as long as employers we know will have a need for them. So we're hoping people take seriously these accommodations because they're certainly going to also apply to our aging American workforce. We also know that the interest is important because increasingly everybody is using computers. Over half of U.S. households now have computers. One of the things we are concerned about is people with disabilities, however, there may be a disparity and they are only half as likely right now to have Internet access as those without disabilities. So it's an area of disparity that we're concerned gets addressed and I think seeing how increasingly it's being used in the workplace shows us that it is imperative to try to close that gap that we're seeing. I also want to mention here that we have focused on human resource professionals and on their processes over the six years we've been involved in this research because we see human resource professionals as really critical persons in the workplace. They are professionals and there is usually one in every 100 employees on the average across the United States industries and businesses, and they touch every part of the employment process from recruitment, pre-employment screening, all the way through promotion and departure from the workforce. So having HR professionals informed about people with disabilities and their potential accommodation needs we see as a really important part of sharing information on equity in the workplace. There were two -- let me turn now to some of our efforts at Cornell, and in the last year, year and a half or so, we have really targeted our efforts in our employer research area on looking at human resource practices and information technology accessibility. And we have several efforts to try to do that. We did at first extensive literature review which I won't share with you, but I'll just tell you it is available if anyone has further interest in that, and we did two specific studies, one was a review of selected e-recruiting sites on major employer and job Board websites, and the other was to actually interview by telephone with a survey some human resource professionals and find out more about what they know about this and what they have done to date in their workplace. So I'm going to talk about both of those studies to give you a sense of context of what they were about, but also pull out some of what we have as key findings so that we can talk about what that means for those of you out there who seem -- who are here because you have an interest in this topic. First of all, electronic human resources and people with disabilities, I'm now on that PowerPoint No. 4, what we have seen in our literature review and our discussions with selected employers and HR professionals confirmed is that as Internet access becomes more common, businesses are becoming more network intensive. They are using web applications in many more of their employee processes, we are concerned about because for selected individuals, those with visual and some with dexterity disabilities, it can pose as a barrier. And to find out more about this is what we were after in this process of inquiry. The first study I'm going to talk just a bit about is we were -- started with most grave concern about, of course, how people are finding jobs these days and how electronic use or e-recruiting use of websites might be a barrier for people. And the next couple of pages are some results taken from this research which was done by bill Erickson on our team and he has written a full report of this if you have any interest, I will put you in contact with Bill to get the full study on this. There is a lot more information than what I'm going to be presenting to you today, but what Bill has done is you can see here on slide No. 5 is he identified the most highly trafficked job boards, ten of them, and he also did some assessment for us to find out what would be the best e-recruiting sites to take a look at to give us a representative sample of where there might be problems. And he selected 14 best e-recruiting sites that were identified through a consulting firm and 17 top fortune 500 companies and went through a quite extensive process looking at some of the top pages, as you can imagine, some of these are quite deep, and we identify just those he thought would be illustrative of some of the problems that would be posed by an individual with a disability trying to get onto these websites and looked at. As you can see on Page 6, corporate home pages, job search pages, sign up registration pages and resume builder pages. Let me also point out here that further information about some of those findings is in -- I believe you have access through ILRU's website a summary of these research studies, and it does give a couple of figures. It gives you a really nice analysis of the findings from this study and we'll provide you a lot more information than in those couple of figures than we will share today, but a little bit about that. This was the process that was used here. It was a two level process. Many of you I'm sure are familiar with the Bobby software that is often used as a first level analysis for us to check websites for accessibility, and many of you probably have the Bobby icon on your own sites and that was the first level of analysis looking at how these sites passed muster in the priority 1 level. The second approach was assimilated process evaluation which Bill evolved for us to attempt to apply for a job using screen reader accessible information and keyboard navigation and he looked specifically at home pages, career pages, job search, job application and resume builder pages. On the next page, I'm looking now on Page 8, Bill has shared with us the Bobby results from that inquiry across those pages and as you can see in the job boards, those sites from the Bobby scrutiny did not -- were not accessible and the corporate recruiting sites fared a little better, but this shows a percentage of priority 1, according to the Bobby standards, errors. The next page shows more in depth inquiry, in that it's the simulated process evaluation that he evolved for us. The job boards -- there were nine of them, one-third of them were navigable throughout the entire process and application steps and the corporate E-recruitment sites, there were 12 that Bill had gone through this scrutiny with. Of those, one-third were navigable. And then in the next slide, the common accessibility issues which we identified in this process, this is just a few. There are certainly much more that -- and I would encourage any of you who are concerned about this, to get this report from us and I can put you in touch with Bill -- is that there are so many of these things that are really easily fixed if we properly educate those who are the designers of software that is emerging in the e-recruiting industry. And these are some examples of what Bill called us for us. One of the critical ones is the submit image buttons are missing alternative texts or critical links missing from the alternative text maps, and the auto submit come bow boxes, and there are examples -- many examples in the figures in the report that show you exactly pictorially what Bill means with these recommendations. On Page 11, the conclusions are here, this just highlighted for us the concern that we had started out with, and that is this burgeoning industry of using online recruiting is definitely problematic for people with disabilities. The majority of recruiting websites evaluated were not accessible, and here are our conclusions that we want to bring home to people and we hope to be able to help with in offering information to employers is that many of the issues can be -- >> OPERATOR: Excuse me, this call will now end as this call has exceeded the maximum time allowed with no host present on the call. Please stand by... >> SUSANNE: Hi, this is Susanne. I somehow got cut off. >> LAUREL: We're glad you're back. >> SUSANNE: Hello, and welcome back to the session. We apologize. For some reason we lost our connection shortly. >> LAUREL: Susanne, this is part of the excitement of live show business. (Laughter) >> SUSANNE: Well, I'm in the swing. Obviously I've gotten my orientation. We have -- I've been apprised that we just missed actually a line or two. So I'm just going to recap what we were talking about at the time, and that was that in this study that was conducted at Cornell, the final conclusion of this first study, first phase that I was talking about is that many recruiting sites were not -- that Bill Erickson on our behalf evaluated were not accessible, but many of the issues could be easily corrected through things like Alt text buttons and links. And the things we want to get out to the employers and the designers is that is indeed the case and they can open up the recruiting process to many more people if they begin to take some of these design features into consideration. And I'm going to pause here because perhaps in sharing that, I've stimulated a few questions and or in the pause we had perhaps some questioned surfaced and Rachel can you tell me do we have questions waiting for us? >> RACHEL: We have two questions, although one you might want to hold off. We certainly did get a lot of questions that said, hey, what happened. As far as content questions, one question is somebody is interested to know is there some research that basically lets us know the actual result of this inaccessibility for people with disabilities? So, you know, do we know the actual impact on people with disabilities of all these sites not being accessible? >> SUSANNE: I don't have data in hand on that. If you are asking how many people are precluded from getting on sites, we don't have a tangible way of knowing that. What we know is that it appears from demographic data from national surveys that far fewer people -- about half of the general population have computers, and we also know from this brief survey we did, but also our literature review that many of these websites are inaccessible. We only know it by those broad-based -- that broad-based proportional information that comes from these statistics. We don't have hard figures of who gets in and who does not. >> RACHEL: So you're saying that half the people with disabilities have computers or half of the population this general? >> SUSANNE: What we said -- both. Over half of U.S. households now own computers, but people with disabilities are half as likely to have Internet access. So we know there is a disparity there, and from review of some of these websites, we just know that these websites are not accessible to people with visual impairments who use technology to access the Internet these days. So that's what we've focused on. >> LAUREL: Susanne, this is Laurel. I have a question about this e-recruiting. I've been employed at TIRR now for over 25 years, so I haven't experienced this. Is this -- is there like a generic -- let me start this over -- are there sites that companies can contract with commercially to do the recruiting for them via the Internet? >> SUSANNE: Yes. Absolutely. There is three different -- I'm being very broad when I say this, but three different ways e-recruiting can be used. Most of the major -- the Fortune 500 companies now are increasingly, if not exclusively, using online recruiting. This is a burgeoning area. It is a way for them to cast their net very broadly in a very cost effective way and it's even increasingly moving to online applications exclusively and there is exploration of electronic sorting and prioritization of resumes based on key word findings, which means that a first cut of resumes could conceivably be done by computer rather than by someone looking through your resume. So -- >> LAUREL: My goodness. >> SUSANNE: This is of grave concern to us because not only are these websites not accessible, but people might not have much experience, for one, but secondly, there might be a technology impediment to applying online and also knowing how to shape the content of your resume to be competitive in this e-recruiting Internet application process. The second way that these are being done is that smaller employers often use a brokerage service. There are many now, industries, that offer this as a package to smaller employers who might not be able to build their own websites. The frame looks like it belongs to the website -- to a smaller employer, but it is actually a brokerage service from someone else. And the third is not necessarily nonindustry specifics like monster.com that are just a clearinghouse. So it's a huge industry out there. >> LAUREL: My goodness. >> SUSANNE: And fertile ground for us to offer consultation. >> LAUREL: If I were interested in a position and let's say I have some skill like -- like editing and writing. Would I just like go to a place like Google and type in jobs like that and would I be taken to one of these websites? Or does one have to know about it in advance? >> SUSANNE: No, you can certainly find some of these job boards through just looking for jobs. If you put in some of those key words of how do I find a job? You will get to these sites. They are very sophisticated at trying to get both employers to post jobs and potential applicants to post their jobs there. So absolutely. You know, people can find their way to these places that way, and now I think people looking for jobs also will go to companies and try to see if they can apply on line or find out what postings are available online. Sometimes its ease easy to do and sometimes it's quite obscure. Not all these websites, as you can imagine, are designed very well for that process. So the added concern of having them be inaccessible in addition to obscure sometimes just by use ability design is a real challenge. >> LAUREL: And these have been around for a few years now? >> SUSANNE: Yes. They've been around increasingly over the last two years, it's just grown in leaps and bounds. I don't have the figures in front of me and I apologize for that because it's quadrupled in the last several years. >> LAUREL: Then your study really is very timely insofar as maybe catching this run away horse before it gets totally lost in terms of providing information on how to make their sites accessible. >> SUSANNE: That's certainly the way we were feeling, Laurel, is as we looked at our research, we just realized that things had changed so much since we had been involved in it. It was not the same workplace as it had been four years ago. All the things we had been concerned about in discrimination, to some extent pales in comparison when you look at how these things are changing so rapidly. >> LAUREL: While we all went missing, we made a point that we can get from you when the session is over the contact information for Bill Erickson and his report and we can post it on the discussion forum that we'll follow along for about four weeks of this presentation as well as the website. So we will be able to do that for you. >> SUSANNE: Terrific. That would be great. The name of the publication which Bill has written is on that little summary sheet. It's the very last item on the related reports and publications. So the name of the publication is there, but I'd like to certainly give you direct contact information for Bill. So that would be great if you could post that for us. >> LAUREL: Absolutely. You can count on that. >> RACHEL: Susanne, I have one other question I'd like to throw in at this point and I'm sure you're ready to go on. This question is, is an employer violating the ADA if they're strictly relying on inaccessible e-recruiting? Because it looks like then they're not accepting applicants who can't use their website. >> SUSANNE: That's a great question, and it is the 94,000-dollar question for us as well. This is an emerging discussion. It's not -- if there is no as yet definitive guidance from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that specifically addresses information technology, although I have to tell you we've had a number of conversations with the EEOC on this. In general, what we believe and what I think is -- we would have support from an assessment from the EEOC is that if an applicant is precluded by inaccessibility for applying for a job that has inequity access to this as the only way of getting job information from a company, that indeed, that this is an area that is ripe for a claim of discrimination. So I think employers, although they're not getting definitive guidance yet, I think will at some point on this and I see it as something that they really need to pay attention. They are definitely leaving themselves open for a claim of discrimination by making -- by having job postings only on inaccessible websites. I just think there is too great a disparity for it not to come back as a potential claim of discrimination at some point in time. I think they're very vulnerable by not addressing accessibility issues, especially if it's the only way people can find out about jobs with their company. >> RACHEL: Okay, great. I have a couple of questions that relate to enforcement, but would you like me to hold those so you can go through a little more material first? >> SUSANNE: Well, let's -- no, let's take them now since you raised the question, I think they're related. >> RACHEL: I'll sort of paraphrase because there are a couple very questions. Basically, are businesses required by law to have their websites be accessible? Sort of alternately, somebody else asked, well, are there incentives for employers to assure that their IT is accessible? Actually, they said are incentives available. Is there somebody out there who offering some tangible incentives and then sort of as followup, if this is required, who is watching or who will enforce it or what will the penalties be for being out of compliance? >> SUSANNE: Well, I see these questions related to the last one that was asked, and I will try to add a little more depth to what I have already shared with you. First of all, in terms of incentives, I don't know of a pot of money that employers can tap specifically to assist them in this process. I think incentives are really to give equitable access to talented candidates who might be precluded from being able to access the jobs. To me, that's the biggest incentive for an employer is to not limit the network of people whom they can draw from. And incentive I know right now certainly -- that is very directly related, but is for a subset of employers, is that there is federal requirements along this line that I think establish a precedent for the private sector. Any of the federal agencies and subcontractors that they work with are required to make all of their technology purchases be ones that are accessible to people with disabilities; and I'm sure there are some of you out there who know about section -- what is titled Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and this specifically deals with the federal sector, but sets a precedent for accessibility of information technology that requires federal contractors to be in compliance with these. So there is a huge incentive for those who are sellers of services purchased by the federal government to be in compliance. We think that many of those industries are going to be establishing protocols that also will be used by the private sector. So I think there is an incremental gain for all of us by having the federal sector have these requirements. And did I miss a piece of one of those questions, Rachel? >> RACHEL: I think just sort of continuing on along that line, you know, who is actually going to enforce that? At this point it's only enforceable at the federal level, but who is going to enforce that and what are the penalties for being outcome ply answer? >> SUSANNE: The enforcement agency where employment is concerned is still going to be the same one -- the same enforcement agency that enforces the Americans with Disabilities Act unless it's in the federal sector, in which it would be -- which would fall under the Rehab Act and that's the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the penalties will be the same as any other claim of discrimination, if discrimination was indeed found. And that can be in statement -- that can be hiring or it can be reinstatement if a person has been released of their job because of inability to access technology. It can be back pay, and there can be additional penalties leveled. So it is really dependent upon, you know, how a judgment call would be made about the claim. But the rights and the enforcement process that could be levied on the individual's behalf toward the employer would be the very same one that is any other claim of discrimination would merit. >> RACHEL: Okay. >> SUSANNE: Have I answered the person's question? >> RACHEL: Yes. All those questions. >> SUSANNE: All right, we can certainly come back to it. What we don't have right now are cases for me to be more definitive. What I can tell you is there a general swell of support for closely scrutinizing this process and encouraging employers to be proactive so that they aren't caught by surprise needlessly. These are fixes that can occur and will prevent the likelihood that claims will get filed if employers are proactive. So that's the note I like to encourage people to consider and to take seriously. And with that, Rachel, can we proceed? >> RACHEL: Yeah. >> SUSANNE: That's great. So the next study I'm going to talk about is related certainly to the first. These are two different -- as I said, two different parts of an overall picture of assessment we tried to do in the last year. And this was more broadly based in that we looked more broadly at computer use and IT use in the employment process, and we took a different tact. Whereby in the first we did a look at websites, one individual looked at websites, in this process, we recruited input from over 400 human resource professionals across a wide variety of industries. We actually went back to folks that we had worked with four years before in the prior study where we looked at human resource practices and asked them if they would answer further questions and specifically in this case looking at their use of information technology in human resource processes. We used the society of human resource members where we originally recruited and we used that same list we had used before. Most of the people had participated in the 1998 survey and we went back to them. In some cases people had left their jobs and so we took their incumbents. So next in responding to characteristics, we felt good about -- again, this reflected our initial selection of these folks. It was a nice, broad array. We had people from large employers, a quarter of them, and we had over 40 percent from smaller employers. That is organizations with fewer than 500 employees. We wanted to see how this impacted different workplaces and we felt that this nice, broad swath of respondents give us pretty firm ground to say that it covers the experience of HR folks and therefore, their employers across many size industries. It also covered a lot of different types of industries as you can see from this PowerPoint slide No. 13. 41 percent were from service industries, 21 percent were from manufacturing and 13 percent were from finance and insurance organizations. Some of the findings -- now I'm going to go onto that and hopefully this will spur some more questions and discussion for us. The next ten or twelve slides is a snapshot, again, of some of the things we found. We also have a much fuller report of all of this, and we'd be happy to share a copy of that with you as well. This is briefly summarized in that summary sheet that's available through ILRU, but there is lots more material. One of the things, first of all, that we were looking at is getting a good perception check of use of computer in the workplace, which would in and of itself tell us if we were on target being concerned about potential preclusion of people with disabilities, impediments of information technology access, and indeed it was confirmed that computer use is really high in the workplace today, more than 80 percent of the employees -- of employees in finance, high tech or telecommunications and insurance industries that were reporting for us used computers more than half of the workday. And that even held true in other industries. It wasn't just unique to the high technology industries. 60 percent of employees in the service and public administration industries represented in our sample used computers more than half of the workday. Even in other areas, about 40 percent of transportation or utilities and manufacturing industry employees were reported by these respondents to use computers at this level. So what it says is no matter what the industry, it's not just the high tech, that the workplace across all sectors is being massively impacted by this use of computers and you don't have to just worry about accessibility if you're going for the technology jobs. You need to think about it and not only have computer skills, but think about what you might need for computer or Internet accessibility to be able to function in your job if you're a person with a disability. The next slide, slide 15, shows the degree of use of online technology in specific human resource processes. In the last study we focused just on what we'll call the E-recruitment process, but since human resource processes has been our focus over the past five years, we also wanted to look at all of the HR processes or a selected subgroup, I will say, where we had a hunch that there was increasing use of information technology processes and therefore potential problems for people with disabilities. And indeed, it was confirmed that it certainly is moving in that direction. We already talked about online job postings or the E-recruitment process and this inquiry just confirmed here we have almost 90 percent of our respondents said that their companies are using that medium either a great -- either some or a great deal. Similarly, about over 75 percent of our respondents said that online benefits information dissemination is now being done either a great deal or to some extent by their company, and a related benefits issue, not just benefits information dissemination, but benefits self-service. You can change our benefits selection online. You can change your address, your phone number, and many employers are moving toward a self-service system that means that people can -- employees can readily keep their demographic information and their contact information up to date more than half of the companies currently use that at least some, if not a great deal. And although this was used less in terms of a great deal of use, it's still over 60 percent said that online training is being used to some extent in their organizations. So what we can see across all of these areas, all of us are used to some extent, we all have in positions either get some training or benefits and so even if we aren't worried about using the online recruiting, we could definitely be impacted or precluded from accessing other parts of the employee process if we can't access the Internet or use the web-based processes that are being used. I'll pause there just for a second and see if you have any questions on any of these things so far? >> RACHEL: Let's see, I actually just got a question -- let me see if I can kind of paraphrase it. It actually -- somebody was reading your mind. The question relates to what you just said, which is basically if a business' website is not accessible, and I guess it could be a number of services then that are not available to people with disabilities, the ones you just mentioned, is there an alternative that the business can choose as opposed to making their website accessible or until their website is accessible? >> SUSANNE: That's a great question, and I think the answer is the same answer one would -- one would respond to any kind of accommodation, and that is certainly the employer should immediately explore a short term fix if it can't be immediately addressed in the bigger picture for along term fix. If the individual is being precluded from full participation in that workplace, either in their job or in their access to benefits or training, the employer -- it's imperative that the employer right away try to find away to give them equitable access and so they should explore alternatives. The kind of alternative they can come up with will depend on the situation and the needs of the individual, but it's something that should be immediately explored if the individual feels an accommodation is needed for them to equitably access such things as their benefits or training, staff development. >> RACHEL: Okay, so that really sounds like the sort of usual ADA issues. >> SUSANNE: Absolutely. It's the very same process. It's a question of -- it may be a question of looking at alternatives that the employer or the individual is not familiar with before. So it may ratchet up the accommodation needs which they aren't used to, but the process of negotiating in an informal discussion with the individual should be identical. Just as we often say with other kinds of accommodations, usually the individual is the one who knows best what will help them to address the situation. They may not know how to redesign the website necessarily, but they sure know when it's inaccessible and I think that's the dialogue that needs to occur to help the HR person and perhaps the web designer or it may be an ergonomic specialist or procurement specialist, a procurement officer for software, but somebody needs to step in and ask the right questions and do a short term fix of the situation so the individual isn't left unable to get what they need to get their job done. >> RACHEL: Okay, and probably that along with -- I have another question here about how people should go about evaluating their websites and I imagine some of the resources you're going to be mentioning near the end of this webcast would help with that as well as how people handled these interim situations? >> SUSANNE: Yep, I sure hope so. We're happy to take questions from people and mention resources and field those inquiry. We encourage you to follow up with us if you have information needs but we're also confident that that list of resources is a great place to start. >> RACHEL: Okay. I have one other question for right now, which is -- >> SUSANNE: Okay. >> RACHEL: Relates back to the first section you were talking B. can you comment on the accessibility of some of the e-recruiting websites like monster.com? And are some of them easier to navigate than others? >> SUSANNE: You know, that is such a complex response, I don't feel -- I don't feel I can do it. I also would prefer to have my colleague, who actually did the analysis, give that information. >> RACHEL: Okay. >> SUSANNE: So what I'd like to do is encourage that person to get in touch with Bill, and he can be much more specific than I about the kinds of things that he found. And you know, I have to say these websites change all the time. The kinds of impediments that we found when we did this analysis may very well have been addressed or fixed, but I think that that is certainly a dialogue that our interest person should have directly with Bill. >> RACHEL: Okay, great. Just so people know, this webcast and the pages that go with it will be archived, and so on the archive site, Bill's contact information will be added, too. >> SUSANNE: Let me give that to two people. Those of you who would really like copies of the study or to give very specific questions about that e-recruiting study, should contact Bill Erickson and here is his E-mail address, wae1@cornell.edu. >> RACHEL: And is that one the number 1. So again, wae1@cornell.edu. >> SUSANNE: and that specific question certainly is one that Bill can help with. >> RACHEL: Okay, great. I think those are the questions that make sense for right now. Let me turn it back to you. >> SUSANNE: Okay, great. Now, I'm on Page 16, continuing with what we found on this -- on a survey of our HR professionals. One of the things we asked professionals -- these HR professionals was their perceptions to barriers to computer use by people with disabilities. We had very little sense of what people's perceptions were, and if they would see -- how they would see IT access as different from people with different kinds of disabilities, and indeed they had decided perception of distinctions between barriers that would be presented by people different kinds of disability. They saw not a barrier or very little barrier to -- for persons who are wheelchair users, persons with mobility impairments, 85 percent said no barrier at all, and they saw -- half of them saw any barrier at all for people with a hearing impairment, and I'm going on up the list where it was increasingly seen as a barrier of approximately one in six saw a very significant barrier of websites for people with cognitive or learning impairments and an additional four out of five, somewhat of a barrier for that population. Fine motor limitations, about 90 percent of the folks who responded, saw that as an issue to computer use for people with disabilities. Three-quarters of the total respondents said somewhat a barrier, about 18 percent said very significant barrier. And the population that they showed the most concern about or the highest perception of barrier were persons with a visual impairment. Overall, 90 percent, 38 percent of which was a very significant barrier. So there is definitely differing perceptions and the most being for a person with a visual impairment. So then we also asked a couple other questions that would give us somewhat more information about that, and that was, is this perception based on knowledge of what's available to remediate some of these barriers? And indeed, we found that there is a great need for education here, that many folks have not had much exposure to assistive technology or organizations or people who can provide information about information technology accessibility and that's part of the difficulty right now. The next slide on Page 17 shows the degree of familiarity with various kinds of assistive technologies; and as you can see, there was a great degree -- almost three-fourths of our respondents said that they were totally unfamiliar with guidelines for web design, almost as many with screen readers, Braille displays, 60 percent were unfamiliar with video captioning, the two areas where they were a bit more familiar, about a third were familiar with speech recognition software and almost half, 46 percent, with screen magnifiers, so those are things that are getting more integrated in the workplace, more broadly for more people, and so people have more exposure to that. Almost two-thirds of them have some kinds of exposure to -- well, actually I take that back. Two-thirds of them whether neither or had some familiarity. The next slide, 18, is a companion slide this that here we're talking about familiarity with not just with specific pieces of technology, but with the resources that we know are available that can help with identifying the correct technology, and these are ones that are public ones. There is also certainly in-house resources and we'll talk a little bit about that as well; but we were interested in finding out if these folks knew about the national resources that are available. The first one, clearinghouse for information technology is related to Section 508 of the Rehab Act which I mentioned it governs federal compliance with information technology accessibility, and 80 percent of our respondents were not familiar at all with that. Almost as many were not familiar with the Worldwide Web Consortium, which is also a resource on information act accessibility, particularly for industry. They were a bit more familiar, almost about 40 percent with vendors of accessible software, 30 percent with the Job Accommodation Network, which is funded by the office of disability and employment policy and provides a 1800 number to ask about accommodations generally and increasingly of course has information on technology, and 40 percent of them were familiar with some disability organization. So they were obviously perceiving those as potential resources for information technology. I'll do a couple more slides and then pause -- one more and then pause a bit for more questions. The next slide, slide 19, we wanted to see if they had not only were they familiar with them, but did they have personal experience with making workplace adaptations using some of this technology, and not to our surprise, and I guess you would find this very reasonable, is that almost half had experience with work station alterations. Computers are such a natural part of our workplace now, that most of us are sitting at a desk and using a computer and trying to make an adjustment so that we can either sit better or have better light or have the work stations set up to minimize eye strain or neck strain or shoulder strain or back strain, and our HR folks are certainly in line with that experience. Most of us -- similarly, most of them have had or 40 percent of them have had experience with screen magnifiers, and about a third with some kind of computer adaptation, a special mouse or keyboard. Less have had exposure to voice recognition, use of larger screens, Braille displays or screen readers. So these are areas that the technology is there that we need to provide information. And with that I will pause a second before we start talking about some of our conclusions. I have five or six slides on that and I want to see if there are questions. Rachel. >> RACHEL: Okay. Just a couple right now. One is about do human resource professionals, when they're going to graduate school or getting their training, do they get some training about IT as well as about disability issues? >> SUSANNE: That's just a terrific question, and the answer is that it's really all over the map. First of all, many human resource professionals are folks who have a wide swath of training. Many of them are folks who have worked their way up through organizations and into human resource functions and have learned on the job, and certainly may have had training on ADA as a part of that. We do know that human resource professionals who have formalized graduate training have employment law as a part of their -- certainly as a part of their formalized training and this is absolutely a part of the training for human resource professionals that is a certificate series designed and implemented by the Society for Human Resource Management. Those courses have the Americans with Disabilities Act as a part of them. I don't know of any courses that specifically are required that give HR professionals a really good exposure to the kinds of accommodations generally that people with disabilities might need, let alone, information technology access. On that front, I would say pretty confidently that the answer is no. This is not a part of the preparation of HR professionals and so it's real important that we get those resources in front of them. And we're hopeful that we can help with that. We have worked with SHRM to put together an article that will go out in the next week to their 170,000 members that gives a synopsis of our findings from the survey of their membership. And we're hopeful that that will stimulate interest and send many of those folks to these websites and the resources that we're going to share with you today. >> RACHEL: Okay. Kind of along those lines, I'm guessing this came from somebody at a center for interested living, but what do you think is the most important resource for employers that we can show employers to improve this whole situation and ultimately improve accessibility of websites? maybe you don't want to have to choose one. >> SUSANNE: Yeah, I think that's a tough question. I think -- you know, I think if you can take -- if you're doing, let's say, a marketing call to an employer about the importance of services like this, and you can take two or three slides like the ones I'm showing you and saying this is a problem in many, many industries today, how is it working for you and be able to offer them a template of standards to consider. That would be very useful. I think you can also lead with questions like, you know, how many of your employees use computers today? You know, how many accommodation requests for computer work station changes or accessibility of your web-based applications to you get. Do you know where to find accommodations when you need them and be able to have answers to some of those questions for them. The standards for web accessibility are on a couple of those websites that we're going to give you at the end. You certainly can print those off and have them available, but there is nothing like being able to coach web designers through this process and give them a little bit of feedback. And this is high level intervention, and that is if you know how to review websites and can go to the e-recruiting website of the company and come up with some easy fixes to how they can make their websites more accessible and I think that would be the more compelling evidence for them about why they need to address this. >> RACHEL: I know that some of the resources you're going to mention at the end including the DBTAC's do offer training. >> SUSANNE: Absolutely. Right now -- and I'm glad you mentioned that, is the Disability and Business and Technical Assistance Center have an initiative that focuses on information access. The information they have can cut across all organizations that use IT-based applications and they are a tremendous resource of both free publications, a 1800 number and training in every region. So I certainly would encourage you to take a look at what they have to offer to get yourselves equipped to be able to consult with businesses. >> RACHEL: Right. Definitely and the DBTACs work a lot with the CILs and also work with businesses on all kinds of ADA-related issues so there is a lot of overlap and if I can for just a second do a mini commercial, one of your hosts for today's webcast, is Disability Law Resource Project is one of those ten DBTACs and so DLRP is one of the places you can call if you dial the single 800 number and you're in the region where DLRP is, then you will reach them and be able to get services from here. >> SUSANNE: and since you're mentioning it, Rachel, it is the first bullet on our additional resources, that number is 189-49-4232. It's a great number to have handy. It's a ready resource for certainly this as well as a lot of other information. >> RACHEL: You can get to it from the ILRU website which is how most people got to the webcast today. Okay, back to you. Commercial is over. >> SUSANNE: Okay. >> RACHEL: Thank you for allowing that. >> SUSANNE: You bet. Now I'm going to move toward summarizing and then we'll certainly have time for a few more questions. I'm now on Page 20, and to pull it altogether, we talked a bit about two studies today. We talked a bit about a study of website accessibility, especially with a focus on e-recruiting and now we're talking about the HR study. In this study, we also asked them about website accessibility checks and approximately 10 percent only said that their HR sites had been evaluated for accessibility. Many of them had no idea -- more than half -- whether their site had been checked at all. Only about 40 percent -- about 40 percent said that their sites had not been checked. They actually were clear about that. So again it just cries out for some kind of consultation, some kind of education to begin to look at these issues early on in the design process as these sites are being conceptualized. Again, we looked at training used now within businesses and asked them some questions about that and their use of the Internet. This is increasingly away training is being -- and staff development is being done, particularly in large corporations because it's very cost effective and it can be individualized and on demand. And yet, given that's the case, only 15 percent of these folks that we spoke to over the 400 respondents we had reported that any employees had been trained in Internet accessibility for persons with disabilities. And 31 percent reported that some staff had been trained in making computers accessible. So not only were we -- we asked some questions about the use of IT in training, but also here specifically I am speaking of training that had been provided on Internet accessibility. We also asked them of the resources that they used, and here we were looking at in-house resources. We asked where our human resource professionals would go to get information about how to make an accommodation of information technology? And we were specifically looking at their own in-house resources, and I was actually very heartened and thought these were pretty smart people when I heard this, and that is that we said we would first go to the employee with the disability. That was rated as the most helpful resource and that is right in line with what the Americans with Disabilities Act would suggest and that is go to the person and find out first what they perceive would be away to remove the barrier and to make the accommodation, and these folks obviously get that. And so we were pleased to see that. They also gave us, I think, good tips about what the other perceived resource persons are and who we need to get to if we are going to get into the organization and be helpful to the most often used resources, and that is health and safety and ergonomic staff. They were rated as helpful resources in almost three-quarters of our folks, and computer network services staff and disability management staff by about two-thirds. These are two very different kinds of resources. The computer network services staff -- and most of us probably have our technical people who help us with these things and know that they are absolutely invaluable, and it is no different in this accommodation process. That's who the HR folks do go to, so getting to them and making sure they understand what are potential technology fixes I think is imperative. And I think it's interesting to note that the disability management staff often who are the case carrying managers when people have a health or disability-related problem are often seen as resource folks and folks who if we can get to them can be real helpful to us in making sure that accommodations get provided. We think this next slide is a good companion to talk about what's helpful inside the organization or perceived helpfulness. This is slide 23. We asked -- we were trying to get a good fix on how can we help, and this was our way of getting a lit must at that. We asked across these eight or so different areas what would be the most helpful to you in removing these technology barriers that you are telling us remain for people with disabilities in the information technology access area? And I think this also gives us some guidance as to what to encourage employers to do and how we can help in certain ways. The ones that were seen as helpful -- they were all seen as helpful, but the most helpful in descending order was at three-quarters of the folks said that specific expertise or technical assistance on technology accessibility issues in the organization would be helpful, as would trained technical staff within the organization, and in understanding of some uniform guidelines to make web-based employer processes accessible. And those guidelines are available to you. So those are things if you can get in the right hands of these employers or the technology staff, you can be of enormous service. They also -- 71 percent said computer training for potential employees with disabilities and that could certainly be within the business organization, but we also think that has implications for public policy and how we encourage, you know, our one-stop centers and our providers of training to our workforces to make -- give equitable access to our young people and our -- and are reengaging people with disabilities to make sure they are equipped in this heavily technology information workplace now. Also of interest here web-based resources on Internet computer accessibility and you certainly have those in your list at tend. Two-thirds of them thought telephone or E-mail consultation on Internet accessibility would be helpful, and Rachel just gave you that 1-800 number that can provide that. So getting that number into the hands of the people who need this information looks like they would be very open to that. Print information similarly, 61 percent would be helpful, and less than the others, but still over half said this would be helpful and that is training their purchasing or procurement specialist within their organizations on Internet access issues for people with disabilities. And we certainly would concur with that. If you can get the people who buy the technology to be buying the right technology from the get go, you can eliminate a Lo lot of these problems. And often they're the ones who make these decisions. Someone says I need a computer and somebody in the procurement office buys them. If we can get them to buy the right piece of equipment that is more readily adaptable to the person with a disability, that would remove a lot of these problems from the get-go. And with that, I'm going to -- I will give my conclusions and then I'd like to share our additional resources and then stop for questions unless, Rachel, you have a pressing question now that we should address before that? >> RACHEL: No, I think your plan is good and then I'll ask questions at the end. >> SUSANNE: Okay. Sounds great. Our conclusions from these efforts to date, and we continue to do this. Let me say this, as we have gone back to the 41 organizations whose sites Bill reviewed a year ago, and given them the information in a global way about our findings and are encouraging them to come back to us and ask questions and enable us to network them with good resources. Our results demonstrate that the magnitude of computer use and computer-related skills required throughout the labor force is just increasing exponentially each year. And because of that and because of what we see as a significant lack of familiarity with both the issues and the resources to fix the issues, that there is a significant need to raise awareness of information technology accessibility considerations for people with disabilities in employment settings. And within employment settings, there are just a number of people who we feel need this information. Certainly the human resource professionals and that is those who are responsible for recruiting, but those who are responsible for access to other employee processes within employment settings. Once people get jobs, like benefits, like training, people will only be able to be helpful if they realize it's a problem. And these HR professionals are certainly folks who touch many parts of the employment process. As we mentioned, we would like to also see safety, health and ergonomic disability management specialists get their own raise in this as well. Also to us -- and I'm on that last bullet now on Page 24, how lights the importance of computer training for employees with disabilities and we do see now that U.S. Department of Labor beginning to take this seriously. There has been grants the last couple of years to intensify technology training across our whole American workforce, but there has also been very specific grants for increasing technology training for people with disabilities. And we think that's terrific, but we also think it's the tip of the ice Berg. This should be a public policy, we think, high profile agenda item for the coming years to come. Next slide, I focused here on the implications for centers on independent living, as I mentioned, although I've targeted that specifically here, any of us who are concerned about equitable access to employment for people with disabilities, whether you're a provider of employment services or you are an employer, I think, should have a serious concern about the possible impediments for people with disabilities in finding jobs and being able to apply for jobs and being able to be equitably competitive once in the job. It's an issue across the employment spectrum for people with disabilities and we continue to believe that the HR practitioner is a key workplace contact. So we'd encourage any of you with concerns out there to get to an HR professional, if you can, because we think if we can inform them, and again the proportion in the American workplace is one to every 100 employees. So there is a pretty good penetration rate, if we can get the HR profession always information, we see those as folks you should be targeting your educational efforts toward. There are many informational services on web design and these considerations and their accommodations -- that information needs to be broadcast widely as does a knowledge of the key resources and that is why you have there the next page, page 26, as well as a listing of our existing publications on the additional resources, we mentioned the disability and business -- also called the DBTACs which highlights this IT access service which DBTACs provide and they were also providing the website as well as that 1-800 number. The EEOC has publications on line about the ADA provisions and guide books more generally. So I certainly would encourage them as a resource and I think the more we can let the EEOC know this is a concern to us, the more that we will have backup and reinforcement on this enforcement issue that looks like many of you out there are concerned about. I mentioned Section 508 which applies to the federal government and there is an excellent website which provides standards, the standards for Section 508 as well as a more thorough explanation of what the requirements are for that piece of the Rehabilitation Act. So I would encourage you to explore that and the website is www.Section 508.gov. The Worldwide Web Consortium website I've given you there, the W3C.org. There is a typo there. So if you got this please do correct it. And if with can correct it on the website that would be great. >> RACHEL: We certainly will. >> SUSANNE: That's just a wonderful resource on these issues and also a place where industry and designers can get a lot more in-depth information. The DBTAC folks on Lynn are well aware of this resource, but one of our companion resources with our DBTAC initiative that Rachel mentioned is access IT at the University of Washington that has a focus on accessible IT in educational settings. So if any of you are interested in that, we've provided that website for you. And lastly, I'm giving you our contact information, what you have there is our website, my phone number and on the next page, on the last page, you have an E-mail. It's some duplicate information, but in between these pages there is a list of the specific reports that I've referenced that cover the three facets of our research. And that is a review of the literature, the first one; the second one is this last study I was just mentioning and that is the survey we did of HR profession always and the last one is the specific report of the e-recruiting websites which Bill Erickson did on our behalf. They're all cited there for your reference and we would be happy to send you a copy if you have an interest. With that I'm going to stop and see if we have time to take any remaining questions we might have. >> RACHEL: Actually, you've answered a lot of the questions along the way. I have one to pose to you and then I think we'll be right on time for me to do some wrap up and thank yous. This is basically -- well, I'd like to say that you've done a really good job of covering a lot of information and outlining for us our work that's ahead of us, but you know, so that everybody can be doing this work coming from an informed position, you know, as opposed to speculating about what's needed or the best ways that people would like to receive information or assistance. So I think that's really helpful; and I guess what I'd like to ask you at this point is based on the research that you've done to date, what are the next steps that you guys will take, either additional research or implementation projects? >> SUSANNE: Well, that's a great question, and two very immediate things we've done -- actually I'd say three. I mentioned one of them and that is we want back to the employers whose sites we have reviewed and offered our services to them because they are some of the biggest industries and the biggest job boards. We would like to very much encourage them to become more accessible. And we've heard back from one so far. So we're going to be pursuing them more doggedly. We have also gone back to our partner on the survey and that is the Society for Human Resource Management and I mentioned we have done one publication with them that will be coming out in the next couple of weeks. It's an article in one of their online member journals called workplace visions and we're pleased that that will reach 170,000 HR professionals. So we see that as very much a combining, but at least certainly a step in the right direction. We have also begun working with the EEOC providing them this information because I think they are -- were certainly not unaware, but needed some much more specificity about the level of problem and I'm pleased to say they're very receptive of this information and see it as helping them to build a case about the importance of employers taking this seriously and the fact that this is indeed a potential discrimination issue that would be one that they would be concerned about as the enforcers of the ADA. >> LAUREL: Good for you. >> SUSANNE: And lastly, we are hoping to engage major providers, major industry providers of E-recruitment services in a partnership. We have begun approaching some of the major providers of these services to see if we could engage them in working collaboratively to make their services accessible since so many of them serve many of the industries that we were surveying. We're hoping if we request get to them, they can start selling accessible services from the get-go. So that's really one we hope -- if we're successful, I'm hopeful we would have quite a significant impact. That's where we've begun and get back to us in a year and we'll tell you how successful we have been. >> RACHEL: In just a year, you're going to do all that in just a year? >> SUSANNE: We'll see how we've done. We certainly will be making strides to try to accomplish that. >> RACHEL: Well, we're impressed to date and know that you and the projects that you are affiliated with do always turn out quality and very helpful work for the rest of us. So I just want to really give you a hearty thank you for the work you do, and for really translating a lot of it for everybody. And we do have a varied audience, so I do think you did a very good job of giving information that will be relevant for a number of different parties. And I just want to remind people that I know some people had technical difficulties today or even if you didn't, that this presentation will be archived. So you can hear Susanne tell you everything again or I know oftentimes we use the archives because we say, you know, I want to hear what she said about that one topic again. And so there will be an archived audio presentation as well as a written transcript. So tell your friends and you can revisit it yourselves. We also would love to hear everybody's feedback. Please do fill out the evaluation forms. Let us know what additional information you would like to hear. I think we could talk about employment every week for several years, but please do let us know which topics particularly interest you. And I would like to do a couple of additional thank yous, in addition to Susanne, so Susanne, we can't thank you enough, but really have enjoyed spending this time with you today and appreciate it. >> SUSANNE: Thank you. I appreciate the invitation. It's always great to be a part of it. >> RACHEL: Thank you. Then we'll invite you again. And actually, Laurel, do you want to do our thank yous and sign off? >> LAUREL: I'd like to make a couple of observations. One is that the purpose behind this project, the research information for independent living was to make clear to the field of independent living and others that research is the basis for effective advocacy, what we know anecdotally about either intended or unintended discrimination is one thing, but when we have hard research on -- such as the ones that Susanne, you and your colleagues did at Cornell, we have really instruments of validity that we can take to policymakers and to legislators and just to rank and file employers. So from the perspective of demonstrating the value of research to those of us who most stand to benefit from the research, this has just been a marvelous demonstration. So thank you for that. >> SUSANNE: Thank you, Laurel. It means a lot to hear that. >> LAUREL: And don't think you won't be invited back in a year. Just hang in there. >> SUSANNE: Good. >> LAUREL: This whole initiative of presenting research findings is a project of the research information for independent living and it's a very serious initiative related to making clear to those of us who have disabilities, those of us who are working in independent living fields, those of us working in disability rights and disability specific organizations gives us the opportunity to hear research and then to think about the applications it has to our regular -- our daily lives as well as our workplace lives. We have a four week follow along discussion forum. Many of the resources that Susanne has mentioned we'll have posted on the discussion forums and we invite participation. It would be very, very welcome. So in closing, much thanks of course to Susanne and her marvelous colleagues at Cornell. We'll be hearing from another one in a few weeks, Andrew Houtenville, and also our colleagues at the University of Kansas, the research and training center folks there, and especially to our colleagues at ILRU who work so hard to get these webcasts out and that includes not just our questioner today, Rachel Kosoy, but to Sharon Finney and to Marj Gordon and to Dawn Heinsohn and Mark Richards, thanks very much. And to the folks who really -- next to Susanne, make this possible are our technical colleagues, Rob Dickehuth who is in charge of this web streaming technology which is somewhat mystifying to me and to Marie Bryant who is just a first rate captioner and thanks to both of you and meanwhile, please check our calendar of upcoming events. We'll have another webcast coming soon your way and thank you very much for joining us today. Good afternoon. >> SUSANNE: Bye now. >> RACHEL: Bye-bye.