The situation at work has improved, but the disabled still  face challenges

Published in the Asbury Park Press 12/20/04
Job growth seen among younger handicapped workers
By BRIAN  TUMULTY
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE 

Twelve years after the Americans with Disabilities Act declared
employment discrimination against the disabled illegal, a Harris poll found the 
percentage of disabled adults with jobs stuck at about 35 p
That's nearly identical to the percentage in a 1986 Harris survey.
According to Census 2000, 33.1 million Americans, or 18.6 percent of the
population ages 16 to 64 considered themselves disabled.
Critics of the ADA say the cost of compliance has made employers wary of
hiring disabled workers.
However, advocates for the disabled downplay the employment participation
statistic as misleading because it includes disabled adults -- many of them
older -- unable or unwilling to work.
Linking the ADA to the employment rate among the disabled misinterprets the
goal of the law. "It gives civil rights and protection in employment, but it
doesn't create jobs," said spokesman Brewster Thackeray of the National
Organization on Disability, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Experts on the disabled say they've seen positive employment gains, many of
them among young adults.
"Young people who have severe disabilities who want to work, who are capable
of being accommodated, their employment rate has risen dramatically," said
David Blanck, director of the Law, Health Policy and Disability Center at the
University of Iowa College of Law.
Jessica Hunt, who was born with cerebral palsy and learned to walk in her
rural Kentucky hometown with the aid of hand crutches, already has an impressive
work-related and academic resume at age 22.
Among her accomplishments: earning a bachelor's degree from Centre College in
Danville, Ky., winning a Fulbright Scholarship, teaching English to
sixth-graders in France last year and working as an intern at the U.S. Department of
Labor this summer, where she made $16 an hour.
A first-year law student at the University of Kentucky Law School in
Lexington this fall, Hunt plans to specialize in disability law and help write
public policy.
"That's my dream job," Hunt said during an interview at her cubicle at Labor
Department headquarters.
"I think I'm also interested in any sort of public interest work, pro bono
type work or, as my dad says, the jobs that don't make much money," she said.
"I want to help as many people as I can. My whole life everyone has always had
to help me do everything that I wanted to do."
Kumar Singh, who was born deaf and attended a special high school for the
deaf in New York City, is starting his third year at the National Technical
Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.
The 21-year-old spent this summer in an $11.66-an-hour internship with a
defense agency in Orlando, Fla., using his computer and technical skills to help
process invoices and bills. He communicated with his supervisor using e-mail,
written notes and some basic sign language.
Interviewed via e-mail, Singh said he hopes to graduate in 2006 with an
associate's degree in accounting technology and eventually earn a bachelor's
degree.
Many disabled adults lost the incentive to find work during the 1990s when it
became easier for them to qualify for Social Security or Social Security
Disability Insurance benefits, said Doug Kruse, an economics professor at
Rutgers University in New Brunswick.
"That clearly is a disincentive for employment because if you earn more than
$800 a month, you lose not only your SSDI but your health coverage," he said.

Kruse, who became a paraplegic as a result of a car accident involving a
drunken driver, has conducted research with his wife, Lisa Schur, on employment
among the disabled.
"We estimated that about 44 percent of employed people with disabilities are
in contingent or part-time jobs, which is about double the rate of people
without disabilities," Kruse said.
He attributes the low percentage of full-time disabled workers to several
problems: in addition to federal rules that cut off health benefits if a worker
makes too much, employers hesitate to take on full-time disabled employees,
and health problems prevent some disabled workers from working full time.
A new federal program, dubbed Ticket to Work, is designed to help the
disabled keep their federal health benefits when they become employed.
"But it's still being rolled out and too early for an evaluation," Kruse s
aid.
© copyright 2004 Gannett News Service