DIVERSITY POLICY ANALYSIS PERSONS

Diversity Policy Regarding Persons With Disabilities

Diversity Policy Regarding Persons With Disabilities

Introduction

Despite passage of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, significant social, economic, technological, and policy barriers exist to the full integration of people with disabilities into the work environment. In a recent proclamation for National Disability Employment Awareness Month, the President of the United States observed, “Americans with disabilities are active and contributing members of our society and they must have the opportunity to develop the skills they need to compete and obtain jobs in the 21st century workforce.”

Despite this policy position, the U.S. Census Bureau in 2002 found a 14.1 percent unemployment rate among persons with disabilities, as compared to an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent for people without disabilities. While policymakers have attempted to reduce barriers to employment for people with disabilities, the population of employed people with disabilities remains persistently lower than average. The implementation of appropriate workplace accommodations is a key approach used to achieve the goal of equal employment opportunity for people with disabilities. Successful workplace accommodations incorporate an array of solutions ranging from assistive devices and universally-designed technologies, to programmatic solutions such as employment activities and process approaches, to policy solutions at the employer and governmental levels.

This paper presents key preliminary results of ongoing research conducted by the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Workplace Accommodations (Workplace Accommodations RERC) as part of efforts to develop policy initiatives for addressing the key issues critical to the implementation of successful workplace accommodations. A review of pertinent literature was conducted to identify workplace accommodation and employment issues associated with the employment of people with disabilities in order to lay the groundwork for developing a conceptual framework to guide policy change.

The framework informed research undertaken utilizing the policy Delphi method, a multi-round, iterative polling instrument used to assess stakeholder perceptions on key issues and intervention options regarding workplace accommodations for employees with disabilities. Participants in the Delphi were asked to provide input on four categories of questions. Forecasts are items that examine the feasibility of broad social, economic, regulatory, and technological trends that may affect the future of workplace accommodations. Issues items elicit the input of respondents on the importance of perceived and identified barriers and opportunities related to workplace accommodations. They are clustered into broad categories: 1) awareness, 2) policy/regulatory, 3) economic, 4) technological, and 5) social. Goals concentrate on the desirability of particular outcomes in addressing pertinent issues. Finally, Options items ask respondents to consider the feasibility of initiatives and policy interventions to address issues deemed important and achieve goals determined to be desirable. While each of these four categories (Forecasts, Issues, Goals, and Options) is relatively autonomous, it is also accurate to note that forecasts inform issues; issues inform goals; and goals inform options.

Discussion

The issue of workplace discrimination resulting from disable persons has not received nearly as much attention in the psychological literature as other forms of discrimination. There are many reasons for this lack of attention ranging ...