Workers with Disabilities: The Role of Workplace Flexibility

A fact sheet for Workers with Disabilities: The Role of Workplace Flexibility covering the following: 1) What are the trends in workforce participation of individuals with disabilities? 2) How does the structure of work limit the employment of people with disabilities? 3) What is the role of workplace flexibility in the employment of individuals with disabilities? 4) The need for flexibility among people with disabilities matches the growing interest in flexibility for all workers

Do people with intellectual disabilities understand their prescription medication? A scoping review

© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Background: People with intellectual disabilities are more likely to experience poor health than the general population and are frequently prescribed multiple medications. Therefore, it is important that people with intellectual disabilities understand their medication and potential adverse effects. Method: A scoping review explored people with intellectual disabilities' knowledge of prescription medications, their risks and how medication understanding can be improved. Results: Ten journal articles were included. People with intellectual disabilities often lacked understanding of their medication, including its name, purpose and when and how to take it. Participants were often confused or unaware of adverse effects associated with their medication. Information was sometimes explained to carers rather than people with intellectual disabilities. Some interventions and accessible information helped to improve knowledge in people with intellectual disabilities. Conclusion: There is a need for accessible and tailored information about medication to be discussed with people with intellectual disabilities in order to meet legal and best practice standards.Peer reviewe

Leveling the Playing Field: Attracting, Engaging, and Advancing People with Disabilities

People with disabilities experience significant challenges in finding employment. The participation of people with disabilities in the workforce and their median income are both less than half that of the civilian workforce. They work part time 68 percent more frequently than people without disabilities. These disheartening results persist despite the enactment of significant federal legislation aimed at making the workplace more supportive and accessible to people with disabilities. The Conference Board Research Working Group (RWG) on Improving Employment Outcomes for People with Disabilities was convened to address how to overcome these disparities. It was sponsored by the Employment and Disability Institute at Cornell University, under a grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research of the U.S. Department of Education. The RWG members focused on four questions: 1) The business case: Is it advantageous for organizations to employ people with disabilities? 2) Organizational readiness: What should organizations do to create a workplace that enables people with disabilities to thrive and advance? 3) Measurement: How can success for both people with disabilities and the organization itself be determined? 4) Self-disclosure: How can people with disabilities, especially those whose disabilities are not obvious, be encouraged to identify themselves so that resources can be directed toward them and outcomes can be measured

Serving People with Disabilities through the Workforce Investment Act's One-Stop Career Centers

This paper examines the extent to which people with disabilities are served through WIA's One-Stop system and discusses its capacity to serve people with disabilities who desire employment assistance, both in terms of common barriers to access as well as promising strategies to improve service delivery to people with disabilities

Ready and Able: Addressing Labor Market Needs and Building Productive Careers for People with Disabilities through Collaborative Approaches

The report describes market-driven practices that increase hiring, retention, promotion and accommodation of people with disabilities through partnerships with employers.Approaches profiled in the research include: collaborations between major national employers and public sector agencies; models that focus on an industry or occupational sector; private and "alternative" staffing services that place people with disabilities; partnerships that expand opportunities for college students and graduates with disabilities; and local and regional hubs that connect people with disabilities and employers. The research also profiles two organizations where lead disability and employment partnerships act as catalysts

Assistive Technology at Work

[Excerpt] Although an immediate transition into an institution of higher learning is ideal for some students who relied on assistive technology in high school, many make the decision to enter the workforce after graduation. It is estimated that about 85 percent of students with learning disabilities (LD) transition directly from school to work.1 Furthermore, statistics addressing employment among people with disabilities indicate that the workplace consists of approximately 18.6 million people with disabilities, ranging in age from 16 to 64. This represents about 56% of all people with disabilities in this age category.2 Given the vast number people with disabilities in the workplace, the potential for assistive technology (AT) to increase productivity is great

Loud, Proud and Prosperous! Report on the Mobility International USA International Symposium on Microcredit for Women with Disabilities

[Excerpt] MIUSA designed the International Symposium on Microcredit for Women with Disabilities in response to recommendations from women leaders with disabilities at WILD, at the Symposium in Beijing, and from our own experience with US-based international development programs. It seemed apparent that economic empowerment of women with disabilities was not high on any agenda – international aid agencies, development organizations, women’s programs, or even disability rights movements. Women with disabilities expressed that they – women with disabilities – would need to take leadership in this area, and that they needed particular knowledge and skills to be effective as leaders in this area

Did the Employment of People with Disabilities Decline in the 1990s, and was the ADA Responsible? A Replication and Robustness Check of Acemoglu and Angrist (2001) - Research Brief

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) (P.L. 101-336) gives civil rights protections to persons with disabilities similar to those provided on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, age, and religion. Title I of the ADA prohibits discrimination in employment practices by private employers, state and local governments, employment agencies, and labor unions for employers with 15 or more employees.1 The ADA requires employers to offer “reasonable accommodation” to employees with disabilities and prohibits discrimination in hiring, promotion, and firing. The goal of the ADA is to level the playing field in employment for people with disabilities and better integrate working age people with disabilities into the labor market. In 2001, Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist published their seminal paper, Consequences of Employment Protection? The Case of the Americans with Disabilities Act. They examined employment time-trends among workers with disabilities from 1988 (shortly before the passage of the ADA) to 1996, using data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS), to determine whether the ADA influenced the employment of people with disabilities. Their key finding was that the CPS data showed a post-ADA decline in employment among young men and women with disabilities. Controlling for other employment factors, including the increased number of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) recipients, they concluded that the ADA led to reduced employment for younger workers with disabilities. Their results were less clear cut for older workers. They cited the cost to employers of compliance with the ADA and fear of lawsuits as potential causes of the observed decline in employment. Acemoglu and Angrist’s (2001) emphasis on the ADA as a deterrent to increased employment triggered a lively debate about whether the ADA or other factors were responsible. More fundamentally, some researchers questioned whether this decline was real or merely an artifact of inadequacies in the CPS data used to quantify employment trends among people with disabilities. In Houtenville and Burkhauser (2004), the research summarized in this brief, we address the key questions: (a) did the employment of people with disabilities decline in the 1990s? and (b) was the ADA responsible for the decline? The evidence we present, described below, leads us to conclude that the employment rate did decline, but that the decline was not a consequence of the ADA

Strategic Connections: Recruiting Candidates with Disabilities

[Excerpt] Many individuals with disabilities possess precisely these attributes. Yet, as a whole, individuals with disabilities represent one of the largest untapped pools of skills and talent in the U.S. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, just over 60 percent of men ages 16 to 65 who have disabilities were working in 2000, compared to 80 percent of men in that age group without disabilities. For women in the same age group, the numbers were 51.4 and 67.3 percent, respectively. Individuals with disabilities have the requisite knowledge, skills and abilities to succeed in today’s rapidly changing workplace. From company headquarters to the factory floor, technology continues to drastically alter the way individuals work, helping to level the playing field for individuals with disabilities and expand opportunities for employers to benefit from their capabilities

Disability-aware adaptive and personalised learning for students with multiple disabilities

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to address how virtual learning environments (VLEs) can be designed to include the needs of learners with multiple disabilities. Specifically, it employs AI to show how specific learning materials from a huge repository of learning materials can be recommended to learners with various disabilities. This is made possible through employing semantic web technology to model the learner and their needs. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews personalised learning for students with disabilities, revealing the shortcomings of existing e-learning environments with respect to students with multiple disabilities. It then proceeds to show how the needs of a student with multiple disabilities can be analysed and then simple logical operators and knowledge-based rules used to personalise learning materials in order to meet the needs of such students. Findings It has been acknowledged in literature that designing for cases of multiple disabilities is difficult. This paper shows that existing learning environments do not consider the needs of students with multiple disabilities. As they are not flexibly designed and hence not adaptable, they cannot meet the needs of such students. Nevertheless, it is possible to anticipate that students with multiple disabilities would use learning environments, and then design learning environments to meet their needs. Practical implications This paper, by presenting various combination rules to present specific learning materials to students with multiple disabilities, lays the foundation for the design and development of learning environments that are inclusive of all learners, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. This could potentially stimulate designers of such systems to produce such inclusive environments. Hopefully, future learning environments will be adaptive enough to meet the needs of learners with multiple disabilities. Social implications This paper, by proposing a solution towards developing inclusive learning environments, is a step towards inclusion of students with multiple disabilities in VLEs. When these students are able to access these environments with little or no barrier, they will be included in the learning community and also make valuable contributions. Originality/value So far, no study has proposed a solution to the difficulties faced by students with multiple disabilities in existing learning environments. This study is the first to raise this issue and propose a solution to designing for multiple disabilities. This will hopefully encourage other researchers to delve into researching the educational needs of students with multiple disabilities