Neglected or Hidden: Connecting Employers and People with Disabilities in Canada

[Excerpt] The Canadian Abilities Foundation (CAF) undertook the nation-wide Neglected or Hidden research project to determine why employment continues to be an elusive dream for tens of thousands of Canadians with disabilities. The Foundation felt that a better understanding of the overall employment-related challenges facing people with disabilities, and how to overcome them, would positively influence their employment levels. Employers would be able to tap into a new wealth of human capital, while increased employment would reduce the strain on the limited financial resources available to the community organizations that provide employment-related services to people with disabilities. As a side benefit, governments would experience a reduced dependence on various “safety net” programs used by unemployed people with disabilities. Should savings in this are be passed along to taxpayers, they too would benefit from this increased employment

Neglected or Hidden: Connecting Employers and People with Disabilities in Canada

[Excerpt] In spite of a myriad of initiatives introduced by governments at all levels over the past twenty-five years, people with disabilities fare more poorly in Canada’s workforce than do their non-disabled counterparts. Labour force participation rates are at 49% for people with disabilities, compared to 65% for the general population. Unemployment rates for people with disabilities are also close to 70% above the national average. Particularly troubling to Canadians with disabilities and the organizations who serve them is the fact that many employers say they regularly face significant challenges finding appropriately trained workers to fill vacant positions

How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRR’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a “total approach to rehabilitation”, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970’s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program

GLADNET: Promise and Legacy

[Excerpt] The Global Applied Disability Research and Information Network on Employment and Training (GLADNET) was launched by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1995, in cooperation with over 50 social policy research centres, governmental and non- governmental organizations involved in disability-related employment programmes from over thirty countries around the world. Major organizations of persons with disabilities were also represented – the World Blind Union, the World Federation of the Deaf, Inclusion International (formerly the International League of Societies for Persons with Mental Handicap (ILSMH)) and Disabled Peoples International (DPI). GLADNET’s lifespan was little more than a generation (1995 – 2018). What’s of interest is that it survived beyond its first few years of existence. It could easily have died early on, given a significant change in nature of support from its initiating body. That it didn’t speaks to the aspirational nature and relevance of the vision prompting its formation. It’s in pursuit of that vision where GLADNET left its mark. This document focuses on its legacy, beginning with a brief review of context within which it was initiated

Assessing individual support needs to enhance personal outcomes

Education and human service organizations providing services to people with intellectual and closely related developmental disabilities are increasingly being impacted by the supports paradigm, the quality of life concept, and the evaluation of personal outcomes. In this article the authors discuss the relationship among these three areas, including examples that illustrate how assessed support needs data can be aligned with quality-of-life-related core domains so as to establish individualized support systems that enhance personal outcomes. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for educators and habilitation professionals of integrating the supports paradigm, the quality of life concept, and the evaluation of personal outcomes

Persons with Disabilities Seeking Employment and Public Transportation: Findings from a New Jersey Survey

Over a seven month period in 2010-2012, the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey conducted a survey of persons with disabilities in New Jersey who were actively searching for employment. The purpose of the survey was to identify key transportation-related issues -- with an emphasis on those related to public transit use -- hindering respondent job search and employment opportunities. The brief discusses how transportation is a prominent factor in the job search process and presents an overview of survey findings as they relate to public transit availability, usage, importance, and satisfaction among the approximately 500 survey respondents

Surveying Persons with Disabilities: A Source Guide (Version 1)

As a collaborator with the Cornell Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Demographics and Statistics, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. has been working on a project that identifies the strengths and limitations in existing disability data collection in both content and data collection methodology. The intended outcomes of this project include expanding and synthesizing knowledge of best practices and the extent existing data use those practices, informing the development of data enhancement options, and contributing to a more informed use of existing data. In an effort to provide the public with an up-to-date and easily accessible source of research on the methodological issues associated with surveying persons with disabilities, MPR has prepared a Source Guide of material related to this topic. The Source Guide contains 150 abstracts, summaries, and references, followed by a Subject Index, which cross references the sources from the Reference List under various subjects. The Source Guide is viewed as a “living document,” and will be periodically updated

Electronic books: Are they effective educational tools for students who are deaf or hard of hearing?

This literature review will examine the effectiveness of electronic book features on students’ reading development in the general education population and investigate whether or not these digital tools could be a useful tool and/or supplement in literacy for students who are deaf and hard of hearing