Preparing Youth With Disabilities for an Increasingly Technical Work Place

A Forum — January 26, 2001

Policymakers gathered on Capitol Hill to listen to panelists describe the changing nature of work demands within today’s increasingly technical work place, the effect of these changes on youth with disabilities, and promising solutions and strategies. The panel was moderated by Richard Luecking, President of TransCen, located in Rockville, Maryland. TranCen is an organization dedicated to the design, implementation and research of career development systems that benefit people with disabilities. TransCen is also a partner in the National Center on Secondary Education and Transition for Youth with Disabilities, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

"Technology for youth with disabilities can be a double-edged sword," says Luecking. It may present a challenge, but it has also become a facilitator in helping to level the playing field for youth as they transition into the workforce. The use of technology is also increasing employer expectations of workers. Luecking, a self-described, "unabashed optimist" on progress in this area says that the single factor that determines the success of youth with disabilities in today’s highly technical workforce is their experience with real work before graduation from high school--the earlier, the better. Internships through systems such as the Bridges Program are helping youth get their first experience with employers while still in an educational setting.

The Bridges Program was developed in 1989 by the Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities to provide employment services and training to youth. Bridges’ staff work with eligible students during their last year of high school and beyond graduation. The program works in three stages to help youth achieve their employment goals, to help them develop job-readiness skills, and to provide a long-term vocational plan for obtaining employment and work experience through an internship with partnering businesses. The internship provides students with experience for 12 consecutive weeks in a community employment setting. The employer pays for wages and benefits, but is under no obligation to continue employment when the internship ends.

TranCen conducted a study on data collected during internship experiences in the Bridges program, from 1993 to 1997, to identify significant predictors of post-secondary employment success. The largest group of youth with disabilities to participate were those with learning disabilities--followed by mental retardation, emotional, hearing, mobility, visual, and other disabilities. African Americans had the largest number of participants, followed by Hispanics, Whites, Asians and others. Male participants led by only a slight margin over females. The overall completion rate of an internship was 86 percent and post-internship job offers from host companies was 77 percent.

The TranCen study followed student progress at six month, 18 month and 24 month intervals after the completion of the internship. Employment rates at six months post-internship were at 68 percent and dropped to 60 percent at 24 months. The study found that youth who received post-internship job offers were five times more likely to be employed six months later; and those who had completed an internship without receiving a job offer from their host employer were still four times more likely to be employed. After twelve months, students who received post-internship job offers were three times more likely to be employed; students who completed the internship experience were two times more likely to be employed and, interestingly, those with emotional disabilities were half as likely to be employed. Finally, the study checked in on youth at 18 months after their internship experience and found only two outstanding predictors of post-secondary employment success: youths with an emotional disability were three times less likely to be employed and those of minority status were half as likely to be employed.

Important conclusions of the TransCen study show that (1) successful high school work experience, by youth in all categories of disability will lead to higher adult employment rates; (2) work experience is important for all categories of disability and the work done by all categories of youth is viewed as valuable by employers; and (3) continued post-school support is necessary for some categories of youth in order to sustain employment success--"or youth tend to flounder," says Luecking. He reemphasised that there is a need to start working with youth with disabilities in transition programs such as Bridges earlier in the high school experience.

Michael Losey, former President and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management provided recent work force trends in the United States. He stressed that the labor shortage is destined to continue and employers should and will need to look to the currently underutilized pool of employees with disabilities. According to Losey, the country’s labor force growth will continue to drop through the year 2020. He says, "Any employer who thinks they can wait out this trend is in trouble!" A projection for the year 2006 shows that there will be 151 million jobs to fill and 141 million people in the workforce. But it’s more than a labor shortage, says Losey, "There’s a serious skills shortage." The computer industry leads the list of selected occupations for which anecdotal evidence suggests a shortage. Securities and financial services occupations lag far behind. According to research done in a survey by the Information Technology Association of America, there is a demand for 1.6 million IT jobs and 843,328 of them will go unfilled. One job in every dozen will be vacant.

Eighty-two percent of employers have not taken preparations for worker shortages and many are pressuring legislators to increase the amount of H1B visas that allow skilled workers from other countries to fill highly skilled, technical jobs. Employers are not used to the idea of looking to the pool of youth and individuals with disabilities who are, as Losey described, an overlooked resource. Employers may turn to those on welfare to seek employees, but that pool is shrinking because of changes in welfare policy, a stronger economy and a higher minimum wage. Also, according to Losey, welfare workers are perceived to bring with them a higher rate of alcoholism or drug addition, which is not attractive to employers. In contrast, Losey argues, individuals with disabilities make up a larger group than those on welfare. Most are underemployed, want to work, are qualified and are able to work with their heads, not their backs. He advocates that employers should turn their attention to or get involved with programs and schools that train youth with disabilities for high tech jobs, and added, "Most employees with disabilities have the brainpower to get the job done. We just need better education."

Marian Vessels, Director of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Information Center of the Mid-Atlantic Region discussed how technology and accommodations in the work place make it possible for qualified workers with disabilities to productively perform a variety of tasks, and how in making such accommodations, employers often make the work place more productive for all workers. Vessels provided four examples of effective and relatively "low-tech" accommodations in the work place:

• When a large employer hired an individual who was blind to work in customer service, where employees used the telephone and computer to input data, accommodations had to be made to adapt the way that information was used by that individual. In the analysis of how to make the current system of input more usable for the new employee, the employer was able to streamline the organization’s data input process. As a result, the blind worker was more effective and efficient than her non-disabled counterparts, convincing the employer to give all customer service representatives the same accommodation.
• A nursery was using people with developmental disabilities to plant specific plants in designated places according to a planting chart. These employees were unable to effectively identify plants by their formal Latin names, compromising the proper placement of plants. After job coaches analyzed the tasks involved, they found that by simplifying the task with color-coding, individuals with developmental disabilities were able to successfully perform the job. The rest of the staff began using the color-coded system and management found that the color-coding resulted in a much higher rate of accuracy for all staff, including non-native English speakers.
• A service worker who was deaf was hired to do off-site work. There was a concern about how to get information to this individual effectively. It was determined that an off-the-shelf, vibrating, text pager would be an efficient and inexpensive form of communicating. The pager proved to be so effective that it was instituted as a means to schedule work and improve time management for all staff members
• A support staff person with developmental disabilities had a very difficult time staying on track and keeping to a time schedule. With the use of reminders from a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), a device with a calendar and timer, the staff person was able to stay on schedule. It proved to be such an effective management tool that many of the other employees were provided one as well.

Teresa LoProto, a senior at Rockville High School in Rockville, MD, described how a combination of technical training in computer software applications and an employment internship have positioned her to begin a career in a technology-related field. Deaf since birth, she requires the occasional services of an interpreter, but this accommodation has not put limits on her job performance or career aspirations. LoProto recounted a number of educational offerings in high school that have included computer technology training as an adjunct to her academic subjects during her junior year. Now in her senior year she works as a part-time, paid intern at a high-tech company that uses computer assisted design and other technology to reproduce high security signatures, among other products. She rated the mentoring she receives from her work supervisor as key to her successful performance. She also credits her high school technology training classes for giving her direction in her career development, and looks forward to pursuing a technology-related major in college.

In conjunction with efforts to prepare youth with disabilities for an increasingly technical work place, it is imperative to also educate employers on the uses of technology as it relates to the increased productivity of this type of employee. As Mike Losey explains, "It [hiring youth with disabilities] has to be a benefit the employer feels they are getting before things will change." Employers may be afraid to use technology because they think it is prohibitively expensive or time consuming to initiate. However, according to Vessels, the majority of accommodation costs rarely exceed $500 per employee--with half having no cost to the employer. More importantly, initiating thoughtful and creative technical solutions may not only help facilitate accommodations for workers with a disability, but may bring a new perspective and cost-effective solution that can positively affect all employees and bring added benefits to the employer. One example, telecommuting, is an attractive alternative for many individuals, particularly those with disabilities. Employees working from home, communicating via phone, email and transmitting computer files on-line, in many cases, is a cost effective alternative for business.

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