Disabled workers are not charity cases.
Here is a common misconception about disabilities in the workforce: People with disabilities will force others to pick up the slack for them; accommodations made for a disability are "special privileges" that mean the person is not a functional worker. The basic idea? Disabled workers aren't nearly as good as non-disabled ones.
In reality, people with disabilities work just as well as anyone else, and accommodations are simply adjustments that let them do that job in the way they are able to do it.
Workers with disabilities are protected under the law--but only if they can perform the essential duties of their work. That is: If you can do the job, they can't fire you for being disabled. But the law does provide that if you have to do the job a different way because of a disability, then you are legally allowed to do that. Most such arrangements are made privately with managers.
Telling people to "just go on disability" is quite counter-productive. Only people who cannot work in their present state, with or without accommodations, should do this. Disability payments are 75% of the federal poverty limit where I live--enough for a roof over your head and food, and that's it.
Almost all disabled people can work just as profitably as nondisabled workers; but there is a very large group of people who are disabled, can work, and are not working because of this perception of disabled workers as being little more than charity cases, rather than competent employees in their own right. That needs to stop.
If you are disabled and you can work, you should work--if only to tell the world that you contribute just as much as a non-disabled worker. But make no bones about it: It's going to be a tough road. It hasn't been long since we were locked away, and the disability rights movement isn't all that old. It's difficult to convince the world that you aren't a charity case.
Accommodations are not "special privileges". They are adjustments meant to let you do your job.
Most accommodations cost little or nothing. Often times, it is simply a matter of modifying policy, rearranging furniture, or restructuring tasks. Money or efficiency are almost never barriers to accommodations--reluctance to change "the way we do things", on the other hand, is a huge barrier.
Some people assume that if you are disabled and you are working, it is because someone had pity on you and was kind enough to give you a job. Think of the Down Syndrome grocery store bagger--an iconic image of disabled folks at work if there ever was one. How many people would commend the manager of the store for employing that person--without even asking whether he was good at his job? They simply assume that he isn't good at it and that the manager is being charitable.
But it's not like that in reality, is it? We are competent, skilled individuals to the same extent as non-disabled workers (perhaps even more skilled in many cases, because of the specialization made necessary by living with a disability). And if that grocery bagger with the Down Syndrome can't do his job (either the way most people do it or in his own way with accommodations), then he should not be hired; he should look for another job that he can do.
A trivial example: Let's say my two friends and I are teaming up to bake a cake. I measure out the ingredients. One of my friends mixes the ingredients, and the other is responsible for using the stove. It doesn't matter if the person using the stove is horrible at measuring. It doesn't matter if I have no idea how to use a stove. And it doesn't matter if the person mixing the ingredients has no idea how to measure them. We're all specialists, and we only have to know that one thing to bake the cake successfully. In fact, the cake would not be of any higher quality even if all three of us knew how to do all three things--our abilities with the skills we are not using to do our tasks are irrelevant.
We are a society of specialists. Everyone works in his own area to make up a team, a company, or a community. This allows us to work around disability, by specializing, to the degree that disability is literally irrelevant, or close to it, in the workplace.
And yet people are still held back by this idea--both imposed by society on the disabled and by the disabled on themselves--that we are charity cases, second-class workers, only hired because a non-disabled person couldn't be found or because someone felt sorry for us.
Accommodations are not a matter of charity. Accommodations exist because there are all these skilled, competent disabled people who can do the job every bit as well as anybody, but are being prevented from doing so by irrelevant barriers that have little or nothing to do with their actual duties.
In reality, people with disabilities work just as well as anyone else, and accommodations are simply adjustments that let them do that job in the way they are able to do it.
Workers with disabilities are protected under the law--but only if they can perform the essential duties of their work. That is: If you can do the job, they can't fire you for being disabled. But the law does provide that if you have to do the job a different way because of a disability, then you are legally allowed to do that. Most such arrangements are made privately with managers.
Telling people to "just go on disability" is quite counter-productive. Only people who cannot work in their present state, with or without accommodations, should do this. Disability payments are 75% of the federal poverty limit where I live--enough for a roof over your head and food, and that's it.
Almost all disabled people can work just as profitably as nondisabled workers; but there is a very large group of people who are disabled, can work, and are not working because of this perception of disabled workers as being little more than charity cases, rather than competent employees in their own right. That needs to stop.
If you are disabled and you can work, you should work--if only to tell the world that you contribute just as much as a non-disabled worker. But make no bones about it: It's going to be a tough road. It hasn't been long since we were locked away, and the disability rights movement isn't all that old. It's difficult to convince the world that you aren't a charity case.
Accommodations are not "special privileges". They are adjustments meant to let you do your job.
Most accommodations cost little or nothing. Often times, it is simply a matter of modifying policy, rearranging furniture, or restructuring tasks. Money or efficiency are almost never barriers to accommodations--reluctance to change "the way we do things", on the other hand, is a huge barrier.
Some people assume that if you are disabled and you are working, it is because someone had pity on you and was kind enough to give you a job. Think of the Down Syndrome grocery store bagger--an iconic image of disabled folks at work if there ever was one. How many people would commend the manager of the store for employing that person--without even asking whether he was good at his job? They simply assume that he isn't good at it and that the manager is being charitable.
But it's not like that in reality, is it? We are competent, skilled individuals to the same extent as non-disabled workers (perhaps even more skilled in many cases, because of the specialization made necessary by living with a disability). And if that grocery bagger with the Down Syndrome can't do his job (either the way most people do it or in his own way with accommodations), then he should not be hired; he should look for another job that he can do.
A trivial example: Let's say my two friends and I are teaming up to bake a cake. I measure out the ingredients. One of my friends mixes the ingredients, and the other is responsible for using the stove. It doesn't matter if the person using the stove is horrible at measuring. It doesn't matter if I have no idea how to use a stove. And it doesn't matter if the person mixing the ingredients has no idea how to measure them. We're all specialists, and we only have to know that one thing to bake the cake successfully. In fact, the cake would not be of any higher quality even if all three of us knew how to do all three things--our abilities with the skills we are not using to do our tasks are irrelevant.
We are a society of specialists. Everyone works in his own area to make up a team, a company, or a community. This allows us to work around disability, by specializing, to the degree that disability is literally irrelevant, or close to it, in the workplace.
And yet people are still held back by this idea--both imposed by society on the disabled and by the disabled on themselves--that we are charity cases, second-class workers, only hired because a non-disabled person couldn't be found or because someone felt sorry for us.
Accommodations are not a matter of charity. Accommodations exist because there are all these skilled, competent disabled people who can do the job every bit as well as anybody, but are being prevented from doing so by irrelevant barriers that have little or nothing to do with their actual duties.