This Thursday will mark the 22nd anniversary of the signing into law of The Americans with Disabilities Act. As the Wikipedia entry notes, the passage of the ADA is every bit as meaningful as The Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it comes to protecting the rights of individuals against discrimination in American society. At [...]
Good news was coming fast and furious at the beginning of this week on the job front for people with disabilities. Between Delaware Governor Jack Markell introducing his “A Better Bottom Line: Employing People with Disabilities” initiative upon ascending to chair of the the National Governor’s Association on Sunday, and Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who [...]
First of all, it’s great that a website with the national readership of The Daily Beast would pick up the story about Delaware Governor Jack Markell’s initiative as chair of the National Governor’s Association (NGA) to increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The article by Eleanor Clift, who is also a contributing editor to [...]
Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is using his position as Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) to lobby public officials and leaders of private industry to set goals for job training, recruiting, and employment of people with disabilities. On Monday, Harkin’s office published Unfinished Business: Making Employment of People [...]
Delaware Governor Jack Markell will use his year as chair of the National Governor’s Association (NGA) to focus on ways states can increase employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities, he announced during the closing session of the NGA annual meeting, which took place in Williamsburg, Virginia, last Sunday. We had mentioned Governor Markell’s participation in [...]
While the 2012 updates to the Americans with Disabilities Act expanded accessibility and accommodation with regards to commercial and municipal spaces, as well as programming offered in these entities, houses of worship continue to be largely exempt from adhering to the same guidelines. That does not mean, however, that churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc., are [...]
If you’re the type of person who looks for comfort in numbers, don’t visit the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) web site today to look at the latest job statistics for people with disabilities. The unemployment rate for this population rose almost half a percentage point in June, just as it did during the [...]
We’ve spent a lot of time recently praising the federal government’s number of initiatives to improve career training and employment opportunities for people with disabilities. But a report published by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) at the end of June wonders whether more necessarily equals better. The subtitle of the 91 page Employment for People with Disabilities [...]
It’s been a little more than a week now since the United State Supreme Court ruled that the majority of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (referred to as ACA) was constitutionally allowable. People with disabilities will be impacted by the decision as much as any single group of individuals; and, by and large, [...]
The new Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) guide, Business Strategies That Work: A Framework for Disability Inclusion (PDF) wraps up with the section “Grow Success: Accountability and Continuous Improvement Systems.” The section includes practices for providing personnel training and setting up mechanisms by which success can be assessed at regular intervals. Accountability is the root [...]