disabled

Is Long COVID Considered to Be a Disability in the Workplace?

Thank you Brandi Fowler and LinkedIn News for the opportunity to talk about the affects of Long Covid in the workplace and its impact on the disability community. These are important conversations and folks living with Long Covid should be aware of their rights under the ADA.

#WorkplaceCulture #ReasonableAccomodations #Covid #Disabilities #DisabilityRights #DisabilityAdvocate #Disability #LongCovid #LinkedinNews

https://lnkd.in/ev2vqFBv

Event Recap: Diversability Unplugged: Disability and Ableism in the Workplace

Event Recap: Diversability Unplugged: Disability and Ableism in the Workplace

Thank you to Tiffany A. Yu, MSc, Whitney Bailey, katherine lewis, Arielle Dance, PhD and the team at Diversability® for inviting me to speak on Disability and Ableism in the workplace for #ndeam. An evening of thought-provoking discussion and insights with powerhouse panelists Jacob Levy, Lusik Gasparyan, JD, RBT and Angela Fowler.

If you missed it, the recap and recording are now live!

Event Recap: Diversability Unplugged: Disability and Ableism in the Workplace

#workplace #hiring #disabilityAwareness #Disability #Ableism #disabilityInclusion #DEIA #DEI #ReasonableAccommodations

Disability Pride Month

It’s Disability Pride month, and a cursory glance at the headlines reveals several newsworthy events.

• The Washington Post reports the Biden Administration released new guidance aimed at avoiding discrimination against disabled students who are suspended or expelled at greater rates than their non-disabled counterparts.
• A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals 1 in 5 adults under 65 is experiencing symptoms consistent with long COVID. Newer variants may not be more severe; however, the CDC notes they are more transmissible; leaving disabled, and immunocompromised populations to fend for ourselves with no cohesive national response to meet the moment.
• The Los Angeles Times reported Uber has settled with the U.S. Department of Justice agreeing to pay $2 million for violating the ADA over wait times charged to disabled passengers. Sadly, the lawsuit does not address ongoing challenges with service dog discrimination, or the lack of disability access as noted in a recent piece in The Verge.
• The Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently pledged to make 95% of its stations accessible by 2055, a whopping 65 years after the ADA.

I could talk about all these things at length. But I won’t. Not today, at least.

Today, I want to talk about something much simpler. Rest. Taking a break. Paraphrasing a popular book title, I want to explore the subtle art of not giving as many spoons.

Rest is not flashy, it’s not sexy, and it absolutely flies in the face of everything that tells us we should always be hustling, doing, producing, creating, and being “on” as a measure of our worth.

For the disability community there is an even deeper desire and inherent necessity to continually push forward even when we have reached our limit. Everyday, both publicly and privately, we confront ableism, indifference, bureaucracy, prejudice, and a society that questions our right to exist equally on the same playing field as non-disabled people.

We are seen as either inspirational for having “overcome” our disability or pitied for having struggled. There is no in between. What we overcome is not our disability but the barriers of societal ableism we confront daily.

In March of 2020 I wrote:

Sometimes we are out of spoons regardless of what the calendar says; and that’s okay.

And so, on this particular day, I want to celebrate disability pride by taking a break from the advocacy, taking time to recharge, and hopefully gather more spoons.

The headlines will keep coming, the advocacy will continue, just not today. Today, I rest in celebration of Disability Pride Month, and I invite my disabled family to do the same.

#disabilitypridemonth #disabilitypride #rest #hustle

Where Are All The Disabled Students?

Following the mass shooting in Uvalde, I have struggled to comprehend the inhumanity. I have thought about friends and family who are teachers or parents of school-age children. Every time this happens, I am left shaking for days, unnerved, and concerned for their safety. I thought about the children whose lives were lost, and I thought back to my time in school. A time before school shootings were pervasive and active shooter drills were normalized.

And I thought about disabled students.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), disabled students account for 14% of students attending public schools.

In the event of an emergency, many disabled students are left without a plan and left to wonder, “Is this how I am going to die?”

That kid was me.

I remember a simple evacuation drill in the days following the 9/11 attacks. Students were told to file out calmly and proceed to a designated area. As a wheelchair user, I saw a room filled with desks and little space to move safely and quickly. When I raised the concern with my teacher, he declared, “Ryan, ‘he’ is your escape plan,” and pointed to a classmate who was a football player.

As my education continued, I would routinely raise the question of how I was to safely evacuate. When there stopped being student athletes to carry me, I was told to sit and wait for evacuation personnel to get me. Teachers? Faculty? Police? Firefighters? Nobody ever discussed it with me. There would be an emergency, and as I watched classmates file out to safety, there I would be, waiting. But it was just a drill, they said. So, nobody came. Nobody could be bothered to even pretend to care about disabled lives. I became convinced that in the event of a real emergency, I would certainly die.

With active shooter simulations and lockdown drills, the stakes are higher. Students learn to hide under desks and barricade doors. They learn to block windows to avoid being seen. What is a student supposed to do if a wheelchair or other mobility device prevents them from participating in this drill? What do we do for students with auditory triggers? Students with visual impairments? Present day drills are not accounting for disabled students.

Inaccessibility abounds more than 30 years after the ADA. Lack of universal design in schools could mean the difference between life and death. Making matters worse, Republicans are advocating for a “one door policy” according to MSNBC. This is a step backward for accessibility.

According to Reuters, the shooter had well over an hour alone inside the school prior to police engaging with him.

After I read that, the only thing I could think was, where are the disabled students? While everyone is terrified and looking for safety, disabled students were likely told, “Sit tight and wait here. Someone is coming to help you.” That should terrify us all.

Disabled workers are struggling to get jobs, even in a labor shortage

In April, 8.3% of disabled Americans were unemployed, compared with 3.1% of those without a disability. If disabled workers were employed at the same rate as those without a disability, nearly 14 million more would have been working in 2021, according to the analysis in the report from Center for American Progress

Emily Peck, Axios

The disabled community historically struggles to find employment and that gap has only widened. We often face discrimination both subtle and blatant throughout our job search. From job postings that list unnecessary "requirements" to purposefully screen out disabled candidates, to lack of accommodations, or invasive questions during the application process; many disabled job seekers often battle the choice whether to disclose their disability at all. While the choice surrounding disclosure is a deeply personal one, there are inherent risks regardless of the decision. Disclose too early and we risk being tossed from the applicant pool altogether. Disclose too late and we may end up working for a company unwilling to accommodate us, making that new job we took a nightmare from which extricating ourselves is yet another obstacle. It’s a Catch-22 all too common amongst disabled applicants.

During a hearing Tuesday for the House Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion, Vilissa K. Thompson, LMSW, co-director of the The Century Foundation's Disability Economic Justice Collaborative told the Committee many employers are failing to accommodate employees now living with long COVID, a sentiment echoed by Thomas E. Foley, executive director of the National Disability Institute.

Another obstacle for disabled job seekers is the unfair choice between receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) from Social Security Administration and Medicaid from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services —programs designed and targeted toward disabled people—and gainful employment. Both programs, while providing a social safety net, have strict means-tested guidelines effectively capping the earning potential and/or total assets disabled workers can have.

All of these difficulties in finding work helps explain in part why laws in 36 states still legally allow for employers to pay disabled people sub minimum wage as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Yesterday, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed S. 533, phasing out the practice, making it just the 14th state in the nation to do so.

The disabled community faces unique challenges in our ongoing search for employment. Whether it’s indirect discrimination, lack of accommodations, risking social safety nets or the fight for equal wages, there remains a lot of work to be done until equity is achieved.

Disabled workers are struggling to get jobs, even in a labor shortage


4 Things High Risk People Need Now To Fight Covid

"The disability community sees disaster looming — more mass death and disablement, and a choice between hospitalization and death, or almost total isolation while everyone else enjoys maskless flying, parties, and eating in restaurants. Meanwhile, individual disabled and chronically ill people increasingly feel like they are now seeing exactly how they will die."
-Andrew Pulrang, Forbes

When the pandemic first began in March 2020, disabled people sounded the alarm. We tried desperately to talk about how deadly and disabling this pandemic would be, and the general response was to dismiss us. We were "othered", told our lives didn’t matter, told not to disrupt your fun and stay over there. As we so often are.

As it became increasingly clear the pandemic would affect the masses, a national emergency was declared. The country, at least for a while effectively shut down. Precautions were taken, and for a brief time it seemed we were all in this together.

Over two years, and 1 million deaths, later it seems the pendulum has swung back toward indifference. The reason so many able-bodied people shout from the rooftops about “learning to live with COVID” is because they very well can. For them, a battle with COVID, particularly if vaccinated, may not prove lethal. For folks like myself with cerebral palsy, which affects the most basic forms of mobility, a potential battle with COVID can go from miserable to life-threatening in a heartbeat.

Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Foundation USA writes:

“….individuals with cerebral palsy will likely experience trouble quickly. This trouble includes inability to generate sufficient force to clear the airway and in fatiguing with the increased work of breathing.”

An Axios/Ipsos poll this week found just 36 percent of Americans said there was significant risk in returning to their “normal pre-coronavirus life" however, the disability community remains at incredibly high risk from COVID.

With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shift from deemphasizing infection focusing on risk assessment, the need for more accessible data surrounding infection rates and daily cases remains paramount. At home test kits and personal protective equipment (PPE) need to be more widely available, affordable, and accessible. Perhaps most importantly there needs to be clear indication of the relative safety of public spaces. We need to know what precautions businesses are talking to protect the vulnerable populations they serve.

The pandemic is not over, its impacts are still being seen and felt globally, and the disability community is here to tell you that you are ignoring its current state at your own peril. Every one of you could become one of us at any time. The difference is. when you do, we will welcome you and not cast you aside.

4 Things High Risk People Need Now To Fight Covid

The World Economic Forum

“There is a global disability inequality crisis. And it can’t be fixed by governments and charities alone. It needs the most powerful force on the planet: business.”
— Caroline Casey, Founder, the Valuable 500

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) is a topic advocates talk about daily. So much work is happening and yet simultaneously so much work remains. Oftentimes, I think of advocacy the way I think of a book jacket. The material might be the same but different covers may resonate with each member of your audience.

As the World Economic Forum kicks off in Davos this week, I thought it was important to highlight the Valuable 500 Initiative—the largest global network of chief executives committed to disability inclusion. Launched in 2019, the initiative aims to “set a new global standard for workplace equality and disability inclusion by engaging 500 private sector corporations to be the tipping point for change and to unlock the business, social and economic value of the 1.3 billion people living with disabilities across the world.”

Some of the world’s biggest companies including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Sony, and Verizon are among its participants.

Although 90% of companies claim to prioritize diversity, only 4% of businesses are focused on making offerings inclusive of disability according to the World Economic Forum.

A May 2022 report published by the Valuable 500 also found that:

• 33% companies surveyed have not developed or begun to implement a digital focus on accessibility
• 29% of companies have a targeted network of disabled consumers or stakeholders.

The cost of excluding people with disabilities represents up to 7% of GDP in some countries. With 28% higher revenue, double net income, 30% higher profit margins, and strong next generation talent acquisition and retention, a disability-inclusive business strategy promises a significant return on investment.

On the federal level, data on inclusion efforts tells a similarly disheartening story. A newly released report by the EEOC found that persons with disabilities remain heavily underrepresented in leadership positions; 10.7% of disabled employees are in positions of leadership vs 16.4% for those without. Further, the report noted that people with disabilities were 53% more likely to involuntarily leave federal service than persons without disabilities.

Clearly, both privately and publicly, a lot of DEIA work remains. These disconnects in the data further support the need for advocacy around not only things like Global Accessibility Awareness Day, but also an increase in disability representation to effectively close these gaps.

Let disabled people not simply have a seat at the table, but a voice in the conversation. Your company will be better off for it.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day

"The truth of the matter is, Netflix Director of Product Accessibility Heather Dowdy explained, the disability community “has been here all along.” As such, it makes sense to want to normalize and tell their stories. Indeed, the pandemic has only reemphasized the importance of accessibility and assistive technologies."
Forbes, Steven Aquino
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Today we celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day, highlighting the advances making technology and entertainment more accessible to the disability community. Oftentimes, seen as an afterthought, these enhancements are vital to ensuring disabled people can participate equitably as consumers of entertainment as well as fully leverage a company’s complete product line readily and with full confidence their needs will be met.

The disability community accounts for 20% of the global population, the largest underserved minority. When you consider accessibility for one, you enable it for all. So many of the tools and technologies in wide use today were initially developed for disabled people, and yet are seen as ubiquitous today. Think captions, speech to text, or screen adjustments on mobile devices.

In recent days companies like Apple, and Microsoft have rolled out enhancements to their product lines aimed at people with disabilities. Apple, for example unveiled Door Detection, helping those with vision impairments more easily navigate their surroundings. Additionally, they’ve improved functionality of the Apple Watch allowing it to be controlled through the iPhone; a larger screen with more real estate that also allows users the benefit of assistive technology already present within iOS— features like voiceover and magnification— not yet independently available on Apple watch.

For its part, Microsoft announced Thursday in a company blog post recent improvements included in Windows 11 that aim to make its OS more accessible, including Live Captions and new natural voices for users of screen readers. Last week at its annual Microsoft Accessibility Summit, a slew of adaptive technology for computing and gaming was also unveiled. Additionally, Microsoft touted its recruitment efforts to improve disability representation within the company.

A new study from Microsoft Education found that 84% of teachers say it’s impossible to achieve equity in education without accessible learning tools. And 87% agree that accessible technology can help not only level the playing field for students with disabilities but also generate insights that help teachers better understand and support all their students.

Accessibility benefits everyone. While companies like Netflix, Apple, and Microsoft are to be applauded for their progress, they represent merely a step forward in equity. We must continue to push all companies, regardless of overall size, or market share to fully embrace equality for all. To that end, I look forward to the day when Global Accessibility Awareness Day ceases to exist and it fades into the background.