Enhancing Diversity: Educators with Disabilities

Stories from Educators with Disabilities: Support Systems

186 • RoIUl-UJ J. AnuerJon Currently, many universities have created an office of disability services or office of disabled student services, offices designed to provide support services for students with disabilities. Support services may include academic support, such as tutoring, training on time management, orientation and mobility training, and personal counseling . Support service personnel may also intervene with instructors if the student is unsuccessful in negotiating adaptations or course modifications. The availability of support services for students with disabilities would appear to improve the success rate for these students on university campuses. Teacher Preparation Students with disabilities graduating from teacher-training programs may face still more obstacles when they enter the job market. Obstacles such as inaccessible school buildings, inadequate parking, unusable rest room facilities, and negative attitudes of school administrators can create difficulties for job applicants who are disabled. The obstacles identified above are variables that discriminate against applicants with disabilities. The Rehabilitation Act (PL 93-112, Sec. 504) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (PL 101-336) prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability. At the same time, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that accommodations should not cause an "undue hardship" on any agency or business. Even though a number of variables create a discriminating effect, eliminating such variables may be very expensive, thus causing "undue hardship." In some cases excessive costs are legal grounds for the lack of accommodation of employees with disabilities. In most cases, the "brick and mortar" accommodations are not the obstacles that applicants with disabilities encounter most often. Violations of prohibitions on preemployment inquiries concerning health or ability to perform a particular job are the most common. School administrators or other human resource personnel may not ask questions about health or job performance unless the agency is making job accommodations. School administrators or human resource personnel are sometimes required to violate federal law by state requirements. An example of this problem is occurring currently in North Carolina. All students graduating from teacher-training programs and who apply for a teaching position in North Carolina are required to have a physician complete a medical form that assures the state and the local school district that the applicant is free from all communicable diseases or disabilities that would prevent the performance of teaching activities. On the surface the completion of a medical form validating the absence of communicable disease or disability might seem appropriate. No one could quarrel with the concern over communicable diseases but there is an ever present danger that administrators could use disability information to eliminate teacher candidates who have disabilities. To date no one has challenged the use of this medical form, although it appears that such a form constitutes a preemployment inquiry, illegal under federal law. (For a more detailed discussion of federal law, regulations , and case law, please see chapter 8 in this volume.) Employment The attitudes of administrators and human resource personnel toward the employment of persons with disabilities are influenced by a number of factors, including Attitudes toward Educators with Disabilities • 187 previous contact or experience with employees who have disabilities, the type and severity of disability, responsibility for the disability (Bordieri and Drehmer 1987), the visibility of the disability (Gouvier et al. 1991), the nature of the specific job for which the person is applying, and the degree of exposure that persons with disabilities have with the public (Wilgosh and Skaret 1987). Research concerning the attitudes of employers toward the employment of persons with disabilities has been conducted largely by surveys (ibid.). These surveys typically establish hypothetical situations about which employers respond. Employers maintain a preference hierarchy for specific types of disabilities that include blindness, cerebral palsy, paraplegia, emotional problems, epilepsy, amputation, deafness, and mental disability. The more visible the disability, the more concern employers expressed. Employers also report that the most influential factors in making decisions to hire persons with disabilities include (a) ability to perform the job, (b) productivity, (c) compliance with affirmative action, (d) absenteeism, and (e) positive public relations. Wilgosh and Skaret state that employers expect employees with disabilities to experience work adjustment problems, creating another reason for employers' reluctance to hire persons with disabilities. Ironically, Wilgosh and Skaret report that some employers believe that applicants with disabilities who had no experience were likely to become long-term employees. "This was attributed to the fact that the disabled, experienced applicant was perceived as having to resign from her present position to receive the position applied for, and, therefore, as being a...