News on employment & PWD (fwd)

[F. Pennell]

Here is an optimistic report on the impact of the ADA from the Washington
Post.  Francie Pennell
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07/26/96 -- Copyright (C) 1996 The Washington Post

                    More Disabled Hired, Census Study Shows
                 Federal Law Created Jobs, Access to Buildings
                                By Jay Mathews
                         Washington Post Staff Writer

      New federal statistics show for the first time a rise in the employment
of severely disabled Americans under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
and a private survey shows the act having a significant impact on American
lives.
        According to the Census Bureau's Survey of Income Program and
Participation, the percentage of severely disabled Americans with jobs had
increased from 23.3 percent in 1991 to 26.1 percent in 1994, a jump of about
800,000 jobs.
        In a survey by the United Cerebral Palsy Associations (UCPA), to be
released today on the sixth anniversary of President Bush's signing of the
ADA, 96 percent of a sample of disabled Americans and their friends and family
members said the act has made a difference in their lives. Fifty-seven percent
said it has given disabled people better access to buildings, and 46 percent
perceived more acceptance by their communities.
       The new Census job figures, provided by the President's Committee on
Employment of People with Disabilities, contradicted a less thorough survey
released last year that showed no gain in employment for people with severe
disabilities. Katharine G. Abraham, commissioner of labor statistics at the
Department of Labor, said the new survey used a much more detailed set of
questions to identify disabled people and their job status.
        Former representative Tony Coelho, chairman of the President's
Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities and an early advocate of
the act, called the new data "the first true measure of the ADA's impact on
the employment of people with disabilities."
         The law, which also had the strong support of Sens. Tom Harkin
(D-Iowa) and Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.), requires access to public facilities for
the nation's 49 million disabled people and reasonable accommodation for them
at their workplaces. It also bars discrimination against disabled people in
certain circumstances.
       According to the UCPA, which surveyed 1,330 people in 48 states, few
other federal laws have had as significant an impact on the feelings of a
large portion of the U.S. population. Of the 84 percent of those surveyed who
said the act had changed their communities, 87 percent said local businesses
were more accessible, 79 percent said public facilities were more accessible,
54 percent said services for the deaf had improved, 51 percent said public
telephones were easier to use and 44 percent said more people with
disabilities were using public transportation.
       A wheelchair-using student in Alabama told a survey taker "it was great
when Valley High School got a ramp for me. Now, I go from class to class on my
own, without a teacher walking with me."
          Michael Moore, executive director of the Washington-based UCPA,
noted that "there is slower progress for people with disabilities in accessing
employment opportunities" but that more disabled people appeared to be
encouraged to seek them out.