Is The Ada Working? - Americans with Disabilities Act

HR Magazine, April, 2001 by Susan J. Wells

AFTER MORE THAN 10 YEARS, A FEDERAL LAW DESIGNED TO GIVE DISABLED AMERICANS EQUAL WORKPLACE OPPORTUNITIES IS GARNERING ONLY MIXED REVIEWS.

Employment law attorney Christopher Bell can remember only one time when he was asked an inappropriate question about his blindness. Years ago during a job interview, Bell, now an expert on the ADA and partner with the Minneapolis office of law firm Jackson Lewis, was asked how he got dressed in the morning. His answer: "I put my pants on one leg at a time."

At the time he didn't think anything of the question, which he regarded merely as innocent curiosity. But his experience illustrates how things have changed since Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) a little more than 10 years ago. Such questions no longer are considered fair game during job interviews with disabled applicants. And landmark gains are plainly visible at most buildings--the ADA ushered in vast improvements in accessibility for disabled workers in the form of ramps, widened aisles and new technologies.

But in other--less visible--areas, the law's effectiveness is much more difficult to assess, garnering mixed reviews from legal and disability experts.

Case in point: People with disabilities believe the ADA has improved their level of participation in mainstream American society--including better access to buildings, greater access to transportation and fuller inclusion in the community--according to a November 2000 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Washington, D.C. But the report also found that individuals with disabilities continue to face discrimination and barriers that prevent them from fully participating in an area that matters most to HR: employment.

"Has the ADA achieved what it could? The answer is complicated," Bell says.

Disabled Haven't Shared the Wealth

Like Bell, Susanne Bruyere has no simple conclusion about the ADA's effectiveness. Bruyere, director of the program on employment and disability at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Ithaca, N.Y., says the ADA's greatest contribution is that it helps HR professionals address the needs of disabled workers and forces employers to think hard about accommodation.

But she believes the ADA has yet to achieve all its goals. "There's still work to be done for those people who haven't yet had those chances for equal opportunity," she adds.

Recent research and government data back up her observations.

Despite the passage of the ADA--and efforts by companies to make jobs more accessible--the disabled still face an uphill struggle when it comes to finding work and earning salaries that are on par with the rest of the work force.

Of the nation's 54 million people with disabilities, more than 70 percent are unemployed, estimates the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency in Washington, D.C., that makes recommendations on disability issues to the president and Congress.

A National Organization on Disability (NOD)/Harris study released last year arrived at similar conclusions: Only 32 percent of disabled people of working age (18-64) work full or part time, compared to 81 percent of the non-disabled population-a gap of 49 percentage points. More than two-thirds of those not employed say they would prefer to be working.

What's more, both employment and earnings for disabled individuals fell over the last 10 years-at a time when the rest of the nation was enjoying the lowest unemployment rates in decades and employers were actively searching for new sources of labor. In short, the decade-long economic boom of the 1990s seems to have left the disabled behind.

That's troubling because, historically, the work experiences of disabled people have risen and fallen with the rest of the workforce during economic swings. But between 1989 and 1998, average inflation-adjusted incomes for disabled workers dropped 4 percent, even though real incomes for workers overall rose 5 percent, according to a recent study by researchers at Cornell and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

The study's conclusions, which draw on population data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, show that the overall number of disabled people with jobs fell from 1992 (when the national economy bottomed out) through 1998.

"Most Americans reaped higher incomes from an economy that created a record number of new jobs in the 1990s, while the employment of people with disabilities fell steadily," says Richard Burkhauser, an economist and the Sarah Gibson Blanding professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell. "Despite receiving higher Social Security disability payments, many working-age people with disabilities lost economic ground while most other Americans gained over the 1990s."

The Reasons Why

The reasons for the decline in employment and wages for the disabled are far from clear, says Burkhauser.

One possible explanation: Many disabled persons dropped out of the labor force because fewer jobs offer employer-sponsored health insurance and because new eligibility standards make it easier for disabled individuals to receive Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income, says Burkhauser. (These two programs provide cash benefits to individuals who are unable to work because of severe disabilities).