Good day ladies and gentlemen! Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Aging Workers with Disabilities: Implications for Employers conference call. At this time all participants are in listen only mode. Later we will conduct a question and answer session, instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during the call, please press star then zero. As a reminder this conference is being recorded. I would now like to the conference over to your host Robin Jones. You may begin.
Yes, hello, good morning or afternoon to everybody depending on where you might be calling from. My name is Robin Jones and I am the director of the DBTAC-Great Lakes ADA Center and we are the Center that sponsors the ADA Audio Conference Series on behalf of the ADA National Network which is a network of 10 ADA Centers regionally dispersed across the country. I welcome you to our session today and before we get started, let me just do a little bit of housekeeping. First and foremost let me apologize for the fact that we are having some technical difficulties on a few ends we thought we had everything worked out, but every time we seem to add technology we risk the potential for things to not work well for us. So the planned online viewing of the files from our speakers today we are not able to do, so you will need to refer to the handouts that were provided to you which are the copy of their slides both in PDF, two slides a page handout as well as text format for those that needed that. Our speakers will be joining us in a minute. Also we have received notifications that our streaming audio is not working, so everyone who was originally using streaming audio has been provided the telephone number to connect and hopefully they have gotten connected via telephone today and again we apologize. We also have individuals who are connected using real-time captioning and thankfully that is working correctly and individuals should be able to be accessing that information at this time. This session will be 90 minutes in length, our speakers will be entertaining questions from the audience at a couple of points in the presentation, so please be patient and our Operator will give you instructions on how to ask questions and you will be able to do so at that time. This is our February session. This program is a monthly session which is offered on the third Tuesday of every month and as I said it is a 90-minute session. So I am happy to welcome today our presenters who are going to be addressing the issues of aging workers with disabilities and the implications for employers. We do have a substitution in our speaker today from the information that all of you have received, unfortunately Susanne Bruyere is not able to join us due to a family emergency but we have a very capable hands, Sarah von Schrader and I will introduce her in a minute who will be providing and presenting information along with Wendy Strobel Gower. So let me go ahead and introduce Wendy and then I will introduce Sarah and I will then turn it over to them to provide you the content of this session. Wendy is with the DBTAC of the Northeast DBTAC and she is the person who is currently the director, she was recently elevated to that particular position and she has a Master''s degree in Rehabilitation Counseling from the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has worked extensively in the application and training of issues around assistive technology in work and school environment and she has an extensive experience in the area of employment for people with disabilities. Her other areas of interest include person centered planning, disability legislation and its impact on services and identification and accommodation of fundamental limitations of disabilities across the lifespan. She has worked as a vocational counselor, as an employment specialist and trainer and she was an educational consultant at George Mason University Training and Technical Assistance Center at one point with the Virginia Department of Education. So she has had numerous experiences and her full bio is available on our website. Our other speaker today is Sarah von Schrader and she has been with the disability employment institute, School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University since June of 2009. She is currently working as a research associate for the New York Mix Work Pay Medicaid Infrastructure Grant and she is focused on creating a conceptual model for craft agency database of service delivery and demographic characteristics of persons with disability. She is also involved in a project using the US employment, Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions, integrated admission system to evaluate employment discrimination outcomes. Prior to coming to Cornell, she was involved in multiple research projects primarily in the area of educational testing and health policy and management. After receiving her Master''s degree, she spent three years as a senior research assistant in Health Services Research and Development Center at Bloomberg School of Public Health at John Hopkins. She has her PhD from the University of Iowa and her dissertation research explores the use of cognitive diagnosis models with achievement test data. So she is been very involved in those areas along her career. So without further ado, I am going to go ahead and hand it over to Wendy and both Wendy and Sarah will take you on your journey today on our topic. So thank you very much Wendy and Sarah and, and the floor is now yours.
Thank you Robin. Sarah and I are going to be talking about issues related to aging workers with disabilities and, and what that really means to employers in terms of making accommodations, thinking about job comp identification and task identification. If you look at Slide 3, the presentation over our slide I just wanted to give you a brief overview of what we are going to talk about today. Big picture issues - we will talk about some demographics in trends as they relate to the aging workforce. We are also going to take a look at some tables and charts and I apologize for those, we can''t help ourselves here at Cornell. We will look at EEOC charge data that can give you some information about implications of charges that older workers have made against employers and then we are going to look at some specific or, or smaller picture issues such as how to make accommodations for older workers and some technology solutions that you might use. I am going to turn it over to Sarah to talk about Slide 4.
Hey, great thank you Robin and Wendy. I am going to start out with some statistics on the aging workforce sort of an introduction to this issue. So basically it is the 45 to 54 and the 55 to 64-year-old US population is expected to grow by nearly 44 million and 35 million in the next 10 years. So this group from 45 to 64 is going to account for nearly half of the working age population by the year 2010 and this was actually an estimate projection from about 2005, but the more recent projections are very similar, we are going to continue to see a large portion of the working age population in that age group and it is going to be increasing. We also know that the prevalence of disability increases with age and we have a figure that I think sort of demonstrates that pretty well. If you look at slide number 5, if you look at the horizontal axis you will see age and on the vertical axis is prevalence. So for adults who are 40 and under, fewer than 10% have a disability, but this grows to a quarter of 60-year-old and nearly one out of every three 65-year-olds has a disability. By 2010 the number of people with disabilities between the ages of 50 and 65 will almost double and it will be significantly larger than that at any other age. If you look at Figure 2, here we have again, what is that? Slide 6, sorry. If you look at Slide 6 on the horizontal axis again we have age and the vertical axis this is the number of people with disabilities by age and we also have two lines here. We have one line in 2000 and then a projected 2010 line and if you focus in on the, the group, the ages between 50 and 65 you can see at every age it is almost twice as many people with disabilities are projected at each of the ages between 50 and 65. And then I am going to go back to Wendy for a moment.
Alright and sorry for all the switching back and forth. We just wanted to try and confuse you. If you look at Slide 7 we are going to talk a little bit about why the workforce is aging. I am sure that some of you are all too well aware of the financial meltdown that occurred in 2008 and for a lot of older people who are planning on retiring at age 65, that became an impossibility because there is, there just isn''t sufficient funds for retirement to take place, so more and more people are staying in the workforce longer. Healthcare cost is another major driver for people to stay employed. The health benefits that are available from the public sector are not as rich as those that are available from the private sector, so more and more people with the aging disability are choosing to stay in their jobs, they are even if they just age. There is also a growing lack of confidence in finances, and a lot of people are very aware if they retire they will have to cut their, their pre-retirement consumption level and that can be terrifying to a lot of people. So you have more and more people who are willing to stay in the workforce past age 65. Another reason that people might choose to stay in the workforce is simply because with the improved medical care people are, are staying healthier longer and they want to stay in the workforce because they enjoy working. We know research shows us that working does improve physical health and emotional well being, so a lot of people are just staying in the workforce simply because they choose to and they want to. There are many benefits to, to staying in the workforce for the, for the older, older workforce. Just as one example, as you stay in the workforce longer, your social security benefit will increase, so if you stay say to the age of 67 versus age of 65, you can have greatly increase, increased social security benefits when you retire and also some studies show that people who delay retirement by as little as five years will be enable to increase their annual retirement spending by about 56%. So as you can see it does pay off in the end to stay in the workforce little longer. As a benefit to employers, we find that there is a declining pool of younger workers and I will show you an example of this on Slide 9, so we will talk about that in just a minute. But there is a declining pool of younger workers and that leads employers to ask older workers to stay on the job for a little bit longer. We do have one exception that I want to make sure that I note, for people who receive pensions; some pension plans include penalties that will actually decrease the amount of the pension payment if you stay in the work for beyond the age of perhaps 62 is usually the retirement age. So if that is the case in, in your situation you want to make sure that you ask your employer the consequences of staying in the workforce a little bit longer. I just wanted to review some of the, the statistics that, on the aging workforce. We know that between 1977 and 2007, the employment of workers above the age of 65 by increased by almost a 101% and also you saw a shift in the number of older workers who moved from part-time employment to full-time employment and we know that this trend is likely to continue in the next 6 or so years. The number of workers age 55 to 64 is expected to increase by about 36.5% and also we see a large increase in the number of workers who are staying in the workforce past the age of 75. The next slide that you see the graying of the workforce slide, gives a, a visual indication of, of that trend and I am just going to go over those slides for those of you who can''t see the, the graphic. So age 16 to 24, labor force participation will decline by 6.9% and so the, the younger workforce is actually decreasing. For ages 25 to 34, the labor force participation will increase by 14.5%, for ages 35 to 44 the labor force participation will actually decrease by 6.1%, for 45 to 54 will decrease by 2%, actually 200th of a percent, ages 55 to 64 will increase by 36.5% and the ages 65 to 74 will increase by 83.4%, and again the 75 plus will increase by 84.3%, so this trend of the graying workforce is something that is expected to continue as we go through the next two years, so this is something that employers are going to have to learn to, to deal with on a pretty regular basis. The next slide if you move to the next slide, you will see an indication of the shift from part-time to full time work, by workers age 65 and older and you can see that in about 2002 it was a basically like someone flipped the switch and the number of older workers who are working full time did an about face with those who are working part-time, so it basically double the amount of people who are working full time as they aged. The next slide you see give as a, as a bar graph that indicates some of the disabilities that increases peoples age. Disabilities that tend to increase dramatically as people age include things like visual impairment, hearing impairment and physical disability. We are going to talk about specific interventions for some of these populations a little bit later, but we just wanted to give an indication of what kinds of disabilities employers might be facing as they see an aging in their workforce. Sarah.
Okay. So this next part that I am going to be talking about is that overview of a recent study that I worked on with Susanne Bruyere and [inaudible] and some other colleagues at the Employment and Disability Institute and it was a study on age and disability related employment discrimination and we had access to the EEOC charge database and we looked in particular charges filed under the ADA and the ADEA or the Age Discrimination and Employment Act. We were interested in what barriers exist, a positive employment outcomes for older workers and workers with disabilities in particular what parts of the employment process and which types of chronic health or disability related conditions are most commonly cited in claims of age and disability related employment discrimination. So basically our analysis just looking at the sheer number of claims, it is clear that perceived employment discrimination is a problem and there are many claims filed annually charging age and/or employment discrimination. From 1993 to 2007 there are about 31,000 charges filed annually under the ADA alone or jointly with other statutes, but 28,000 charges filed annually under the ADEA alone or jointly and about 4,600 charges filed jointly under both the ADA and the ADEA and that sort of those jointly filed charges were actually sort of when we focus some of our a lot of our analyses on for this in this paper. Just at looking briefly at the figure in, on Slide 12, it presents sort of the percent of charges of total EEOC charges that are ADA related or ADEA related charges and as you can see that both of these groups have charges that account for around 20% of all employment discrimination related charges and that this figure we don''t have updated but so it goes from 1993 to 2003. So I am going to present two figures and these figures focus on ADA charges that was filed alone and ADEA and ADA jointly filed charges and as I said we are focusing on these jointly filed charges because they allow us to look at the intersection of age and disability discrimination and in particular as I said we are interested in what parts of the employment process and what types of chronic health conditions and disability related conditions are most commonly cited in these discrimination charges. So looking first and I believe its Slide 13, you can see there is sort of three groups of charges, those, the first group of ours is the ADA, charges filed under the ADA alone. The second group of charges are the ADEA filed alone and then the third group is the jointly filed charges and it presents, each of these bars represents the percent of charges that were filed under various issues and it represents the top nine most common issues for the jointly filed charges in order. And those top nine reasons for filing a charge where discharge terms and conditions, reasonable accommodation, harassment, hiring, discipline, layoff, promotion, demotion, and wages. Let''s see, so approximately more than one issue can be cited in a charge of discrimination, so someone could cite more than one of these, these issues here. But by far the most common issues cited are, is discharge with both for the jointly filed charges and the ADA filed alone charge is about 55.7% of charges, cite discharge as an issue and across all statutes discharge is the most common issue cited. The top five most common issues are the same provoked the ADA and the jointly filed charges. I think it is interesting reasonable accommodation although it is not a issue that is possible to cite under the ADEA as age is the issue for those charges under the ADA filed alone and the jointly filed charges of reasonable accommodation is a, is cited and 26.9% of ADA alone charges and about 17.4% of ADA, ADEA jointly filed charges. So moving from that slide on to the next slide where we have percentage of charges filed by statutes and we now look at the top joint bases and again these are charges filed from 1993 to 2007 combined and here we present the top 10 most commonly cited the specific basis for jointly filed charges and then also as a comparison we present ADA alone charges. Let''s see, so the top going from the most commonly cited to the least commonly cited we have orthopedic structural back impairment not accounted for approximately 11% of the jointly filed charges, cited that basis. Next was non-paralytic orthopedic impairment followed by heart, cardiovascular, diabetes, depression, cancer, hearing impairment, other psychiatric disorders, vision impairment and other neurological. Interesting that conditions that are more prevalent in, in an aging population like heart cardiovascular conditions, diabetes and cancer are more commonly cited among the jointly filed charges, those that cite both the ADA and ADEA as compared to their prevalence among charges filed under the ADA alone. Meanwhile mental health conditions such as depression and psychiatric disorder are more prevalent in the ADA alone charges. It is also interesting to note that hearing impairment and vision impairment which Wendy was just talking about being more prevalent among older people were not more common in the jointly filed charges in fact.
And I think part of the reason that that occurs is because it, it can come on very slowly, the vision impairment and the hearing impairment and so people make small adjustments in the way that they do their work in order to prevent going out on disability or making disability claim versus some of these other issues that can be more shall we say catastrophic in terms of their onset would cost people to say "Hey wait a minute, I didn''t get what I needed from you."
Uh, huh. And that is a great point. So on to our next slide, we are at slide 15. It is important, we have been throwing around a lot of numbers that although statistically if the incidence of disability does increase with age this process is very individualistic and we should not make assumptions about the health, well being, or productivity of older workers and workers with disability. And secondly proactive workforce, workplace, and accommodations strategies can heighten the likelihood of productivity, job satisfaction and successful long term retention of older workers and employers, and employees with disabilities and I am going to talk a little bit more about that. So kind of the three areas I am going to touch on in the next part of the talk are as related to effective aging workforce retention strategies and talk a little bit about workplace policies and practices, minimizing age discrimination through workplace culture and finally talk a little more specifically about accommodation. So starting with workplace policies and practices, changes in HR and management practices can aid the retention of older worker. We just presented some statistics, we know that roughly 60% of the charges that are filed under the ADA or ADEA cite to terminate a relation issue and this suggest and this suggests that employer policies and practices are not really adequately structured to keep older workers on the payroll. Let''s see, benefit claims may create an impetus for older workers to retire. We can, we can offer benefits of interest specifically focused on matured workers as possible to offer long-term care insurance, pre-retirement planning, health and wellness programs, comprehensive medical coverage, prorated benefits for flexible schedules and these are benefits that are likely to appeal to older workers and be more likely to retain them in the workforce with these benefits. Company policies and practices should include alternative appealing to older workers, for instance flex time working hours, part-time positions as Wendy was just talking about and the ability to choose work hours.
I, I think the point of theses slides is just to say there are things that a company can do to make their workplace more welcoming to those older workers and, and, and a lot of that has to do with how older workers are treated culturally in the workplace. I was just doing some reading before we came on the call and there was a great concern for some employers that older workers were staying in the workforce longer which puts preventing the promotion of younger workers and also preventing the promotions of some of those younger worker ideas, for example the use of social networks media the, the more experience use of computers and internet technology. So a lot of companies just as an example of a policy or, or a practice that they can put into place are putting into place mentoring programs, but not mentoring programs where the, the sole relationship building is on the part of the, the younger worker where the benefited to that younger worker, but mentoring programs that also allow the younger worker to mentor the older worker in things like this is how you can use social networking sites for marketing and things that younger workers learn coming out of college such as new strategies for marketing, new approaches to business that may be the older worker doesn''t know because they have been using tried and true practices. There are a lot of new and interesting practices that are, that are coming into play as a result of this interesting mix of, of older people staying in the work place longer.
Okay, also one last thing about workplace policy is we are, we know it the most common conditions or common bases for complaints which Wendy and I were just presenting are among older workers and employers can be more proactive regarding specific interventions for particular conditions.
And that is something we will talk about more later on in this presentation.
So I think, I think we have kind of touched on most of the workplace policies that I was going to go over.
I would just like to say there are a number of shared workspace technologies that are coming into play right now, document sharing sites that allow people to work very productively from home. So is, is telecommuting becomes a greater option for people who want to work at home that is something that businesses can use to ensure that their workforce is still connected. So when older people do want those more flexible schedules that is a one way to make that happen. So we are now on Slide 19.
Okay. We are going to talk a little bit about workplace culture. Let''s see employer program can contribute to positively influencing workplace culture and retaining older workers. Organizations with cultures of trust and inclusion allow for open dialog and permit them to plan and control outcomes. It has been shown that successful companies make it a priority to create a workplace culture that both embraces and encourages diversity and there needs to be a greater movement toward eliminating age based and disability based discrimination in the workplace. This has been done, a good amount of success in the race and sexual orientation and I feel little more of an emphasis soon on focusing on this growing aging workforce. And then finally I will briefly talk a little bit about accommodations and I know Wendy is going to talk about, more about that later in the presentation. As the average age of the workforce increases, the incidence, severity and duration of disability is also likely to increase and even more important to identify proven, to identify proven strategies to return workers to productive roles. Older workers often experience a loss of vision, hearing loss, decreased coordination and balance and medical conditions that put them at risk of suffering workplace injuries. A specific impairment can often be accommodated with ergonomic redesign or new training. As we said a good portion of the charges for discrimination charges that we presented earlier cite orthopedic, various kind of back impairments and that may be, maybe something that can be, sorry...
Ameliorated.
Yes that is the word, exactly. Thank you Wendy and so again with the special attention to the more common conditions and common bases for complaints among these older workers we can just be more proactive related to these accommodations.
I think that disability management strategies in, in, in the case of an aging workforce that becomes really important for employers to start thinking about if someone does become injured on the job what can we do to bring them back into the workforce, whether it be simple things like giving them a new office chair that they can adjust throughout the course of the day as their back begins to hurt, a larger monitors so that they don''t have eye strain. Things like that simple changes can sometimes make a world of difference in terms of someone''s presence in the workplace, and, and this is a, it is a really good way for, really good time for employers to just start thinking about if I start making the changes not just for the people who have disabilities but for all my workers that will improve the culture across the board and ensure that my workers are getting what they need to work effectively. We are going to, did you have anything else on this slide?
I, I just would wanted to just point out that workers who are accommodated following disability are significantly less likely to leave the workforce and we also know that accommodating workers slows the application for disability of benefit and increases job retention. We also know that those accommodations are generally very low cost or no cost and so this is very important issue which we will talk more about.
Alright. We are going to stop now for questions. So if you do have any questions I think Robin is going to go over the procedure for asking question.
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Okay, I have one that was submitted in advance, so Wendy, I am going to go ahead and give that to you and I think that you may have addressed this a little bit when you were giving some of the data and things of that nature, but do we really have a sense when you look at the outcomes the, you know you have talked about the charges of discrimination that EEOC charges and how they compare the types and things of that nature. Do you have any information about the outcomes of the cases and things that where aging may be a factor in the disability and does that change at all in regard to especially issues of disability in such? Do you have any insights on that?
You are talking about whether the charging party would receive a beneficial outcome?
Yes right [inaudible] of the outcomes, yes, if you look at those issues? Do you see any trends at all for older workers that might be also looking at ADA issues?
Right, you know I actually, I haven''t, we have not looked at outcomes. I know specifically for the jointly filed charges. However, the rates of beneficial outcome is very similar for the ADA and charges filed under the ADA and the ADEA, very, very similar I think trying to think it is, it is in the range of about 20% of charging parties receive a beneficial outcome in its very similar cross statutes, but that is an interesting question. I am not sure about those that are jointly filed.
Okay, and how would somebody do you know saying by looking at that information if I were, we are to refer people or to who is looking at that if anybody you that might be aware of?
We are looking at outcomes and, and we have not specifically about the jointly filed charges, but we are working on our papers, Susan and I are working on a paper that is related to outcomes of charges.
So that might be something that is coming down the line?
Yes, yes, absolutely.
Okay, thank you. If we don''t have any other questions you can keep going.
Okay I guess that means we are either really informative or really boring.
I am showing two people in queue right now. Our first question. Your line is open.
Looking at questions. Okay I have a couple of questions regarding your statistics. One is from the page that is referenced I don''t know what slide it is, there is no slide number, it is LaPlante 1988.
Okay.
My question is you, you listed the types of impairment on that list seem pretty obvious with aging except mental retardation, I am curious why they put mental retardation, there is no correlation between aging and mental retardation that I am aware of.
Yeah and there really isn''t any correlation and I am not sure why that was included on the slide, but as you can see there is really if anything there is the decrease as people age and, and, and I am not sure why that information was included on the slide.
Okay.
When you say that is not included on the slide you are talking about that is in that graph because you know you pulled something from LaPlante, is that correct?
Right, exactly.
So it is not that, you, it mean, you were pulling something that they were reporting so what you are not clear about is why they included that category in the reporting.
Exactly yes.
Okay, I appreciate that. The second thing of your graying workforce slide or slide or two before that, you, you cite that of those 75 and older there will be an increase of 84%, but you don''t give an n and I am curious about how large a number that is.
The information is taking from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so I didn''t get a specific n for that but their, their sample sizes are generally very large. If you notice on the slides before the graying of the workforce slide there is a citation for that, for that, for the chart. So that if you go to that, that slide to get more specific information on the size of the population. But I think they pulled it from their more general surveys and I am sorry I don''t have a better answer for that. If you would like to send an email to me I can look that up and, and get you a better response to that and let me give you my email address.
Your email is on the very front slide, Wendy both.
Okay, so that makes it easy.
Yeah, it was included on the very, your title slide with your name, so your phone number I believe is also there, your contact information.
Okay, so I am sorry I don''t have a better answer for that right now.
That is okay, it strikes me as an interesting statistic and I am just curious you know if, if the n is very low it might be easy to get a rise in the percentage, I am just curious.
You know and, and I, at first I was thinking that can''t possibly be correct, how large the, the population is, it is really staying in the workforce, but as I did more research into this issue of the aging workforce, you find it again and again, cited in multiple studies. There is a, a study that was done by the Michigan Retirement Research Center, that talks about the saving shortfall into late retirement and they have some, some very similar statistics to those listed in the, in the Bureau of Labor Statistics report. It really talks about this phenomenon of older people staying in the workforce longer and longer and longer.
And I also, I don''t notice anywhere you were talks about the, maybe you did, maybe I just missed it, the percentage of workers at that age who will continue to work. Is that in your, somewhere? Maybe there is, maybe its earlier?
Ah, we don''t, I am not sure I understand the question. Can you rephrase?
Sure, what percentage, what percentage of people who are in their, their age range of 75 and older will continue to work just as a percentage of all the workers, all, all people I guess?
Yeah I am looking at the, the study that is being reflected here in by this couple of slides and they said that the, it is relatively small as 0.8% of the employed individuals as of 2007.
Okay, I guess part of my question is if I get to be 80 years old, do I still have to work?
You don''t have to, once you save enough money before you get there, so you can retire comfortably.
Yeah and this, the study shows that part-time work among all the workers is the trend that has been steadily increasing and that there was a rise of part-time workers over the ages 75, approximately a 19% increase between 95 and 2007.
I appreciate, thank you.
Yup.
Any other questions?
That information is available on the Bureau of Labor Statistics with a lot more detailed drilled down into it.
Any other questions?
Our next question. Your line is open.
My question is regarding the graying of the workforce slide as well.
Okay.
The age group 16 to 24, can you give us a little bit more information is to why that specific age group is decreasing?
I, I think simply put more and more people are, are going for more education and staying in school longer. So as opposed to going immediately into the workforce upon graduation out of high school more and more people are going into higher education and continuing their education and that has created a, a decline in, in the workforce at that age range.
So then the relevance I guess as far as 25 to 54 is other individuals than going on to graduates, I mean that one below as well.
Right and I think that the, the significance there is just that that the number of people there isn''t really changing, it is not increasing because there hasn''t been as many births as there was during the, the baby boomer population time, so that that number just isn''t increasing that dramatically because there is just simply not as many people in that age range.
Thank you.
Sure.
Again if you have questions, please press the star and the 1 key on our touchtone telephone.
Why don''t you go ahead if we don''t have any additional questions Wendy?
Okay, great. We are going to start again on Slide 21. I want to talk a little bit about, about the coverages or the protections that are afforded to the people who age into disability not only because of their age but also because of their new status as a person with a disability. So not only do you have the, the protection of this Civil Rights Act, but you also gain the protection to the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Americans with Disabilities Act was originally passed in 1990. The ADA Amendments Act became effective on January 1st, 2009 and that really is creating some additional, some changes in, in the law and we are going to go over those on the next slide. I think the one thing I wanted to let you know about the ADA Amendments Act was that this was a law that was really negotiated by people with disabilities and the business community as well. So it is, if I can use the colloquialism from Fox News it is kind of fair and balanced, where it considers the needs of both the business community and people with disabilities. So it is a really good, it offers really good protections for both of those groups. If you move on to Slide 22, you, we are going to talk about some of the consequences of the ADA Amendments Act. Really the, the largest consequence of this law was to remove the focus from the courts and from some of the court cases that that came up from who has disability and who is protected under this law to whether or not employers are complying with their obligations under the law, so whether or not discrimination actually occurred. And that is a major shift that happened when the ADA Amendments Act was passed. For employers there is a few things that they have to think about as a result of this law. One of those is, do they have a process for reviewing reasonable accommodation request? We are going to go into specifics about what constitutes a request and how people ask, but it is really important from employers to start, start thinking about, does this person need to reasonable accommodation in order to perform those essential functions of their job? We tell employers if you see someone who is really struggling to perform duties that they have been able to do pretty regularly in the past, don''t wait for them to ask you, offer and begin that iterative process with them where you discuss reasonable accommodation. The one caveat I would give is be careful how you ask the person with a disability if you are an employer because if you say, I notice that you are having a lot of trouble in your job and I think you might have a disability, then you are triggering that regarded that clause and then they are afforded the protections of the ADA where as if they didn''t have a disability they would not have that protection. So the way that employers need to ask is, "I notice that you are having difficulty with this portion of your job, is there anything I can do to help you," so not bringing up that disability issue at all. There is a need for employers to, to involve themselves in that interactive process where they really have a discussion about what is going to be an essential, or what is going to be a reasonable accommodation, what is going to work for this person with a disability. There was one court case that I wanted to bring up because I think it makes an important point in Tobin versus Liberty Mutual Insurance. Tobin actually won the case against his employer because the company failed to participate in that interactive process. They failed to have a discussion about with him about what reasonable accommodation would work for him and, and that is a critical example of needing to make sure that your HR staff, that your frontline managers are aware of how to have that conversation and not just that this is what I can do for you, but what will work for you is a better question to ask. Employers have to be very clear about their essential and nonessential job functions that they give for their job description and they have to make sure that those decisions are justified, that there is a reason why that particular task is involved in the, in the essential job function. We are, I think we are going to see as the ADA Amendments Act comes into play, more and more ADA cases being tried by a judge and a jury and not being dismissed because the person does not have the coverage under the law because they don''t have a disability. As you go on to Slide 23, I just want to go over briefly the definition of accommodation. Often times when we think about an accommodation, we think of just technology, but accommodation can really be many things, it could be a more liberal leave policy; it could be a adjustment in the work schedule. An accommodation is really anything that changes in the work environment or the way things are customarily done that enables an individual with a disability to enjoy those equal employment opportunities. So these accommodations have to be made for things like essential job function, but also things that would allow people to enjoy equal access to benefits and privileges of employment. And what that means is if there is a company picnic and you have someone who is employed who is deaf, you are going to have to get a sign language interpreter to come to that company picnic so that the, the person who is deaf can enjoy that experience just as that anyone else can. Whereas you offer a gym at your workplace that you have equipment that someone with the physical disability can access and use just as someone without a disability would use it. And also we have things like removing workplace barriers and this could be as simple as insuring that there is a ramp or that there is also space that is sufficient to accommodate a wheelchair. So some pretty basic idea but I just wanted to review those so there wasn''t confusions about the kinds and things that we were talking about. If you go on to Slide 24, some general considerations that I think needs to be made when you are thinking about accommodation is that you can''t ever say this blanket accommodation will work in any case. Accommodations are very specific to the individual and their unique needs, their disability as it, as it relates to them, so this specific functional limitation that they experience is a result of their disability which can be different even in the same class of disabilities and you have to make sure that as I said before that you work with a person to identify an effective solution. I just want to give a brief example if I could, we had a caller to our technical assistance line of a medical transcriptionist who was working for a company and was no longer able to type. So she had asked for a voice recognition software program to enable her to continue to do her job without having to use a keyboard. The company got for her Dragon Naturally Speaking which is a voice recognition product with a real general vocabulary, it is not really meant for a high level needs. There is another product on the market called Dragon Naturally Speaking Medical Edition that has special vocabularies covering nearly 80 medical specialties and in her case if voice recognition was going to be the solution that was used she really needed to upgrade to that more advanced Dragon Naturally Speaking Edition, the cost difference is quite significant between those two products, so that may be why the company didn''t go to that, that better solution. If they couldn''t get her the medical dictionary for Naturally Speaking there are other options that they could have used, such as word prediction programs that would have decreased the, the, the amount of typing that she had to do. She could have used an on-screen, on-screen keyboard with alternative selection method or she could have created macros for commonly used words to reduce again the need to type over and over again. So it is one of the things that that while the employer does make that final determination as to what accommodation will be put into place for the person, they have to think about what is going to enable the person to perform those essential functions of their job, so not just a solution but an effective solution. I hope that that makes sense. If you go on to Slide 25 I want to talk specifically about technology related accommodations. As I said before accommodations can be things like adjusting the working hours of someone with a disability. So let''s say that if you have gotten a diagnosis of cancer and you needed to get your chemotherapy treatments in the morning from 8 to 9 o''clock and you are generally scheduled to start working at 8:30, it would be perfectly okay for employers to say as a reasonable accommodation I will adjust your schedule from 9:30 to 6:30 versus 8:30 to 5:30 and that is a perfect example of, of an accommodation that an employer might make that is not technology related. For technology related accommodations, and they can really make a, a huge impact for a lot of people with, with disabilities especially some of the more subtle disabilities as people age like low vision or hearing that is slightly diminished. But all technology related accommodations are made on a case by case basis and they should be based upon the functional limitations that the individual is experiencing and I want to preface my use of functional limitation, I don''t generally talk about functional limitations when I talk about disability, but in terms of making accommodations, the accommodation is really there to address the issue that the person is having in getting their essential functions done. So this is the one time where I say it is okay to talk about functional limitation because that is how you know what you need to work on. And again you have to look at not just what the, who the person is, but also the environment in which they are going to use the technology. So it is always case by case determination that looks at who the person is, where they are working and also what the employer thinks is a good solution because that will have bearing on the final solutions they put into place. Just as an example, a reasonable accommodation that I was making for someone with a disability who was working at a small business development center, she wanted to, she didn''t have use of any of her hands at all and so she had to take messages on a regular basis because she was a receptionist but she couldn''t write. So you know a simple solution I thought would be getting conversation record on a phone and when I mention that to the employer, he said absolutely not, I will not have the privacy rights of my customers violated by recording them without telling them and it is an excellent point and as a young job developer I did not think of it. So what we did instead was we got a tape recorder and put the tape recorder on, on pause and then when, when this person needed to take a message she would take pause off and she would take the message just as if she was writing it, so the only thing getting recorded was the person''s name, their phone number and their needs and you know the employer was satisfied and also the person with a disability was satisfied. Here it was very important to her that people calling in didn''t know that she had a disability, so it really met the needs of everyone and, and was an effective solution in that case. You should always make sure that you center your assessment of the needs on the person and not on what the technology can do. In other words just because the technology is available, it doesn''t always mean that it is a good solution. You have to make sure that the person is able to operate that the technology especially if sometimes for people with cognitive disabilities when you are talking about really high tech solution the person may not be familiar with how to fix the computer if it breaks and so a computer based solution is not going to be your best option. You always want to go with kind of the, the least intrusive and lowest tech solution that you can and by that I mean the technology really relies on a continuum from, from very simple to very complex. Just as an example, there is a, a if you needed to use an alternative mouse system, so you weren''t able to use a standard computer mouse, there are simple things like getting a different kind of mouse, like a trap bow mouse, there are things like head pointers that or, or dowel sticks that you can use just to, to use your keyboards to point, but then there are things like eye gaze technology that is a very, very expensive about $12,000 for the Tobii systems that are really good. It is very high cost, very difficult to maintain and set up, so it is not going to be a solution you want to go to first. I hope that makes sense, it is difficult to tell when I can''t see the looks of confusion or understanding on your faces. But if, if you have specific questions about technology related accommodations, the Job Accommodation Network is a really good place to start, also most of your DBTACs have people who are knowledgeable about reasonable accommodation and about assistive technology and you can make that call to our 800 number. If you move to Slide 26, I want to talk a little bit about kind of the big picture of technology in the work environment. We always tell people whenever possible make sure that the technology that you use in your office is universally designed. And by universal design what I am really talking about is technology that has features and functions that work for most people, so may be not, like Microsoft Word is a perfect example of a universally designed technology. It is effective for most people and it has some special features and functions that you can turn on if you need small adjustments in your technology. For example, the accessibility where the Microsoft Word allows you to turn on things like a magnifier that can increase the, the size of the screen from two times magnification to nine times magnification, not a perfect solution for everyone but for someone who is just developing low vision issues it may be a perfect solution. So again you see that it is designed for most people. We then go down one level from the universally designed technology environment to accessible information technology and what we are talking about in this case is things like making sure that your database if you use Microsoft Access Database for example is compatible with those pieces of assistive technology that certain people may need to use. And just as an example a college had in place a very advanced database system that was used to maintain all the student records and the billing information and the grading and all that kind of stuff used on a regular basis by people with disabilities. They hired a person who was blind to work in a registrar''s office and that person then had to interface with that technology. If they hadn''t thought about how this person was going to access that database they could have encountered significant expense in trying to accommodate that woman, but luckily because they thought about what is accessible information technology they were able to give her Window Eyes which is a very commonly used screen reading program to access a database effectively. I hope that that makes sense to all of you. Again I can''t see the looks of understanding on your face, so I am going to assume that you understood. The next slide, Slide 27, I want to talk about some general kinds of technologies that you may use for reasonable accommodation. For people who are blind you often see the use of JAWS or Window Eyes which are the two major screen reading and computer interface programs used by people who have, who are blind. One thing about these programs is, is that they are very operable with keyboard commands because people who are blind are not going to be using mouse, but scan and read systems in general are good for a very large percentage of people with disabilities. For example, people with learning disabilities might use programs like text help Read and Write or Kurzweil has a really good screen reading program for people with LD. People who have cognitive issues such as mental retard, I am sorry intellectual disability, people who have experience of stroke, people who have low vision, people who experience eye fatigue or migraines are going to benefit from a technology that can read their computer screen and these are available at very low cost, you can get some of them for free, although at a very low voice quality, but some of them pretty good systems are available for about $99. For people with low vision, screen magnification programs are something that is pretty readily available. In terms of specific programs you can get things like a program called LunarPlus from Dolphin, a program called Magic from Freedom Scientific or a ZoomText from AI Squared, they are all readily available programs for people with disability, with low vision disabilities. But some simple solutions that employers can implement are getting things such as the larger monitor. If you lower the screen resolution on your computer your graphics and your text are going to appear larger and that is something that you can do at really no cost. A lot of the generally available programs like Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, Adobe Acrobat, the feature magnification tool that allow you to just increase the zoom on the screen so you can see the picture on the screen a little bit bigger and again that Accessibility Wizard in Windows will allow you to change things like font size and screen resolution, how big your scroll bar appears, the color scheme on your computer, the appearance of your mouse and screen magnification by simply going through a simple wizard tool that will allow you to individualize settings for your needs. Other tools include TTY devices, the relay system allows you to call 711 to communicate with people who have hearing impairment that who are deaf or who have speech impairments from any phone. A lot of people who are deaf are also using technology such as instant messaging to communicate in the workplace. So that has then another free tool that anyone can access is very effective. For signing over the phone a lot of people are turning to tools like Skype that allow video to be included on voice over IP systems. For people with physical disabilities, tools like alternative mice and keyboards are readily available and pretty inexpensive and then for speech input you have those tools like Dragon Naturally Speaking, but also there are some programs, voice recognition programs built into Windows and another program for Mac called Mac Speech Dictate is pretty readily available. So there are a lot of options out there for, for people with who need assistive technology. On next slide, Slide 28, there was survey done in 2008 by the Microsoft Corporation and one of the things that they looked at was what do employers think about this, all this talk about accessible technology. And what they found was that employer are really appreciating accessible technology not just because it allows compliance, compliance to the ADA and other laws was, was listed as, as a, as a good thing by 49% of the employers, but also things like improving employee satisfaction, improving productivity, improving diversity in the workplace, improving workplace collaboration and also you find a lot of times that clients and customers are happier because when you have happier employees they tend to, to, to be more helpful to people. Reduction in workers compensation claims is, is a very big one for a lot of employers, anything that can cut down on the expenses related to disability is something that they are really going to appreciate. But also at 32% you see retention of existing employees and for the aging workforce this is something that is really critical because employers are making an effort to make their employees comfortable on the job, they are really able to keep that older workforce in place versus having to replace them. Recruiting new employees for technology is another key issue with the younger workforce, but also reducing absenteeism. There was a study done that said simply replacing an uncomfortable office chair can increase productivity by about 45% over the course of the day because if you are more comfortable in your workplace, you are not up walking around, distracting other people, you know trying to alleviate your aches and pains, you are sitting at your workstation and working, there is a lot of benefit to accessible technology that employers are recognizing which I think is really, really important. Moving on Slide 29, I want to just briefly go over the process necessary for requesting an accommodation. If someone in your workforce is experiencing a disability or needs a reasonable accommodation all they have to do is let you know and using plain English that they need an accommodation. They don''t have to write that request down unless your workplace requires that they fill out some form for their own personnel reason, but under the law there is no requirement to put that request in writing and also they don''t have to mention the specific law that would entitle them to an accommodation. So for example, if I needed an accommodation I wouldn''t have to go to my employers and say I have this disability and under the ADA I need an accommodation for my disability, all I would have to say is I am really having some trouble performing my essential functions because I have a disability. And then that would trigger that that iterative process that employers have to, to be involved in. On the next slide, Slide 30, what an employer has to do to respond to a request for a reasonable accommodations. One of the things that, that is important to talk about is that need for documentation. If someone has a really obvious disability that you can look at them for example they are in a wheelchair and you can see that they use a wheelchair and that a ramp is a reasonable request then you, you shouldn''t ask for documentation, but if the disability is not obvious and there are great many hidden disabilities out there, for example, someone might have intellectual disability or they might have a psychiatric disability, you can ask for documentation to put in your records, so that you know that the person needs a reasonable accommodation for medical reasons. Again you have to engage in that informal process to ensure that the accommodation you make is appropriate and effective for the person with a disability and you have to respond promptly to the request. So there has to be action and steps taken towards making a reasonable accommodation that is, that is pretty visible to ensure that you aren''t going to get into any trouble with the law. So it is, it is a, it is a really simple process and one of the things that, that I find very heartening is that many employers are not waiting for that the documentation, they are not waiting for the, the proof that someone has a disability. They see reasonable accommodation as a benefit to not just to employees with disabilities but to all people in their workforce. So a lot of employers are more than happy to provide reasonable accommodations without waiting for that documentation. Moving on to Slide 31, there is really a five step accommodation process. Anytime someone ask for reasonable accommodation. I say this just because a lot of times what happens is when you ask for a reasonable accommodation, all you get is okay we will get you that and then you walk away and that is a really, it is a real big problem for some people. The first thing that you want to do is define the situation, you want to evaluate the work site, you want to evaluate the workstation, and you want to look at the essential functions of that job. You want to have a pretty good understanding of what the person''s functional limitations are, what is it that they are having trouble doing and why can''t they do it. You want to ask questions about the, the disability, is it progressive, is it something like multiple sclerosis that may get worse over time or is it pretty stable and also is there a task that the person may be they can do, but it is a really hard for them to do and slowing them down in terms of productivity. This will allow you to get a pretty clear picture of the whole situation. So you make the appropriate selection of technology or other accommodation for the person to be effective on their job. Next thing you want to do in Step 2 is a little bit of research. You want to explore the available options. What is out there that can really help, the web is a great tool and a lot of employers will turn to the web. The Job Accommodation Network has a searchable online accommodation resource SOAR that is a great resource for a lot of employers to get information, but you also want to always ask the person with a disability, what is it that will work for you or what is that that you think would be the best solution, but you can talk to computer technicians or your IT team in the workplace, there is a lot of different options. The next thing you want to do is select on accommodation based on that research that you did, what is going to work for the person and what is going to work for the employer and also what is offered at a reasonable cost. The next step, in Step 4 you want to implement that accommodation and you want to not just give the person the technology, but you also want to provide any training for that specific person or their coworkers to be able to effectively use that accommodation and always, always, always in Step 5 after the person is or the solution has been implemented, go back and check and make sure that it is working for the person, make sure that their performance is improving and make sure that any kind of disability issues are not coming up with making that technology impossible to use. So making sure you monitor the, and adjust the accommodation as needed. The last slide, on Slide 32 that I want to talk about is just some kind of benefits that the Job Accommodation Network found. I find this slide as a nice counter to the, to the business survey that was done. This survey was done by the Job Accommodation Network and they found that the direct benefits of making accommodations in the workplace was that 87% of businesses found that accommodations enabled them to retain a valued employee. Again they saw a large gain 74% of employers said it increased productivity, 55% of employers said increased attendance and 54% state that that making accommodations saved those workers compensation cost. There is also a number of indirect benefits. These are things like improving interactions with coworkers, improving the morale of the company, improving interactions of customers and, and improving workplace safety. So all things that make a huge difference in the culture of the workplace, but may be you don''t see an, an improved monetary benefit right away, but I think that is a really nice counter to the Microsoft survey slide. On Slide 33, we provided you with some resources that you may find helpful in your search for additional information about this topic and I think that is about it from us Robin, if you want to take some questions.
Sure, we have got time here left. I know you have a lot of information, so obviously it was a whirlwind of time, but if we get some instructions again from our Operator then we can see if there are some questions from those that are participating today.
Again ladies and gentlemen on the phone line, if you have question please press the star and then the 1 key on your touchtone telephone. And we have a call, your line is open.
Go ahead. Check your mute on your phone to see if it is on, we are not able to hear you.
Okay can you hear me now?
Yeah, yeah, we can.
Okay, you were right, I was muted that doesn''t help much. Anyway, I had two questions. My first one was types of jobs, blue collar versus white collar, this goes back to when you were talking about the chart that there were a lot of questions about before from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Okay.
Is there any way to tell, I mean when I see statistics like I think it was in, a gentleman during that question period, we see statistics of people 75 and older working, you know I just got to believe that that is a white collar worker versus a blue collar worker, just simply because people wear out and I mean your ability to drive a truck a long distance, I mean it is, it is just physically it becomes impossible to do even with accommodations and, and frankly unsafe. So I, I am wondering if there is some, some skewing in the data with you know white collar versus blue collar workers.
You know I didn''t see any specific data that separate those two out, but again if you email me that question I will look for that information and see if I can get it for you. One of the interesting things I did find in terms of staying in the workforce due to financial need, a lot of people who had low income over the course of their life were forced to stay in the workforce longer and so they didn''t have an option to retire because they never had as you do in often white collar environment, of course your retirement account sponsored by your employer. So there are a lot of low income people staying in the workforce longer simply because they don''t have any other choice.
Now I am wondering if that is what you are seeing in terms of the, the dip with people going back to school, formerly perhaps blue collar laid off, you know have a disability with it, they can''t do the essential functions even with an accommodation at their blue collar job and then are going back for retraining so they can reenter the workforce as a white collar worker and, and you are right, probably still at a low pay grade with limited benefits. So perhaps there may even be, boy I don''t know, you know transitional blue collar, white collar sort of things going on to and, and I, I see that these the data ends at 2007 and that was pre the crash, so I am, I am wondering as the statistics catch up with what happened, you know how, how much different, that is just some musing on my part about it that might show up as a pretty significant blip on the, the graph as the data catches up with what ha happened or the data reporting.
Yeah, I most of the data that we found although it predates the crash, projected increases over to like 2016, so we may see even larger numbers in the near future, but unfortunately at this point because I don''t have the data, it is pure speculation on my part.
Yeah.
I mean today there always a data, always the data is always behind. I just want to give you form that same survey it does talk, it doesn''t talk about specific, this is again the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, it does not talk about specific positions, but it does talk about the educational preparation of individual 65 and older who are still in the workforce and 31% of them have a bachelors degree or higher and 34, 44 or 46% of them have high school or less than high school, no college that are in the workforce.
Wow.
An actual higher percentage have less than higher studies in the workplace at 65 and older which I think goes to the statement back, Wendy was saying about potential income related issues and lower income there is fewer with a college degree staying in the workforce at 65 and over.
Yeah I, I agree that, that makes perfect sense. And then a quick second question, I get asked this a lot about documentation and that the wheelchair example that you gave accommodation being a ramp, the, the disability is a visible disability i.e., it is obvious, but the employer can ask for I mean legally can ask for documentation.
Yeah, they, they can ask but if let''s just say that for example a person in a wheelchair came in and said so and so needs a reasonable accommodation because of their disability, it would be really difficult for the employer to prove that it was necessary for them to keep going back to the person and asking for additional documentation when the disability was obvious versus if someone had a hidden disability like a psychiatric disability if an employer wrote a note and says this person needs to get flexible leave policy because they have a psychiatric disability. In that case it is perfectly appropriate for the employer to seek additional information because it is not really clear to them why the person needs that accommodation. So does that make sense?
Yeah that makes sense and, and what I typically get asked are questions to go along this line of, if a person is using a wheelchair but the, the employee also may have some hidden disabilities, I mean multiple sclerosis is a perfect example where there may be mobility and then cognitive.
Right.
Then it is a tricky sort of scene where I mean I, the employers are concerned about harassing the person, they know they don''t want to be like going on a fishing expedition bringing the person''s medical record which is, is, is clearly not appropriate but you know when you, when you got a situation where somebody might have both an invisible and a visible disability, I mean the proper request to my understanding would be you know ask for the documentation that supports the accommodation that is being asked for.
Right exactly. Now in that multiple sclerosis example for example, if the person said that they needed to have a scribe to read to them, it is not something that is immediately obvious when, when looking at them, so you would, you could ask the doctor to explain why a scribe was needed and usually best practice in that situation is to let the person know what, what topics you need more information about and how you will be asking for that information, so [inaudible] with the process.
Yes, yes and so it does not come off as a fishing expedition because I mean people are private about their medical records and I mean it, it is, it is tricky because I, I know the employer has a right, but many consumers that I have worked with in the past, I mean it is very touchy situation for them where they feel it is an invasion of privacy.
Right and I think a lot of them think that if they you know sign a medical waiver that the doctors going to turn over their entire medical history.
Exactly. Wendy Strobel Gower And that is frightening, you don''t want that and that is why I say it is really important to do that interactive process where you say, here is what I need to know and why I need to know it. So that there is really clear understanding in both parties, the information that you need clarified.
Okay, thank you that does it for me. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Do we have others in the queue please?
Our next question. Your line is open.
I am here in Indianapolis and I have a couple of comments and then may be one recommendation to make. One is we really have to be careful as professionals, to be more conscientious about aging remarks, ageism, lumping of those people you know because of their age or whatever into what they can and can''t do and I just wanted to kind of bring back to the attention of everyone participating in this because I did hear what I considered an ageism earlier. Two, there is a program in every state for individuals 55 and older to get retraining at no cost and in fact they get a minimum wage while they are learning on the job. These individuals are placed in not-for-profits where they can learn new skills where they can hone in skills that they had maybe on older technology and come up to date on technology. And that is called SCSEP, S-C-S-E-P which is the Senior Community Supported Employment Program. So that might be one way that, for example when we were talking about older workers and how they might get re-trained if they were a blue collar worker now, maybe they were having some limitations and now they need to be re-trained in another area. And the third thing I wanted to just caution or make a recommendation, when we are talking about these accommodation processes and when we are talking to employers or whomever, I think it is very important that the evaluations and the recommendations and looking at the different technologies or the different tools that might be an accommodation, that we really bring assistive technology professionals in to do those evaluations. I have been working with assistive technology for over 25 years and I am a certified assistive technology professional, of course that is one reason why I am mentioning this, but also because there has been over my 20 years of experience money spent that really were not appropriate accommodations. They actually caused the employees more difficult and it kind of gave that a bad taste in the employer''s and the other co-workers you know, bad taste and bad taste, whatever. And so I just kind of wanted to mention that when an evaluation of this sort is being done, it might be very good to bring in someone who has had experience and can look at all the different avenues and does know about the disabilities, with the limitations for both people with disabilities and those of us who are aging. That is all I want to say. Thank you.
I think those are all really good points and to your last point about getting a specialist in, we often recommend that employers partner with employment service agencies in their local communities to explore reasonable accommodation issues, because it is good especially when you are dealing with technology. There is a level of expertise that can be the difference between finding an effective solution and finding a really poor solution. In addition to the Job Accommodation Network, there is an organization called RESNA, and their, their website is resna.org and they have a listing of certified assistive technology practitioners that employers can call in to do more complex accommodation questions to take a look at some of those issues. So thank you for those points.
Great we are at the bottom of the hour. I am sorry if there were any questions that were left in the queue. It is always a catch 22 in these situations to respond to questions versus numbers sometimes. So if we did leave anybody in the queue, you do have the contact information for our speaker. And Sarah, do you want to give your contact information because I believe on the slides that they have they would have Susanne''s because that is who we had originally listed.
Sure my email address is SV, as in Victor, sv282@cornell.edu
And your very last slide you have the generic address and they do have their 800 number listed. That is the 800 number that is used for the ADA National Network across the country, all 10 centers. That is 800-949-4232 both voice and TTY and that is, would it ring anywhere that you are. That is in your region and would get you to the Center that serves your geographic area. So that is a way to reach your ADA Center that serves your geographic area if you have further questions that might, we might be able to be of assistance to you. We also really encourage you to fill out the evaluation on the session so we can get some feedback from you and you will be getting, if you don''t already have that link or document, please submit that and return that to us we really need that. This session was being recorded and a transcript is going to be posted within 10 business days on the ada-audio.org website so you will be able to review it. It will also be posted with all of the materials which you should have already as well received in advance. We invite you to our next series of sessions which are going to be switching gears from employment arena to the issues of conducting effective accessibility survey starting in March and through April. Again the third Thursday of the month so the first one, I am sorry, Tuesday of the month which is the first one is March 16th, and the second one is April 20th. So we invite you to join us for that. More information is available on our website at www.ada-audio.org I want thank everyone for participating today. I want to send a special thanks to our presenters, both Wendy Strobel Gower and Sarah von Schrader, Sarah I always mess up your last name there, for stepping in and for providing us this information and again I want to extend a thank you to the ADA National Network for your promotion of the program. And again if you have questions contact the ADA National Network at 800-949-4232 both voice and TTY if you have questions. Thank you everyone and have a great day.