The disabled must educate leaders and agencies

It’s Saturday 16 and I’m very late for my monthly writing. This will not happen again because I will make sure that I have made contingent plans so that this does not again happen.

If you have been reading my writings since December of 2000, you have been reading my autobiography-entitled Striving To Be Normal. It chronicles my life following Traumatic Brain Injury at age eight and described things that happened to be because of the lack of governmental as well as professional help. Unfortunately many of these same things still appear to be occurring not because of the lack of knowledge, but rather because of an atmosphere of neglect and indifference on part of governmental agencies as well as government in general.

As an example of the neglect, which I have chronicled, I would like to cite some statistics from my country which have not appreciable changed even with the of a land mark Civil Rights Law called ADA.

Prior to ADA the unemployment rate of the disabled in my country appeared to hover around 70 to 75%. Therefore, according to my country, only 25 to 30% of the disabled were capable of becoming employed. The rest were deemed so disabled that they were placed upon some type of government assistance. Ten years later the unemployment rate of the disabled still appears to be at this level. So ADA ha not changed this even thought it was supposed to.

Besides employment ADA was supposed to help the disabled of my country regain fundamental rights that they may have lost simply because of their disability. More importantly it was supposed to help those capable of full time employment become employed without having to first overcome man made barriers to employment. Many times these barriers made us appear to be risks to prospective employers even before we had a chance to prove ourselves capable employees. Should such a situation be allowed to continue even with ADA? The answer is no.

If the answer is no then we must ask why it has been allowed to continue? The answer becomes clear if we look into ADA. It appears that government failed to enable us to be looked upon as assets to employers. Rather it opted to allow many disabled to be perceived to be liabilities simply because of controlled disorders or cured diseases.

If these abnormalities weren’t controlled or cured then those possessing them would have been true liabilities to the employer. But if controlled or cured then these individuals possessing them should not be regarded as liabilities to employers. How can disabled individual expect to be come employed if employers still believe them to be risks to their benefit programs or even to the workplace?

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