Blog [with]tv

The Real Truth about Reasonable Accommodations

by Nadine Vogel, President, Springboard Consulting LLC

Many would-be employers cite the cost of accommodations as a barrier to employing people with disabilities. If only they knew that nearly half of all accommodations cost nothing. That’s right. Nothing. In a 2006 survey conducted by the Job Accommodation Network ( JAN), a service of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, 46 percent of the employers surveyed reported that the accommodations needed by employees and job applicants with disabilities cost absolutely nothing. The typical onetime expenditure for accommodations that did have a cost was $500, but only $300 more than what was typically needed for an employee without a disability in the same position.

In order to disabuse potential employers of the myths surrounding reasonable accommodations, I believe it’s important that the disability community know the facts as well. To that end,  I’d like to give you  fuel for your fire:

Accommodation Benefits

When the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) surveyed employers about making accommodations, they found the following:

Accommodations are effective.

Seventy-five percent of the respondents reported that the accommodations they implemented were either "very effective" or "extremely effective."

Employers experience multiple direct and indirect benefits.

   The most frequently mentioned direct benefits were:

o  Retaining a valued employee (86 percent);

o  Increasing the employee’s productivity (71 percent);

o  Eliminating the costs associated with training a new employee (56 percent).

                 The most widely reported indirect benefits were:

o  Improving colleague interaction (67 percent);

o  Increasing overall company morale (58 percent); and

o  Increasing overall company productivity (56 percent).

Accommodations produce financial benefits.

According to the employers who participated in JAN’s study, on average, for every dollar they put into making an accommodation, they "got back" a little over $10 in benefits.

Armed with this knowledge, you can be an advocate for yourself and other job-seekers with disabilities.

My new book, Dive In, Springboard into the Profitability, Productivity, and Potential of the Special Needs Workforce* provides the information that employers need in order to make the business case for employing and properly supporting people with disabilities, parents of children with special needs, and older workers with age-related impairments. Dive In provides facts, and success stories. I’d love to hear yours.  

Contact Nadine at (973) 813-7260 or [email protected] .

No Odd Job Too Small

Have you been pining for another deformed criminal mastermind?  Are you tired of all the clean cut post-modern corporate bad guys who can’t be distinguished from your local insurance agent?  Are "thrillers" and detective novels letting you down when what you need is some old fashioned freak show figuration?

Well rest assured.  The latest James Bond novel, "Devil May Care (James Bond) " written by Sebastian Faulks (under the imprimatur of Ian Fleming Productions) carries on the misadventures in the "Fleming-way" world of disability villainy.

The writing is terrible and you’ll have to stagger over more patriarchal cold war clichés than one supposed could be arranged between the covers of a single book, but that’s okay because the chief evil-doer is a dude named Gorner who used to be a Nazi but then became a Commie and all because "back in the day" when he was a student at a British prep school the other boys made fun of his deformed left hand.

Bond learns of him from "M" and here’s how it goes:

"The man crops up everywhere.  One of his hobbies is aviation.  He has two private planes.  He spends a good deal of time in Paris, but I don't think you'll have much difficulty in recognizing him."

"Why's that?" said Bond.

"His left hand," said M, sitting down again, and staring Bond squarely in the eye.  "It's a monkey's paw."

"What?"

"An extremely rare congenital deformity.  There's a condition known as main de singe, or monkey's hand, which is when the thumb makes a straight line with the fingers and is termed 'un-opposable'.  Being in the same plane as the other digits, it can't grip.  It's like picking up a pencil between two fingers." M demonstrated what he meant.  "It can be done, but not very well.  The development of the opposable thumb was an important mutation for Homo sapiens from his ancestors.  But what Gorner has is something more.  The whole hand is completely that of an ape.  With hair up to the wrist and beyond."

Something was stirring in Bond's memory.  "So it would be larger than the right hand," he said.

"Presumably.  It's very rare, though not unique, I believe."

Yep.  In "Devil May Care" (the title is completely irrelevant) you get a socio-pathologized Nazi-cum-Commie Social-Darwinized "missing link" who wears an oversized white glove in a vain attempt to hide his monkey paw.

The book aims for balance because Bond’s best friend, the redoubtable Felix Leiter of the CIA has lost a leg and an arm and now gets around on his true grit.  So you get dueling cripples in this book which of course makes the whole thing acceptable.

I can only add that this book should be divided into halves.  Each half should then be thrown away.  You can accomplish this whether your thumbs either do or do not work.

Trust me.

S.K.

Cross-posted on Planet of the Blind

Have you been pining for another deformed criminal mastermind?  Are you tired of all the clean cut post-modern corporate bad guys who can’t be distinguished from your local insurance agent?  Are "thrillers" and detective novels letting you down when what you need is some old fashioned freak show figuration?

Well rest assured.  The latest James Bond novel, "Devil May Care (James Bond) " written by Sebastian Faulks (under the imprimatur of Ian Fleming Productions) carries on the misadventures in the "Fleming-way" world of disability villainy.

The writing is terrible and you’ll have to stagger over more patriarchal cold war clichés than one supposed could be arranged between the covers of a single book, but that’s okay because the chief evil-doer is a dude named Gorner who used to be a Nazi but then became a Commie and all because "back in the day" when he was a student at a British prep school the other boys made fun of his deformed left hand.

Bond learns of him from "M" and here’s how it goes:

"The man crops up everywhere.  One of his hobbies is aviation.  He has two private planes.  He spends a good deal of time in Paris, but I don't think you'll have much difficulty in recognizing him."

"Why's that?" said Bond.

"His left hand," said M, sitting down again, and staring Bond squarely in the eye.  "It's a monkey's paw."

"What?"

"An extremely rare congenital deformity.  There's a condition known as main de singe, or monkey's hand, which is when the thumb makes a straight line with the fingers and is termed 'un-opposable'.  Being in the same plane as the other digits, it can't grip.  It's like picking up a pencil between two fingers." M demonstrated what he meant.  "It can be done, but not very well.  The development of the opposable thumb was an important mutation for Homo sapiens from his ancestors.  But what Gorner has is something more.  The whole hand is completely that of an ape.  With hair up to the wrist and beyond."

Something was stirring in Bond's memory.  "So it would be larger than the right hand," he said.

"Presumably.  It's very rare, though not unique, I believe."

Yep.  In "Devil May Care" (the title is completely irrelevant) you get a socio-pathologized Nazi-cum-Commie Social-Darwinized "missing link" who wears an oversized white glove in a vain attempt to hide his monkey paw.

The book aims for balance because Bond’s best friend, the redoubtable Felix Leiter of the CIA has lost a leg and an arm and now gets around on his true grit.  So you get dueling cripples in this book which of course makes the whole thing acceptable.

I can only add that this book should be divided into halves.  Each half should then be thrown away.  You can accomplish this whether your thumbs either do or do not work.

Trust me.

S.K.

"The Blind Doctor"

The Blind Doctor-The Jacob Bolotin Story by Rosalind Perlman.

"The biography of this gentle Jewish saint should be read by everyone.

It is published by Blue Point Books. www.bluepointbooks.com (800) 858-1058. This is one of the most inspiring books I have ever read."

-- Valerie Brew-Parish
   [email protected]

Read Valerie's review in The Herald News

Thank you, Valerie

 

"The Blind Doctor is the moving and powerful story of a blind man who fought ignorance and prejudice to become one of the most respected physicians in Chicago. Everyone who reads Dr. Jacob Bolotin s story will learn that blindness is no barrier to a full life and great accomplishments."

--Dr. Marc Maurer, President, National Federation of the Blind

Book: Rachel in the World: A Memoir

I just stumbled on  Deaf Mom's review of the book:  Rachel in the World: A Memoir

 Review

“Jane Bernstein’s Rachel in the World is a remarkable book about tough love--about the many challenges of raising a child with special needs, and about the woeful inadequacy of terms like ‘special needs.’ It is a fearlessly honest book about disability and family life, in which children with disabilities are not heaven’s special angels, and in which children with disabilities grow up to be adults with disabilities. It is a necessary book, in which parents of children with disabilities worry about the world of social services and group homes and uncomprehending strangers. And it is a bracing book that reminds us how tough a parent’s love can be-- and how the power of love can sustain us in even the toughest times.”  --Michael Bérubé

"One-Handed Catch"

One-Handed Catch, a book written for readers ages 10 and older, is the story of an 11-year old boy who loses his left hand in a tragic accident.  "Through determination, hard work and creativity, he learns to do everything most kids do."  The author, MJ Auch, borrowed the theme for this story from details of her husband's life.

Herm Auch was 12 years old and working in his parents'  meat and food market in Putnam County, NY when one day, while grinding meat for customers, he caught his hand in the grinder.  Surgery resulted in the amputation of his hand.  "Once he realized his hand was gone, he says, he pouted, then adjusted."

"My mother never coddled me," Herm Auch says. "She wouldn't let me feel sorry for myself, so I grew up believing I could do anything."

An article, written by Barbara Livingston Nackman and appearing in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, details for us the inspiration behind the writing of this book.  You can read it here before it's archived.

One-Handed Catch was nominated for the American Library Association's Schneider Family Book Award, which honors a work that deals with childhood disabilities. (The award went to The Deaf Musicians, by folk singer Pete Seeger and Paul DuBois Jacobs.)

* Thank you to Georgia for bringing this to our attention!*

Graphic: front cover of book shows young boy leaping into air to catch baseball.

Cross-posted on Planet of the Blind

Congratulations Simi Linton, author of "My Body Politic"

As mentioned previously on this blog, Simi Linton has a blog called Disability Culture Watch, which she categorizes as "A disability-focused commentary on the arts".  Here is an excerpt from her "About" page:

There is an emerging cadre of dancers, actors, writers, performance artists, and painters who are actively engaging with both the fact and idea of disability. The most exciting work explores what disability provides the artist, rather than what feats someone can perform despite disability. When disabled artists use their unique bodies and voices, something innovative happens.  My job is to follow these turns and twists on the cultural map, selectively reporting and critiquing this vital phenomena.

Simi is the author of My Body Politic (University of Michigan Press, 2006) and recently she has been awarded grants, one from the Puffin Foundation and one from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, to develop a stage adaptation for the book.  Congratulations, Simi!  We can't wait!

With permission from Simi, the summary of her book, as found on her web site, is copied below for our review.  Follow this link to learn more, as well as to hear two selections from the book, read by the author herself. 

Black Friday Deals on Amazon!

This year you can avoid the crowds and shop online at Amazon.com from the comfort of your own home.  (Or from Grandma's house...)  And when you do, you can help support the [with]tv mission by using this link: www.amazon.com/blackfriday

"While we don’t have a cold, dark parking lot for you to line up in, we do have a bunch of great deals to help you get your holiday shopping done for less. Be sure to check back here on the day after Thanksgiving to see our Black Friday 2007 specials. This year we’ve created a Black Friday page for holiday shoppers at www.amazon.com/blackfriday. Amazon.com will be offering hourly deals from 6am to 6pm PST along with thousands of products on sale for a limited time. Also, customers will get gift wrapping for $.99 per item."

So please, feel free to bookmark this link and if you wouldn't mind, spread the word!  Your family and friends may appreciate the link as much as we do.

Thank you!

Cross-posted on Planet of the Blind

Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption: On the Meaning of Family and the Politics of Neurological Difference

Book Review:
by Stephen Kuusisto

Reasonable People: a Memoir of Autism & Adoption
By Ralph James Savarese
The Other Press

“My name is DJ and I am taking a trip of a lifetime.”

The line above appears in the journal of DJ Savarese who is the co-author of the memoir Reasonable People which has just been published by The Other Press.  The sub-title of the book is as important to culture as the title itself: “On the meaning of family and the politics of neurological difference”.  This timely book is about the Horatian life, “Life” written with a capital “L”.  Accordingly it is about family and the life of the mind; about poetry and the fierce resistance to stereotypes of people with autism.

Assuredly one can think of dozens of additional sub-titles for the book: Living Outside their Boxes; Unraveling the Outworn Tapestry of Academic Autism; A Prayer Wheel by Two Poets; or The Road of Salt and Honey.   

This is a memoir about “hard traveling” as Woody Guthrie would say, and yet it is far more than a narrative of trouble and triumph.  The poet, Ralph James Savarese, skillfully tells the story of his adoptive son DJ’s former life of physical and intellectual abuse and in turn and almost seamlessly tells the story of how he and his wife Emily must grow both intellectually and emotionally and yes, politically, since DJ’s autism is the kind of disability our culture has misunderstood throughout history.   

Cross-posted on Planet of the Blind

Image Description: The front cover of the book is depicted. There is a photo of a shirtless boy, from the shoulders up, looking down and looking very serious.  He's at the beach.  All we see is blue water and bright blue sky behind him.
 

The History of My Shoes: Field Work with Body and Soul

Book Review
by Stephen Kuusisto

(cross-posted on The Planet of the Blind)

The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory
By Kenny Fries
Carroll and Graf

Kenny Fries has ghosts on his shoulders and ghosts in his shoes. It is precisely because of this that the narrator of this important book is a shaman of culture and history. Kenny Fries is speaking for all of us, even if we don’t know it yet. Readers may initially think this is a disability memoir but it is really a post-Victorian narrative about Darwin’s strange legacy in our world of real bodies.

Arriving at the tuff of the Galapagos Islands Fries sees the graffiti carved into the hillside by two centuries of mariners. And he reads the names for us. We are in the company of travelers who have followed the course of Charles Darwin’s famous voyage and whose only writing remains as stark and meaningless as uncatalogued bones.

Enter poetry. Lyric poetry. Subjective experience. The story of a singular body.

Fries walks with damaged legs and wears custom made orthopedic shoes as he follows the path of Darwin’s literal and figurative voyage—and like Darwin he travels because customary ideas are in need of re-examination.

A friend of mine in my undergraduate days at Hobart College once observed that “there’s the real Darwin and then there are the Sears & Roebuck Darwins…” The latter are of course the purveyors of faulty social ideas and certainly people with disabilities have been the sad inheritors of same. The late Victorian obsession with eugenics comes to mind.

The History of My Shoes is a poet’s eye look at Darwin’s world of ideas and it is simultaneously a book about inhabiting a body that requires hourly adaptations both of mind and of physical practice. This is a narrative that works against method as Darwin once worked against method and the rewards are manifested on page after page. This is a groundbreaking book for those who are interested in the history of ideas and the corresponding history of the human body.