[nfbwatlk] More reflections on "reasonable accommodation"

[Mike Freeman]

Elizabeth:

Again, I do not quarrel with your post below. Indeed, I think most thoughtful people with disabilities share your dream. Certainly the National Federation of the Blind does.

But there's theory and then there's reality. You write: "What I'm aiming for here is a concept beyond "reasonable accommodation." "Reasonable accommodation" is personal. The barrier free workplace – the barrier free market place – is societal. With "reasonable accommodation,"The wheel has to be refitted or refashined case by case. In a barrier free society, the same wheels could spin for everyone." This is certainly a valid dream and great in theory. However, as a practical matter in a world where the marketplace tends to govern societal activities -- at least as they intersect with employment -- it does not provide a blueprint for progress for persons with disabilities who are, by definition, minorities within society, at least in my opinion. In part this is due to the age-old problem that NFB perennially points out (much to the distress of people who see the concept of universal design as the salvation of the world: with each person with a disability having his/her own unique mix of talents, capacities and deficits, it becomes increasingly difficult to accommodate those characteristics in a world where, at least in the technical realm, product design and manufacture is dominated by companies, not individuals, and where people are increasingly using what we programmers used to call "turn-key systems" that weren't one-off but were designed to fill perceived sets of needs by individuals and companies and where people were increasingly expected to mold themselves to the system rather than the other way round.

Consider the example of blind diabetics that both you and I have cited. You correctly aver that blind diabetics should have access to the same tools as their sighted fellow diabetics. But in a world wherein blind diabetics are a minority within the blind community and the blind community is a minority within society, there are virtually no levers that we can activate to cause mainstream diabetes technologies to be made blind-friendly. Admittedly, there is a moral imperative to make such technologies accessible but, sad to say, most of the time, morals don't cut much ice in the world of practical economics. And there is virtually no legal framework that we can use to convert the moral imperative into action and there is very little incentive for medical device manufacturers to produce accessible diabetes technologies. I'm sure this bothers you as it ought to bother most caring people. But moral indignation does not accessible diabetes technologies make.

Hence, I outlined the perhaps more primitive steps we blind diabetics can take in the here and now to control our diabetes, maintaining our self-reliance and not needing to depend upon fancy diabetes technologies that, I believe, are unlikely to be developed in the immediate future. This doesn't mean we don't advocate development of such accessible technologies. It *does* mean that, rather than pining for accessible technologies that don't exist yet while needlessly sacrificing diabetic control while we wait, we use the tried-and-true technologies at hand.

Admittedly, such an approach is not ideal. But what practical alternative do we have when we are faced with government that eschews mandates upon business while emphasizing technologies that shut us out? Long-term, we can advocate for technologies that theoretically could read all our displays for us and, more importantly, interpret those readings. But isn't that another way of saying that what we really need is Mr. data from "Startrek, the Next Generation"? In other words, are we not slowly but inexorably being pushed to develop substitutions for vision rather than working toward a world in which access to information doesn't depend upon vision?

And what of the increasing emphasis these days being placed upon security of software systems? My place of work would not and *should* not allow, say, NVDA to be put on its systems due to the changing systems and the inability to correctly evaluate security. And there's already one very good antivirus system -- Kaspersky -- that maintains that it will *never* allow keyboard access to its products because said access is *itself* a security risk?

How do we implement your ideal in such situations?

Again, this isn't criticism: we need all the idea-generating we can manage.

I appreciate your continuing the dialog.

Mike Freeman


-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Elizabeth Rene via nfbwatlk
Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2014 1:47 PM
To: nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org
Subject: [nfbwatlk] More reflections on "reasonable accommodation"

Hi Mike, Debbie, Mary Ellen, and everyone,
Thank you for your comments and conversation about job hunting and "reasonable accommodation."
In my last post, I suggested A re-visitation of the term "reasonable accommodation," arguing that it carried overtones of paternalism, and questioning whether it didn't offer at least a subliminal invitation to ask employers to take care of us (and make allowances for our disabilities) rather than a gateway to full equal opportunity in the workplace. 
I argued that women, for example, did not request "accommodation" when insisting on gender appropriate bathrooms in formerly male-dominated work venues. We feminists argued that the adjustments made to the work environment through the influence of women would benefit all. To a point, at least, I think that prophecy has come true.
The ADA and its amendments have brought people with disabilities into the mainstream culture. Little by little, it is becoming less and less shameful to lay claim  to a disability.
Little by little, for many reasons, The idea of human finitude is becoming less an indictment of the individual and more a fact of the human condition.
More and more, the concepts of a quality and accessibility embodied in the ADA are becoming accepted as the civil rights that they were intended to be. And because of the ADA and it's statutory precursors, "reasonable accommodation" has become a legal term of art, carrying meaning distinct from that which the words alone might impart.
As a term of art, the ideas embodied in "reasonable accommodation" evolve with the culture, with the changing attitudes of the courts, and with shifting political sensibilities.
Whoever thought, in 1990 for example, that a major contender in the computer industry would build accessibility into the heart of its operating systems?
But it seems to me that questions still remain as to where our responsibility as blind people leaves off and that of society and employers begins.
Mike, I think that the blindness skills that you cite in your most recent posts have their place – working with an amanuensis, using a slate and stylus, and administering one's own insulin injection, for example. But to me this is the blindness equivalent of what everyone must do "off the grid,"when the power is out and the Internet comes down. They don't fit the everyday 21st century workplace anymore then weaving on a handloom or spinning yarn could make one's living after the Industrial Revolution.
 And we are in the middle of another Industrial Revolution.
Our ideas, our self-concept as resourceful  employees and entrepreneurs, and our skills have to keep pace.
And so should our expectations.
I don't fault at all the diabetics who insist on universal accessibility in the medical devices  marketed to them. If blindness is a foreseeable outcome of diabetes, isn't it about time for this?
And I'm not at all surprised that an employer might ask whether some piece of technology could make a human reader unnecessary. When was the last time you saw job openings for amanuenses on Craigslist? Not an especially flourishing career path. If anything, the use of a reader is task specific, and one can't reasonably expect an employer to hire someone just for that purpose (I'd like to know what the Feds do though).
I grew up being taught all of the traditional blindness skills. But when I graduated from college in 1972 and wanted an office job to support my ongoing criminal justice activism, I found that typewriters weren't being used anymore – only word processors. And these didn't speak. I had edited my high school newspaper, and had written freelance articles, gratis, for a national prison reform journal. But already I was being told that the process of submitting news copy was automated, and I wouldn't have a place in journalism.
I'm thinking aloud as I plot the direction of this post, so, my apologies for rambling.
Two thoughts come to mind at this point.
One is that the internal processes of each employer are not necessarily evident from the job description or even from an interview, and may be actively concealed as a legitimate business secret. Wiat the cited applicant observes (and absorbs) while walking through an office on the way to an interview might not catch our attention as we focus on the skills requested by the employer to fill the need. And as the employer sits down with HR managers to tease out the essential functions of a job, none might suspect that the medical record keeping or law office management software saving the company thousands each month is incompatible with JAWS. The devil is in the details.
The other thought is this: combat veterans who would have died on the battlefield only years ago are coming home to work and live in society with wounds demanding technologies heretofore unimagined. These vets don't want to be shut-ins. And who dares deny them the life they've paid for?
What I'm aiming for here is a concept beyond "reasonable accommodation." "Reasonable accommodation" is personal. The barrier free workplace – the barrier free market place – is societal. With "reasonable accommodation,"The wheel has to be refitted or refashined case by case. In a barrier free society, the same wheels could spin for everyone.
That's my dream.
Thanks for reading,
Elizabeth   
 

Elizabeth M René 
Attorney at Law 
WSBA #10710
KCBA #21824 
rene0373 at gmail.com
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