The U.S. Department of Labor is soliciting ideas from people with disabilities, employers, service providers and advocacy organizations on how to effectively increase the employment of women, veterans and people with disabilities.
Throughout the first three months of 2010, the labor department will hold “Listening Sessions” in Dallas, Texas, Philadelphia, Pa., Chicago, Ill., San Francisco, Calif., Atlanta, Ga. and Boston, Mass. The agency asks that participants register on the A New Day: We’re Listening Web site established especially for these meetings.
Blind accessibility advocates, organizations of the blind and others have an opportunity to advocate for ideas that can lead to greater public awareness of the capabilities of blind people and increased accessibility to the workplace technology that can enable us to achieve and maintain gainful employment.
It seems that studies like this are done every couple of years and, with a pile of new data, the sponsors of such research say, “interesting” and then move on as if nothing was learned.
I’m tired of seeing people with vision impairments and other disabilities forced to act like trained monkeys to show off that, yes, we can answer and even dial telephones. Yes, we can touch type, yes, we have the cognitive skills to think critically and make good decisions. Yes, we can go to the toilet without help, we can go up and down staircases without some do-gooder trying to lift us by our arms. Yes, I can cut my own steak. Yes, I can write software as good or better than anyone on your team. Yes, we can be translators, transcriptionists, transliterators and a but of trans other things I can’t think of right now.
Years after ADA, 508, 255, IDEA, 504 and lots of other legislation, this country continues to refuse to enforce these laws.
It’s why I, Gonz Blinko, prefer living in the shadows and cloaked in hiding. I’m so sick of finding that I am treated like a sideshow freak that the neo-Nazis would just as well see dead as I am clearly an imperfect aryan who, with a birth defect, should probably be removed from the gene pool.
Total panic today, will not leave our hiding place, After watching the documentary, “White Power USA” (you can find it on Big Noise Films) I’ve gotten all the more fearful.
Cynically and Paranoid Yours,
GB