Kansans with disabilities have what employers need. Topeka politicians let them down | Opinion

Where is the love for the disability community in Kansas?

July is Disability Pride Month in the U.S., a time of celebration for the disability community to coincide with the anniversary of the July 26, 1990, passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The American Bar Association defines the event as “reclaiming visibility in public and interacting fully with their disabilities out in the open.”

Ben Mattlin, who lives with spinal muscular atrophy and is author of “Disability Pride: Dispatches from a Post-ADA World,” equates disability as cutting “across all nationalities, races, orientations, genders, socioeconomic groups, and religions — perhaps the most democratic of all minority cohorts.”

Kansas lawmakers had an opportunity to make government positions more disability inclusive this year but failed to move proposed legislation forward this past session.

If passed, House Bill 2253 would have allowed Kansans with disabilities applying for government positions to have employment preference because of their disabilities. It also would have guaranteed that reasonable accommodations are provided to successfully do these jobs. Instead, after a public hearing in which many of us in the Kansas disability community provided testimony, H.B. 2253 was stricken from the legislative calendar.

Up to 1 in 4 Americans identify as having a disability. Let’s do the math here. In Kansas, there are 125 state representatives and 40 state senators. Statistically, up to 31 representatives and 10 senators could be living with disability. That is quite telling.

As a person with progressive sensorineural hearing loss and a former special education teacher in Kansas, there was no such law to provide employment preference when I began applying for jobs in the state. I was also not made aware of reasonable accommodations when I applied for various teaching positions. After being hired as a teacher, this put an enormous burden on my shoulders to prove that I was capable of performing all the responsibilities of the job, while advocating for access to appropriate workplace accommodations.

According to Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, regulations require that covered federal contractors and subcontractors take proactive steps to recruit and retain workers with disabilities. Because this is a requirement for businesses that work with the government, it is important that state government positions be disability-inclusive to set this example for other businesses.

One concern may be the potential cost of providing accommodations to employees with disabilities.

According to the latest annual survey from the nonprofit Job Accommodation Network, however, employers reported a high percentage (56%) of accommodations for people with disabilities cost nothing to implement — zero dollars — while the rest of the accommodations made had a typical cost of $500. That $500 cost has been consistent across the many years of the survey’s findings.

Research shows that people with disabilities have higher levels of problem-solving skills, memory and dependability. Harvard Business Review conducted research that revealed adults with various disabilities, such as autism or other types of neurodiversity, may possess higher-than-average abilities in memory, mathematics and pattern recognition. Employees with intellectual disabilities, according to research from the Institute for Corporate Productivity, are rated high for their dependability (89%), engagement (88%), integration with co-workers (87%) and attendance (84%).

Back to Disability Pride Month in Kansas. If our state’s leaders truly wanted to celebrate the 1 in 4 of us who live with disability, they would consider disability-inclusive policies in the 2023-24 session. The late Judy Heumann, a polio survivor and author often called the mother of the U.S. disability movement, once said, “It’s one thing to have our rights, but that doesn’t mean you have justice.”

How can Kansans help? Take a moment to learn more about disability justice and the history of the disability rights movement.

This article is a good place to start. Use the #DisabilityPrideMonth hashtag on your social media accounts to promote awareness of the July event. This month should be a time of disability awareness-building for all Kansans, and your allyship is truly appreciated.

Shanna Groves serves on the board of the Kansas Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. She is the author of two books about hearing loss.