Dispelling myths about people with disabilities - Employment
By: TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF | Times-Dispatch Published: July 30, 2012
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Employers need to stop thinking of hiring people with disabilities as "charity" and start seeing the value in leveling the playing field, said Debra Ruh, chief marketing officer for SSB BART Group.
Ruh will talk about those issues at a meeting Wednesday sponsored by the Virginia Business Leadership Network. The meeting will be in the auditorium of Dominion Resources' offices in the Innsbrook Corporate Center in western Henrico County.
"There's a lot of myths and fears about hiring people with disabilities," Ruh said. "The reality is hiring a person with a disability is the same as hiring anybody else."
Ruh founded TecAccess, once a Hanover County-based provider of accessibility and workforce solutions for people with disabilities. TecAccess last year merged with McLean-based SSB BART, which provides training, auditing and testing of communications and technologies for accessibility.
Her talk, "Mythbusters: The 'Real' Story About People with Disabilities in the Workforce," will focus on dispelling the misinformation employers have about the Americans with Disabilities Act and the pros and cons of hiring someone with a disability.
Under the law, employers are required to make reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities.
But that doesn't mean they can't fire employees who aren't doing their jobs well. And, Ruh said, it's not just employees with disabilities who require accommodations.
"I've worked with people that wanted to be accommodated so they could leave early on Tuesdays and Thursdays so they could coach their child's soccer team," she said.
Ruh said it's important that employers understand the value of giving people with disabilities the same consideration as other employees. For a person with a disability, she said, "life is a puzzle."
"To get through your daily life, you have to solve puzzles every single step of the way," Ruh said. "Don't you want these really creative problem solvers?"
For more information, email [email protected].
Eleanor Kennedy