Subject: FYI: Air Force Using Computer Technology to Put Disabled to Work
From: Ginette Perkins (ginettep@seals.org)
Date: Mon Mar 26 2001 - 09:18:16 PST
Air Force Using Computer Technology to Put Disabled to Work
Kevin Lamb
c. 2001 Cox News Service
DAYTON, Ohio - As the Air Force plans to hire 7,000 people with disabilities
in the next five years, a small office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is
becoming the place to go for the special equipment and technology they'll
need for working.
The Computer Accommodations Program (CAP) will set the new employees
up with one-handed keyboards for the partially paralyzed, head-mounted radio
signals for the more fully paralyzed or ergonomic equipment for people with
carpal tunnel syndrome or other musculoskeletal disorders. CAP finds these
ergonomic and assistive supplies, buys them, puts them into work stations
and teaches people how to use them.
``We're matching people with the technology that enables them to
work,'' says Danielle Kuehnle, a program control analyst and one of seven
contractors who work with CAP's single government employee, manager Scott
Clausen.
Since the Air Force Materiel Command started funding the program in
1998, Kuehnle says, ``our customer numbers have skyrocketed. We've gone up
at least 38 percent each year,'' with CAP currently helping 509 Wright-Pat
employees.
The growth led to CAP's expanded Air Force-wide responsibility, which
coincides with two big federal plans to add disabled employees to the
workforce.
President Bush's New Freedom Initiative last month earmarked $880
million over five years to expand employment opportunities for what it
called the 1 in 5 Americans with disabilities, including nearly 1 in 10 with
severe limitations in seeing, hearing, walking or other basic functions. The
plan includes investing in the development of assistive technology, helping
businesses and individuals buy the devices, increasing access to education
and enabling the disabled to take jobs without losing health insurance.
Bush's proposed law closely follows former President Clinton's
commitment last year for the federal government to hire 100,000 people with
disabilities by the end of 2005, which included the Air Force's 7,000. And
starting this summer, any electronic and informational technology bought by
the federal government must be adaptable to people with disabilities.
``Once these people get hired, that's only half the game,'' Kuehnle
says. ``The other half is getting people their accommodations, and we'll be
the catalysts in doing that. People at the Air Force headquarters have told
us they want all their points of contact to be aware of us.''
So if the Air Force hires someone like Rich Lamb, a 28-year Wright-Pat
employee who was born blind, the new worker can come to CAP for a Braille
printer, software that converts computer text to voice and a scanner that
feeds printed text to the voice software.
``It's unbelievable, the stuff they've helped me obtain,'' Lamb says.
CAP also put him in the FlexiPlace program that enables him to work at his
Lebanon home about 80 percent of the time, and it keeps giving him tutorial
tapes for new software.
``We count on every two to four years, these people are going to come
back to us because the technology has changed,'' Kuehnle says. The sea
change from DOS to Windows was particularly challenging for blind people who
suddenly had to click and drag a cursor on a monitor they could not see.
Effective as the JAWS voice software is, Lamb says it has trouble
translating math. He's an operations research analyst with the engineering
directorate, so numbers are vital to his work. ``CAP helped me determine
what would be best for me,'' he says, and he wound up with a Braille
display, which lets him read the monitor by scanning his fingers on a pad
below his keyboard.
Working all his adult life has made Lamb an exception. Seventy percent
of disabled Americans are unemployed, the Bush plan says, costing government
agencies more than $20 billion a year in aid. Once the federal government
dives into assistive technology, Kuehnle says the result no doubt will be
more options at lower prices.
``We have so many disabled people who are still illiterate and
unemployed,'' says Pat Cashdollar, founder of the Technology Resource
Center, which hooks disabled people up with assistive devices in the
civilian world. ``They depend on these technologies. It can make the
difference between productive working and being on government assistance.''
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