Ten years after ADA: How are employers doing?
The Americans With Disabilities Act is now ten years old. According to a 1998 survey:
- Most employers have made changes to their existing recruitment, pre-employment screening, testing and orientation procedures in order to comply with the ADA.
- 80 percent of responding organizations have changed the questions they ask during an interview and 79 percent have made interview locations more accessible to people with disabilities.
- 82 percent have made changes in their existing facilities to be more accessible; 79 percent have been more flexible in applying human resource policies; and 67 percent have restructured jobs or modified working hours.
- When asked about possible barriers to hiring and promoting people with disabilities, the two most frequently cited obstacles included lack of related experience (51 percent) and lack of requisite skills and training (40 percent).
- 79 percent of companies surveyed have either an informal or formal disability management program.
- In dealing with the overlap between the ADA and other employment-related laws, survey respondents indicated that they have the greatest difficulty in handling the interaction between the ADA and the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
“The ADA At Work: Implementation of the Employment Provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act Survey,” released in 1998, was conducted jointly by The Society for Human Resource Management, Cornell University, the Washington Business Group on Health, and the Lewin Group.
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