University Of Arkansas Researcher Seeks To Open The Workplace To The Deaf And Disabled

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Late spring marks the time when eager graduates begin the ritualistic search for life beyond college, clutching their newly-minted degrees and updated resumes as they seek good jobs and the hope of exchanging starchy meals for a salary and benefits. With an ever-plentiful supply of good jobs, a strong economy and an overwhelming sense of financial security, this year's nearly 1.6 million U.S. college graduates have a better than average chance at a well-paying professional future. Despite this sense of optimism, however, a University of Arkansas researcher wants to remind prospective employers that meaningful professional futures should be accessible to everyone, including those budding professionals who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Paul Geyer, an assistant professor of rehabilitation education and research at the Regional Training Center for Persons Who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing at the University of Arkansas, has conducted extensive research on employment issues faced by deaf, late-deafened or hard of hearing workers.

"Tremendous strides have been made in public awareness of accessibility issues in the past decade because of the Americans with Disabilities Act," Geyer said. "But there's still a great deal of work to be done, especially in the area of equal rights to employment. Hearing loss is not as obvious a factor as a physical disability, but unfortunately, it's still just as powerful a deterrent to potential employers - one can't simply build a wheelchair ramp to make the problem of accessibility disappear."

An estimated one in 10 American workers is hard of hearing, while some 357,000 others are classified as totally deaf. In 1997-98 alone, there were almost 24,000 students with some degree of hearing loss enrolled in colleges and universities across the United States. Despite significant gains provided by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, people with disabilities, particularly those with some degree of hearing loss, still face major barriers in the workplace. As a result, the unemployment rate for deaf workers is triple the rate of the general workforce, and the rate for women who are deaf is even higher.

One of the major reasons for this discrepancy, Geyer says, is the lack of information made available to human resource personnel on the laws, regulations, reasonable accommodations aids and devices and the capabilities of job seekers and employees with disabilities.

"Unfortunately, the guidance offered to employers so far has done little to calm the anxiety and confusion experienced by supervisors, managers and human resource personnel as they struggle to deal with the day to day issues of deafness in the workplace," Geyer said. "With more research on this specific population, we can surely make a difference in the lives of the thousands of Americans with disabilities that keep them from working."

Geyer advocates the use of augmentative devices to make the workplace "reasonably accessible" to people with hearing difficulties and physical disabilities and insists that measures like these are not as difficult to implement as they often seem at the outset.

"Making a working environment hospitable to someone living with a disability is often as easy as purchasing a bit of additional software, electrical equipment or just providing a simple telephone device for the deaf (TTY)," Geyer said. "Usually, changes like these aren't nearly as expensive and technically frightening as employers often assume."

Geyer insists that it's not only the employees who ultimately benefit from workplace accessibility but also their employers, coworkers and the community as well.

"When employers address a social problem like equal access to good jobs at the grass roots level, they have a direct impact on the social tolerance level," he said. "All kinds of good comes from 'leveling the playing field' for workers with disabilities. Not only do working people living with hearing or physical disabilities become productive members of society and generate revenue, their employers help create an environment of tolerance. Those are tremendous benefits that make our communities better places to live and work."

"It remains for us to debunk the myth that people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or living with a physical disability cannot function successfully as professionals in their field," Geyer continued. "With an effort to educate companies and corporations, those with disabilities can be included in nearly any pool of potential employees. It's that simple."

Geyer will present a series of his studies of deaf and hard of hearing workers and their employers at the annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) in New Orleans, La., April 14-16. SIOP, established in 1982, is a 6000-member organization dedicated to applying psychology to people in the workplace to improve their attitudes and environment.

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