The South Wing

Policies to promote full participation of people with disabilities often ignore the real access barriers while still being heralded as prime measures to ensure inclusion. For example, offering price concessions on rail travel without building ramps on platforms or low floors on trains; or reserving a portion of public sector jobs without any efforts at ensuring accessible workplaces. Simplistic quota-based affirmative action policies that primarily aim at increasing numerical representation are inadequate and unable to break down the real barriers in obtaining and retaining employment, especially for such a heterogeneous target population.

People with disabilities face significant disparities in pursuing vocations and jobs of their choice due to stigma and societal presumptions about their inability to engage in productive labor. Beliefs about their employability can result in severely discriminatory practices in all aspects of the employment process such as hiring, retention, and promotions, responsibilities and employer expectations, worker appreciation, and discharge. They are frequently viewed only as the recipients of someone else’s charity, as the subject of someone else’s expertise, and confined to household enterprises, handicraft workshops, and charity based and family income. Such exclusion from the mainstream occurs when individuals are expected to fit into the existing environment, even though the environment itself acts as their biggest obstacle. In reality, people with significant disabilities can perform competitively in high end and skilled jobs when given fair and equal employment opportunities through the use of assistive technology, accessible environments, and reasonable workplace modifications. If employment policies do not embody this holistic view, they will remain policies on paper for the majority of this population.
India’s Persons with Disabilities Act of 1995 created a 3% quota for people with disabilities in all public sector organizations, divided into 1% for people with blindness or low vision, 1% for people with hearing impairments, and 1% for people with loco motor disability or cerebral palsy. This allocation completely excludes people with other disabilities such as speech, learning, developmental and intellectual disabilities (other than cerebral palsy), mental illness, or those with disabling conditions arising due to chronic or progressive illnesses such as cancer. An Expert Committee constituted by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment identifies different government jobs suitable for people with disabilities based solely on physical functioning requirements. People with disabilities can apply for unreserved vacancies only if they fall under the identified disability category. There are several problems with this, starting with the discriminatory notion that people with disabilities are completely defined by their medical conditions alone and there is no need to judge individual merit, qualifications, experience, and capacity to actually perform the job if they don’t fall into the right category.

This does not imply that positions need not have minimum functioning requirements, but a medical diagnosis by itself is not the most accurate indicator. For example, according to the List of Identified Jobs a person who cannot use both arms cannot be a computer programmer – presumably because of the inability to type on the keyboard. This is irrelevant if a person otherwise qualified in computer programming can use voice recognition software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking for data input (nowadays used frequently by people without disabilities as well). People who are blind can work easily and accurately with data and documents through the use of Braille or screen readers – then why should they be restricted from being information scientists, statisticians, or economists? Why bar a qualified individual with hearing impairments from being an industrial engineer – work that involves the study of man, machine, and materials – when sign language interpreters, aids, or information and communication technologies can facilitate interaction? Are they being barred because they really cannot perform, or simply because the rest of us believe they cannot perform?

Even though “aids and appliances” are to be considered in making final decisions, many people will not even get the opportunity to demonstrate how they can work with these through pure elimination based on medical diagnosis. Additionally, “aids and appliances” cannot address all barriers in the workplace. If a person cannot enter an office, use the restroom, or interact with coworkers, they’re clearly not in an equal opportunity environment.

Not addressing the real barriers to employment will limit the range of workplace activities that people with disabilities can participate in, which will continue to be interpreted as their shortcoming, inability, and incompetence. The consequence is that only people who need very few to no employment supports can actually benefit from this quota system. Those with more significant disabilities lying outside the margins before the quota system will continue to be marginalized.

The labor market does not function in a vacuum either. Lack of inclusive and accessible education programs, limited vocational training opportunities, and inaccessible transportation systems also undermine the ability of people with disabilities to compete in the labor market. Reserved job positions will not solve these problems. On the contrary, lowering meritocracy criteria creates patronizing attitudes and reinforces negative stereotypes even with contradicting evidence and competitive performance. Quotas, even in equal proportions to the percentage of people with disabilities in the population, cannot work in isolation to strengthen and sustain their employment opportunities. They have to be supported, or even superseded, by anti-discrimination measures, sensitivity trainings for coworkers and supervisors, inclusive education, skill development and training programs, and the utilization of advances in technology and non-technological accommodations.

Above all, people with disabilities have to be seen as people first, with equal rights and the freedom to exercise those rights. Equality does not mean difference-blindness. Different people may need different resources to achieve similar outcomes, and it is more important to ensure that people have the freedom to apply and be considered for the jobs of their choice without having to fit into pre-determined moulds. With India’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, an amendment to the Disability Act on the table, and new incentives to promote private sector employment, there is an opportunity for a more comprehensive employment strategy that goes beyond quotas. People with disabilities can and want to contribute to economic development; equalization of opportunities will ensure that a productive section of the population does not remain on the sidelines.download dog day afternoon movie download my daughter s secret online

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