Modernizing Disability Policies and Programs to Serve a Diverse Nation

NATIONAL COUNCIL ON DISABILITY
December 1, 1999

National Council on Disability
1331 F Street, NW, Suite 1050
Washington, DC 20004-1107

202-272-2004 Voice
202-272-2074 TTY
202-272-2022 Fax

This report is also available in Spanish, Chinese, braille, and large print, on diskette and audiocassette, and on the Internet at the National Council on Disability's award-winning Web page (http://www.ncd.gov).

The views contained in this report do not necessarily represent those of the Administration, because this document has not been subjected to the A-19 Executive Branch review process.

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

December 1, 1999

The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

On behalf of the National Council on Disability (NCD), I am pleased to submit NCD's new report on issues affecting people with disabilities from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, Lift Every Voice: Modernizing Disability Policies and Programs to Serve a Diverse Nation. We were pleased to release the Executive Summary of this report at the White House forum on Disability and Cultural Diversity on July 26, 1999, the ninth anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

As you know, there continues to be a large disparity in employment and educational outcomes between people with disabilities and the non-disabled population in the United States. This gap is even more pronounced for people with disabilities who are members of racial or ethnic minority groups. The attached report calls on the Administration and Congress to work to close this gap by making a concerted effort to translate the promise of ADA and other disability laws and programs into real opportunities for children and adults with disabilities from diverse racial and ethnic groups, their families, and their communities. NCD stands ready to work with you and leaders throughout your Administration and Congress to implement the recommendations in this report.

As you have reminded us through your One America initiative, America benefits from the diversity of our citizenry. To fully tap this rich diversity, we must modernize our disability policies and programs so that they are delivered in a culturally competent manner. I look forward to your ongoing leadership to ensure that the American dream is truly accessible to all.

Sincerely,

Marca Bristo
Chairperson

(This same letter of transmittal was sent to the President Pro Tempore of the U.S. Senate and the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.)

LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING
"The Black National Anthem"
James Weldon Johnson, 1900

Lift ev'ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring.
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might.
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee,
Shadowed beneath thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

James W. Johnson originally wrote this song for a presentation in celebration of the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln. It was adopted as the Black National Anthem in the early 1940s.

NATIONAL COUNCIL ON DISABILITY
MEMBERS AND STAFF

Members

Marca Bristo, Chairperson
Kate Pew Wolters, First Vice Chairperson
Hughey Walker, Second Vice Chairperson
Yerker Andersson, Ph.D.
Dave N. Brown
John D. Kemp
Audrey McCrimon
Gina McDonald
Bonnie O'Day, Ph.D.
Lilliam Rangel-Diaz
Debra Robinson
Shirley W. Ryan
Michael B. Unhjem
Rae E. Unzicker
Ela Yazzie-King

Staff

Ethel D. Briggs, Executive Director
Mark S. Quigley, Public Affairs Specialist
Kathleen A. Blank, Attorney/Program Specialist
Geraldine Drake Hawkins, Ph.D., Program Specialist
Moira Shea, Senior Legislative and Economic Adviser
Allan W. Holland, Accountant
Brenda Bratton, Executive Secretary
Stacey S. Brown, Staff Assistant

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The National Council on Disability (NCD) wishes to express its appreciation to Sarah L. Triano, graduate assistant at San Francisco State University's Institute on Disability, for her assistance in drafting this report. NCD would also like to acknowledge the contributions of participating individuals and organizations, including members of the San Francisco State University Institute on Disability Report Team (Jean Lin, Laura Echegary, Randolph Feliz, David Freeman, and director/professor Paul Longmore), Kathy Abrahamson and Kathy Knox of the Rose Resnick Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco, Nancy Grant and Cheryl Wu of the Hearing Society of San Francisco, and Steven P. Triano, president and CEO of Automated Business Concepts, Inc., in Fremont, California.

NCD would also like to thank LaDonna Fowler of the American Indian Rehabilitation Rights Organization of Warriors, Mandan Kundu of the Rehabilitation Counseling Program at Southern University and A&M College, and Paul Leung of the Department of Rehabilitation Counseling at the University of North Texas for their assistance.

CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

I. HAVING A SEAT AT THE TABLE: BARRIERS TO RESOURCES

A. BARRIERS TO EMPLOYMENT
B. BARRIERS TO PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS
C. BARRIERS TO TRANSPORTATION
D. BARRIERS TO CULTURALLY COMPETENT SERVICE DELIVERY
     1. MINORITY REPRESENTATION IN DISABILITY SERVICE PROFESSIONS
     2. CULTURALLY APPROPRIATE OUTREACH
     3. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION BARRIERS

II. GETTING IN THE DOOR: BARRIERS TO CITIZENSHIP

III. BEING RECOGNIZED: THE NEED FOR ACCURATE DEMOGRAPHIC DATA

A. INTRODUCTION
B. BARRIERS TO RESOURCES
     1. OVERVIEW
     2. ANALYSIS

C. BARRIERS TO CULTURALLY COMPETENT SERVICE DELIVERY
     1. OVERVIEW
     2. ANALYSIS

D. BARRIERS TO CITIZENSHIP
     1. OVERVIEW
     2. ANALYSIS

E. BARRIERS TO ACCURATE DEMOGRAPHIC DATA
     1. OVERVIEW
     2. ANALYSIS

IV. CONCLUSION

V. NOTES

Appendix

On July 26, 1990, President George Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), one of the most sweeping civil rights laws ever enacted. During the signing ceremony, President Bush emphasized the historic importance of the signing of the Act by comparing it to the fall of the Berlin Wall. "And now I sign legislation which takes a sledgehammer to another wall," he said, "one which has, for too many generations, separated Americans with disabilities from the freedom they could glimpse, but not grasp. Once again, we rejoice as this barrier falls, proclaiming together we will not accept, we will not excuse, we will not tolerate discrimination in America." Then, as he lifted his pen to sign ADA, Bush concluded his remarks by declaring, "Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down."

Nine years later, ADA and the American disability rights movement have produced some tangible results for many Americans with disabilities. In towns and cities across the United States, ADA has produced evolutionary progress in removing barriers that exclude Americans with disabilities and their families. But for a large segment of the population with disabilities, particularly those from diverse racial, cultural, and ethnic communities, a shameful wall of exclusion continues to hinder their ability to participate fully in all aspects of American society. Whether the exclusion stems from one's disability, one's race, one's language, one's culture, one's ethnicity, or a combination of these, the sting of rejection is just as painful. As we mark the ninth anniversary of the signing of ADA, the declaration of equality made in 1990 remains hollow for many people with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds in their continuing struggle against the persistent barriers of poverty, inequality, and dual discrimination.

On August 5, 1998, the National Council on Disability (NCD) held a public hearing in San Francisco on "Meeting the Unique Needs of People with Disabilities from Diverse Cultural Backgrounds." This hearing was part of a series of hearings and forums that NCD conducts to develop recommendations for improving the ability of federal policies and programs to serve diverse communities effectively. A roundtable forum in Atlanta and a hearing in New Orleans preceded the San Francisco hearing. To encourage the participation of non-English speakers and specifically to ensure input from the Asian/Pacific Islander and Hispanic communities, the San Francisco hearing was conducted simultaneously in Spanish, English, and Cantonese. Although the hearing participants were from California and Hawaii, the issues raised have application at the national level.

In six hours of testimony at the San Francisco hearing, more than 60 witnesses identified numerous barriers to full participation by minority individuals with disabilities and their families.

Three main barriers emerged from the testimony:

1. Having a Seat at the Table--Barriers to Employment, Public Accommodations, Transportation, and Culturally Competent Service Delivery.
   
2. Getting in the Door--Barriers to Citizenship.
   
   
3. Being Recognized--Barriers to Accurate Demographic Data.

This report follows up on the groundbreaking 1993 NCD report Meeting the Unique Needs of Minorities with Disabilities. Many of the findings reported in 1993 remain true six years later. Notwithstanding federal efforts to improve service delivery to minorities and other underserved groups, grassroots consumers have told NCD that little has changed that has resulted in tangible improvements in their day-to-day lives.

This report is not a comprehensive treatment of policy issues affecting minorities with disabilities. Rather, it is intended to spark dialogue about how best to learn from our experiences in the past several years and how to bring the federal disability policy agenda to a new level of inclusiveness and effectiveness, resulting in better outcomes for people with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds and their families. The report captures priority issues identified by those who testified in San Francisco, many of whom are native Spanish speakers or native Cantonese speakers. Although the issues raised in San Francisco echoed themes NCD had heard in the public hearings and meetings in Atlanta and New Orleans, some of the issues raised elsewhere were not emphasized at the San Francisco hearing, and some of the priority issues raised in San Francisco received less attention elsewhere.

To broaden the scope of the policy agenda contained in this and other reports that NCD has released in recent years, NCD will host a think tank in spring 2000 to further refine a public policy agenda that is responsive to the needs of all minorities with disabilities, their families, and their communities. Likewise, in winter 2000, NCD plans to issue reports on federal enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and ADA that will include a number of recommendations specifically geared toward making those laws more effective for minorities with disabilities and their families.

NCD looks forward to working with the broader disability and civil rights communities in the coming months and years to elevate the voices it heard in San Francisco, New Orleans, and Atlanta and thereby make the policy landscape more inclusive and responsive to the needs of this important population. The pages that follow include many important recommendations for improving service delivery for minorities with disabilities. However, NCD wishes to highlight one recommendation in particular that has potential to enhance the impact of current policies and programs.

NCD has learned from grassroots witnesses that the best way to empower minorities with disabilities and their families to take full advantage of federal laws, programs, and services is to provide them with easy-to-understand, culturally appropriate information about what their rights are under various federal laws (e.g., ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, IDEA, the Fair Housing Act) and how best to exercise those rights when a violation occurs.

NCD recommends that an interagency team composed of representatives from the departments of Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development, along with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Small Business Administration, and Federal Communications Commission, develop and implement a large-scale outreach and training program targeted to people with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds and their families that will provide such information directly to the target audiences through a series of forums, workshops, and seminars across the country. These trainings should be repeated on a regular basis so that new people are trained each year and materials routinely updated.

This interagency team should work with disability communities, minority communities, other disability, minority, and religious organizations, and other interested organizations to develop a workplan, timetables, and appropriate consultation as it begins its work. In addition, NCD recommends that the interagency team recruit, train, and contract with a core group of people with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds and their family members to help develop the written materials and programs that will be used for the trainings, translate them into different languages with awareness of the cultural appropriateness of terminology, and conduct the trainings once the materials are produced. The federal partners should make efforts to include and accommodate often-overlooked groups among the people to be trained and include young adults with disabilities, people with disabilities living on Indian reservations and in other rural or isolated locations, people with mental disabilities, and people with limited English proficiency. Finally, NCD recommends that the federal partners eliminate any potential financial barriers to participation so that the population trained will truly represent the population to be served.

NCD found in 1993 that "persons from minority backgrounds with disabilities...do not have appropriate training and career development opportunities." NCD believes this finding is still applicable today. On the basis of the low employment numbers for minorities with disabilities and the testimony presented at the 1998 NCD hearing in San Francisco, it is apparent that minority individuals with disabilities still have tremendous difficulty gaining access to culturally appropriate job training and career development opportunities. Although all people with disabilities confront these barriers, the barriers are more persistent and more pronounced for people with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds.

While the labor force participation rate for people 18 to 64 years old who do not have disabilities is nearly 83 percent, it is only about 52 percent for those with disabilities, and only about 38.6 percent for non-Whites with disabilities. For people with severe disabilities, the labor force participation rate is about 30 percent for Whites, 21.2 percent for Hispanics, and 17.8 percent for Blacks.

On the basis of the testimony and data reviewed, it seems that in spite of the Rehabilitation Cultural Diversity Initiative begun in 1992, significant racial disparities persist in the delivery of vocational rehabilitation services. In California, these disparities are particularly apparent in the areas of job training and placement services. Moreover, minority individuals with disabilities often have tremendous difficulty obtaining employment with minority-owned businesses because of the stigma attached to disability within many minority communities. In some racial and ethnic communities, as in some White communities, people with disabilities are still perceived as bad for business, as not worth investing in as employees or courting as customers, and in some cases as bearers of bad luck.

NCD's 1993 finding that "persons from minority backgrounds with disabilities...are unable to take full advantage of ADA and other disability policies because of a lack of economic opportunity" is still applicable today. According to witnesses at the San Francisco hearing, few opportunities are available to minority individuals with disabilities for economic independence, particularly entrepreneurial opportunities. In seeking employment, many minority individuals with disabilities encounter significant language and communication barriers, often the direct result of discrimination based on fear and ignorance.

Family members of minority individuals with disabilities have unique needs and confront unique barriers to employment, such as lack of after-school childcare, that have a direct impact on the provision of services for the member with a disability. For the most part, these needs of family members of minority individuals with disabilities have not been incorporated into the larger disability policy agenda, and this failure has had adverse effects on the lives of minority-group members with disabilities.

Recommendations for Improving Employment Opportunities:

• The Department of Labor (DOL), the Small Business Administration (SBA), and the Department of Education should expand funding for culturally appropriate job training and career development opportunities and should require all federally funded programs to demonstrate their ability to meet the language, culture, and disability needs of the whole population in their service areas.
  
  
• The Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) should address the racial disparities apparent in the vocational rehabilitation system, particularly in the areas of job training and placement services.
  
  
• RSA should strengthen and increase the number of interventions outlined in Section 21 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires vocational rehabilitation agencies to take action to better address the needs of underserved groups within their service areas.
  
  
• RSA should conduct compliance reviews of all state departments of rehabilitation to determine the extent to which their efforts to comply with Section 21 of the Rehabilitation Act have produced better outcomes for minorities with disabilities in their state.
  
  
• The SBA, working with the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities, should provide more entrepreneurial opportunities for minority individuals with disabilities to promote economic independence.
  
  
• Federal, state, and local policy makers should incorporate the unique needs of family members of minority individuals with disabilities into the larger disability policy agenda, particularly in the area of employment.

One barrier to employment for family members of minority children with disabilities that was mentioned repeatedly at the San Francisco hearing was the lack of accessible, affordable, and integrated childcare and after-school programs. Very few after-school programs are available in California, let alone programs that are affordable, integrated, and accessible. The programs that do meet these criteria tend to have waiting lists of a year or longer. Even where programs do exist, they are rarely staffed with employees trained to work with children of varied abilities and from different cultural backgrounds.

The lack of accessible, affordable, and integrated childcare and after-school programs forces parents of minority children with disabilities to forgo valuable employment opportunities. Parents who cannot afford to stay home with their children testified about turning to extreme measures, including locking their disabled children in their rooms--a practice that was noted by a substantial number of witnesses at the 1998 hearing. Put simply, the childcare shortage in California and other states has reached crisis proportions for low-income parents of children with disabilities, many of whom are minorities.

Recommendations for Improving Access to Childcare:

• The Department of Justice (DOJ) should place a high priority on investigations to assess compliance with ADA Title III mandates for access among social service center establishments serving children.
  
  
• The Departments of Education and Justice should place a high priority on investigations of school district compliance with IDEA least restrictive environment requirements in the implementation of district-provided after-school programs.
  
  
• Congress should appropriate funding to increase the supply of accessible, affordable, and integrated childcare and after-school programs and should require that all federally funded programs not only meet federal disability access standards but also demonstrate the capacity to meet the language, cultural, and disability needs of their entire service population.
  
  
• The Departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services (HHS), including the federally funded legal services programs and protection and advocacy systems, should increase outreach efforts to parents of minority children with disabilities regarding their rights under ADA, IDEA, section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Fair Housing Act, and other federal disability civil rights laws.

NCD's 1993 finding that "persons from minority backgrounds with disabilities...have greater difficulty...gaining access to public accommodations...than do other Americans with disabilities" is still applicable today. More than 20 percent of the witnesses who testified at the San Francisco hearing said they confronted multiple barriers when trying to gain access to public accommodations such as restaurants, markets, and other local establishments, and that this often occurred in their own cultural communities (such as Chinatown in San Francisco). Minority individuals with disabilities and their family members who testified attributed the continued lack of access to public accommodations to the lack of compliance with existing access mandates in Title III of ADA and to the lack of awareness of those requirements among protected individuals and covered entities in minority communities.

Serious gaps exist in the legal protections afforded minority individuals with disabilities and their families, particularly in the area of access to public accommodations. Unlike IDEA, which has specific language supporting the rights of ethnic minority families whose primary language is not English, ADA and most other disability laws and policies fail to address the unique language and communication needs of minority individuals with disabilities and their families for whom English is a second language. Moreover, many American Indian tribes have no civil rights law for tribe members with disabilities.

Recommendations for Improving Access to Public Accommodations:

• Congress should require federal enforcement agencies such as DOJ, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Department of Transportation (DOT), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to demonstrate their effectiveness in serving people with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds.
  
  
• Federal enforcement agencies should work together to develop a multiagency outreach and technical assistance strategy that would constitute a national campaign to increase knowledge of civil rights protections and how to file complaints among protected communities, focused on underserved groups such as language, racial, and ethnic minorities, youth, and rural residents with disabilities and their families.
  
  
• Congress should ensure that civil rights enforcement agencies have adequate financial and staffing resources to address the needs of their entire service areas effectively.
  
  
• Congress and the Bureau of Indian Affairs should provide federal financial support and assistance for the development of tribal disability rights legislation.

NCD's 1993 finding that "persons from minority backgrounds with disabilities...have greater difficulty...gaining access to...transportation than do other Americans with disabilities" is still applicable today. Nearly one in five witnesses who testified at the hearing in San Francisco said they encountered multiple barriers.

One issue brought up repeatedly at the hearing was the perceived unwillingness on the part of public transportation personnel to accommodate minority individuals with disabilities and implement existing requirements for access to public transportation. Several parents who testified at the hearing said this problem is especially acute for minority children with disabilities. According to these parents, public transportation personnel have been unwilling to assist minority children with disabilities in getting on and off the bus and in finding the appropriate stop. Minority individuals with disabilities who speak English as a second language or who do not speak English at all face additional language and communication barriers when attempting to use public transportation. Some respondents testified that public transportation personnel are less helpful to these minority individuals who speak limited or no English.

The number of transportation options available to minority individuals with disabilities who live in isolated areas and rural communities is limited, especially in the Pacific Islands. Although most Americans with disabilities occasionally have to wait a long time for public transportation, witnesses at the San Francisco hearing asserted that because of their disability and racial identity, drivers were even less likely to pick them up. Witnesses said they had sometimes been forced to wait four to six hours before public transportation personnel would finally stop and pick them up, and as a result of this discrimination they missed important medical or other appointments.

Recommendations for Improving Access to Transportation:

• DOT and/or DOJ should investigate the extent to which local compliance with ADA transportation requirements is influenced by race and ethnicity.
  
  
• Congress should ensure that transportation civil rights enforcement agencies have adequate financial and staffing resources to maintain an adequate presence with covered transportation entities to ensure compliance.
  
  
• DOT should make funds available for local transportation providers to offer ongoing diversity and disability awareness training for all public transportation personnel, as well as specific training on the public transportation provisions of ADA.
  
  
• DOT should create incentives for local transportation providers to increase efforts to hire bilingual public transportation personnel in service areas with high concentrations of non-English speakers.

1. Minority Representation in Disability Service Professions

NCD's 1993 finding that one of the main barriers to culturally competent service delivery for minority individuals with disabilities is the lack of minority representation in disability service professions is still applicable today. Half of the participants at the San Francisco hearing testified about the difficulty they have in getting culturally competent services because of the lack of minority individuals in disability service professions.

One area where the lack of minority representation is particularly apparent is disability-related counseling services. Several respondents at the hearing stressed the tremendous need for cultural identification between clients and counselors in the provision of culturally appropriate counseling services. In a recent national study funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), 82 state rehabilitation agencies (general and blind) were surveyed about the racial and ethnic composition of their workforces. Within the 56 agencies responding, the aggregate breakdowns of their staffs were 87.4 percent Caucasian American, 7.7 percent African American, 1.9 percent Hispanic American, 2.9 percent Asian American and Pacific Islander, and 0.1 percent other. Within district offices, which tended to have lower salaries across the board, the staffs were reported as 79.5 percent Caucasian American, 13.3 percent African American, 4.8 percent Hispanic American, 1.7 percent Asian American and Pacific Islander, and 0.5 percent Native American. The same study found that professionals of minority backgrounds are significantly underrepresented nationally.

Another area that has lacked minority service personnel is special education. Witnesses at the hearing testified that few bilingual/bicultural school personnel are found in special education. According to statewide special education data, more than half (57%) of the students enrolled in special education in California are from minority communities, while fewer than 15 percent (14.9%) of the special education teachers in the state are minority and almost 85 percent (84.3%) are White.

Hearing participants believe that this racial imbalance leads to conflicting expectations and poor parent-teacher communication, particularly in rural areas. Witnesses at the hearing also testified that there are few, if any, special education mediators and hearing officers of color, particularly African Americans. In the California special education hearing offices, there are no special education mediators of color, and only three of the eight hearing officers are from minority communities. Furthermore, no special education mediators or hearing officers in California are African American. Because minority contract preferences have been deemed unconstitutional as a result of Proposition 209, the hearing office cited above has made no effort to conduct targeted recruitment and hiring of minority individuals and women.

Hearing participants pointed out the lack of disability service personnel who are not only members of racial and ethnic minority groups, but also people with disabilities. Just because people are bilingual or bicultural does not mean they will understand and be sensitive to the needs of people with disabilities from minority communities, particularly given the stigmas attached to disability within these communities. Several witnesses who were recent immigrants noted that this issue is further complicated by generational differences and immigration status.

Another difficulty that affects culturally competent service delivery is the absence of minority individuals with disabilities in positions of decision-making power. According to witnesses at the hearing, this problem is particularly apparent in the composition of the general and administrative staff for California's network of independent living centers. According to the Section 704 Report for 1997, more than 50 percent of the general staff for the state's independent living centers are members of minority communities, and at least 60 percent are people with disabilities. More than 60 percent of the decision-making staff, however, are White.

Of the 18 current state independent living council (SILC) members in California, furthermore, only 1 is a person from a minority community. Section 705(b)(4) of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires that a majority of all SILC members be persons with disabilities, but there is no similar requirement to ensure appropriate minority representation.

Recommendations for Improving Diversity of Disability Service Providers:

• The Departments of Education, HHS, and Labor should increase incentives for minority individuals, particularly minority individuals with disabilities, to enter disability service professions and to be afforded educational and professional development opportunities after entry. For example, the Department of Education should enhance funding for scholarships funded through the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to minority institutions of higher education to increase the number of qualified graduates of culturally diverse backgrounds, especially those with disabilities.
  
  
• RSA and the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) should continue their efforts to increase the number of minority professionals working in vocational rehabilitation, special education, independent living, and related services, and other disability service agencies should create similar initiatives. For example, Rehabilitation Capacity Building initiatives should be used to develop new programs in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Native American Serving Institutions, and Asian American/Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, which will increase the number of qualified rehabilitation personnel of diverse cultures in the system.
  
  
• RSA and other federal funders should require disability service providers to have a demonstrated commitment to workplace diversity and family-friendly policies. Along these lines, RSA should mandate hiring of a higher percentage of graduates (RSA scholarship recipients) of the programs mentioned above each year to fulfill the Comprehensive System of Personnel Development needs of every agency.
  
  
• Congress should appropriate adequate funding to the EEOC, DOJ, HUD, DOT, and the Department of Education to enable them to conduct disability rights training for minorities with disabilities, their family members, and bilingual individuals, with the goal of creating a core group of culturally diverse individuals in every state who can train additional individuals in the requirements of federal civil rights laws and how to use those laws when a violation occurs.
  
  
• The Department of Education should issue a policy memorandum mandating targeted recruitment and hiring of bilingual and bicultural special education staff at all levels.
  
  
• OSEP, along with the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, should investigate the racial and ethnic composition of special education mediators and hearing officers nationally and the extent to which race and ethnicity influence mediation and due process outcomes.
  
  
• Federal funding agencies such as the Departments of Education, HHS, and Labor should encourage voluntary public disclosure of diversity data for entities receiving federal funds. In addition, federal agencies such as RSA should require an annual cultural competency assessment for every state agency and maintain a national database containing the following personnel information: position, ethnicity, gender, disability status, education, certification/licensure, and salary.
  
  
• NIDRR should fund a longitudinal study on participation of culturally diverse professionals in the rehabilitation system. In addition, NIDRR should fund research on such factors as rehabilitation outcomes and educational outcomes as a function of counselor/teacher ethnicity, gender, disability, education, and professional competency.

2. Culturally Appropriate Outreach

NCD's 1993 finding that minority individuals with disabilities and their families are largely unaware of the services and resources available to them because "there have been insufficient outreach efforts" to these individuals by federal, state, and local agencies is still applicable today. More than 4 in 10 of the participants at the San Francisco hearing indicated that minority individuals with disabilities and their families are still unaware of the services and resources available because of the inadequacy of culturally appropriate outreach efforts to these populations.

Participants in the hearing noted that there is a tremendous lack of awareness among minority populations about the existence of ADA, and about the specific rights that are guaranteed under the Act. One group that has particular difficulty gaining access to necessary information and resources is parents of minority children with disabilities who have limited English or speak no English. Several witnesses at the hearing said that lack of access to information and resources substantially limits the ability of parents of minority children with disabilities to exercise their rights and responsibilities under the law and to obtain necessary services for their children.

A large number of hearing participants testified that the lack of awareness among minority individuals with disabilities and their families indicates a failure of federal, state, and local agencies to provide information in a way that is culturally and linguistically appropriate and that considers the fundamental differences between majority and minority cultures.

Many U.S. minority groups hold collectivistic value orientations that emphasize the importance of family and interdependence. This orientation is often in direct contrast with the U.S. majority culture, which is highly individualistic and places a high value on personal autonomy and independence. Because of these cultural differences, concepts such as "individual empowerment," "self-sufficiency," "independent living," "control over one's life," and "minimal reliance on others" may be isolating and even offensive to a minority individual with a disability if they are not adequately translated and presented in a culturally appropriate manner.

There are significant cultural differences in the perception and impact of disability on the individual and the family. Many U.S. minority cultures view disability as a reflection upon and responsibility of the entire family. U.S. majority culture, on the other hand, tends to view disability primarily as an individual matter. According to witnesses, the sense of family responsibility for disability within many minority cultures stems from the negative perception of disability within those cultures. A large number of minority group members typically view disability as a shameful or negative reflection upon the whole family.

There is a tremendous need for education and outreach to minority individuals with disabilities, their families, and their communities in order to provide support to them in dealing with the impact of disability and, in turn, to increase their awareness about available resources and ways to integrate the experience of disability into one's life, one's family, and one's community without shame or unnecessary sacrifice of one's goals.

There is an equally profound need to increase awareness about minority cultural issues within the mainstream disability community. According to witnesses at the hearing, most disability organizations know very little about linguistic and cultural access for minority individuals with disabilities. Linguistically and culturally appropriate outreach is often hampered by the failure of federal agencies to renew grant funding specifically earmarked for this purpose. Culturally appropriate outreach requires a long-term commitment and a continued presence in minority communities in order to establish the sense of trust that is necessary for outreach efforts to be successful. When funding is not renewed, outreach efforts are substantially and negatively affected.

Recommendations for Improving Culturally Appropriate Outreach:

• Congress should amend the definition of "Minority Entities" under Section 21 of the Rehabilitation Act to once again include "Community-Based Minority Organizations," which were deleted from the definition in the 1998 amendments.
  
  
• Congress should ask the General Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate the cultural and linguistic appropriateness of public information activities related to ADA, IDEA, the Fair Housing Act, and other federal disability civil rights laws.
  
  
• The Departments of Education, HHS, HUD, Transportation, and Labor, as well as the SBA, should require their grantees and field offices to develop a culturally appropriate outreach plan that takes into account the fundamental differences between majority and minority cultures.
  
  
• NIDRR should require its research and training centers with emphasis on minority populations to develop and test guides describing the services provided by independent living centers that use appropriate cultural and linguistic terminology for diverse populations. Once these guides are produced, RSA should require centers for independent living (CILs) and SILCs to use these guides to improve their outreach and service delivery to diverse populations.
  
  
• Federal agencies funding outreach efforts should encourage initiatives directed not only toward minority individuals with disabilities, but also toward their families and racial and ethnic community organizations.
  
  
• Federal agencies conducting or funding outreach should emphasize that successful outreach requires an awareness of the perception of disability and related issues, such as independent living, that exists within a particular cultural community.

3. Language and Communication Barriers

NCD's 1993 finding that one of the main barriers to culturally competent service delivery for minority individuals with disabilities is the failure to address their "language and communication" needs is still applicable today. Approximately 4 in 10 of the participants at the San Francisco hearing testified about their difficulty in gaining access to culturally competent services because of language and communication barriers.

For minority individuals with disabilities who speak limited or no English, language barriers are a major obstacle to obtaining necessary resources because there are so few bilingual service providers, interpreters, and language-appropriate materials. The lack of language capacity among many disability service providers was noted at the hearing as significantly limiting access to information about rights, benefits, employment programs, and other support services and opportunities.

The need for bilingual service providers is particularly critical in special education. According to witnesses at the hearing, parents of children with disabilities who speak limited or no English face significant language barriers when they attempt to enroll their children in special education, obtain related services, and participate in everyday, informal communication with school personnel. Among the difficulties they mentioned were evaluating interpreter skills, finding and paying for an interpreter with the particular language needed, and having interpreters available when needed.

Cheryl Wu and Nancy Grant, of the Hearing Society for the Bay Area, noted that interpreting or translation often addresses only words and does not take into account the need for translation of cultural concepts, behaviors and body language, expectations about relationships, and jargon (medical terms or educational and legal acronyms). When dealing with service providers, minority individuals with disabilities encounter significant communication problems because of cultural differences in body language and communication styles.

Other language and communication barriers mentioned at the hearing include a lack of direct telephone access when answering systems use English as the only language option, limited funding for translation and interpretation services, and the absence of translated materials in alternative formats such as braille, audiocassettes, and large print.

A follow-up study conducted after the hearing by Kathy Abrahamson and Kathy Knox, of the Rose Resnick Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco, concluded that an additional language and communication barrier for people from diverse cultural communities who are blind or visually impaired is the absence of language-appropriate materials available in alternative formats, particularly from government agencies.

Recommendations for Removing Language and Communication Barriers:

• The departments of Education, HHS, HUD, Transportation, and Labor, as well as the SBA, should require that their field offices and grantees conduct targeted recruitment and hiring of minority individuals who are bilingual and bicultural, especially minority individuals with disabilities.
  
  
• The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services should issue a policy memorandum mandating targeted recruitment and hiring of bilingual special education staff at all levels.
  
  
• RSA should include language interpreter information and referral as a core service at all centers for independent living that have significant populations of non-English-speaking people within their service areas.
  
  
• RSA should require all CILs with significant non-English-speaking populations in their service area to develop language and communication action plans that include the following:
  
  
• Establishing contacts within minority community agencies who can assist in facilitating communication with ethnically diverse populations.
  
  
• Developing a language interpreter referral database that is available in multiple languages and alternative formats, including the World Wide Web.
  
  
• Sending all existing or new translated materials to the SCLC for widespread distribution to other centers for independent living and related agencies and organizations in the state.
  
  
• Establishing sign language and other language interpreter and translator training programs that provide instruction on translation of cultural concepts, behaviors and body language, expectations about relationships, and other technical disability-related terms (medical terms, educational and legal acronyms).
  
  
• Providing language-dedicated telephone lines in Spanish and other languages, and information in bilingual formats on Web pages.
  
  
• The departments of Education, HHS, HUD, Labor, and Transportation, as well as the SBA should make available adequate funding to all field offices and grantees for translation and interpretation services.
  
  
• Congress should ask GAO to investigate the quality of service delivery for minority individuals with disabilities and their families in terms of language and cultural competence.

The United States has a long and well-documented history of actively discouraging and restricting the immigration and citizenship of people with disabilities, especially those from certain racial and ethnic communities. This historical pattern continues today through the subtle yet equally exclusionary practice of denying immigrants with disabilities their right to reasonable accommodations in the naturalization process.

Following passage of the 1996 welfare reform law, many immigrants with disabilities throughout the United States faced the possibility of losing necessary Social Security and food stamp benefits if they did not become U.S. citizens. In California, almost 74 percent of the legal noncitizens in the state stood to lose not only Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and food stamp benefits, but also Medicaid and In-Home Supportive Services (the state name for home-based personal assistance services) as a result of categorical eligibility requirements if they had failed to naturalize and attain U.S. citizenship before the enactment of federal welfare reform.

At the time of the San Francisco hearing in 1998, citizenship continued to be withheld from many qualifying immigrants with disabilities because the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) denied them reasonable accommodations and policy modifications during three stages of the naturalization process: the naturalization interview, fingerprinting, and the execution of a "meaningful" oath of allegiance.

Only in the past year or so has the INS begun to take its obligations under the Rehabilitation Act seriously. It has formed a national working group with community-based organizations that is helping to develop needed field guidance and policy modifications for naturalization processing and adjudication. On April 7, 1999, INS issued comprehensive new guidance to its field adjudicators that is intended to simplify and streamline the review of form N-648, which excepts persons with certain disabilities from the English language and U.S. civics knowledge requirement for naturalization. INS also is revising form N-400, the naturalization application, and is planning to include a new section on the revised form that will allow applicants to indicate that they will need a reasonable accommodation during their interview (e.g., sign language interpreter, home visit). In addition, INS announced a new fingerprint waiver procedure, effective in summer 1999, waiving the fingerprint requirement for applicants who cannot produce classifiable fingerprints because of a disability and instead requiring that they be instructed to obtain a local police clearance memorandum.

The April 7, 1999, memorandum also included guidance to field adjudicators on determining whether certain applicants with severe disabilities understand the oath of allegiance. The guidance instructed adjudicators to communicate with the applicant through a family member, if the family member can aid in communicating with the applicant; to use "yes or no" questions that the applicant might more readily be able to answer; and to accept whatever form of communication the applicant uses, including blinks and nods.

Recommendations for Improving the Naturalization Process:

• Congress should ask GAO to conduct a study of INS compliance with disability access mandates under federal law, examining in part whether the changes put in place in the past year have resolved the long-standing problems identified in this report.
  
  
• INS should conduct training for field staff regarding the new procedures and policies outlined in its April 7, 1999, memorandum. Such training should be completed by October 1, 1999.
  
  
• Congress should amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide for a disability waiver for the oath of allegiance requirement.
  
  
• INS should ensure timely processing of naturalization applications for applicants with disabilities.
  
  
• The Disability Rights Sections of the Civil Rights Divisions of DOJ, NCD, and INS should work together to monitor implementation of INS's recent efforts to address long-standing problems with its naturalization process regarding access for applicants with disabilities, and to address ongoing problems as they occur. To further this effort, DOJ should institute a toll-free number to a central location staffed with trained multilingual employees so that anyone having problems with accommodations in the naturalization process could raise those issues and have the staff take steps to address both the individual and the systemic issues identified. This toll-free number should be publicized in numerous languages in every INS office and on INS forms and materials.

Over the past 30 years, the United States has seen significant changes in the racial and ethnic makeup of its population. Many of these changes were felt first and most powerfully in California, a harbinger of what other large states will encounter. With the turn of the century, California becomes the first continental state in America with a majority population of racial and ethnic minorities. This shift has substantial political, economic, and social ramifications.

The federally funded disability service provider network in California will need to revisit assumptions about the prevalence of disability among Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander populations and subpopulations and the emphasis placed on service delivery for individuals with disabilities in those communities. This need will expand beyond California as other states undergo similar population shifts. The importance of accurate demographic data is underscored by the reliance on such data, particularly census data, by state and county agencies in planning for eligible recipients under Medicare, Medicaid, and SSI programs; by rehabilitation agencies in distributing funds and developing programs under the Rehabilitation Act; by HUD in distributing funds for housing for people with disabilities; and so on. In short, all levels of government use census information to guide the annual distribution of $180 billion in critical services to people with disabilities and their families.

According to the national estimates, the rate of disability in Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander populations is significantly lower than for other racial or ethnic groups, including Whites. Some researchers, however, believe that these estimates do not accurately reflect the prevalence of disability in Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander populations and subpopulations because of a variety of socioeconomic factors and acculturation variables, including immigration status and the perception of disability within these cultures. These variables have an impact on the self-reported rate of disability in Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander populations and subpopulations.

Service delivery systems have been developed and focused on the needs of the majority with some added attention to African Americans and Native Americans with disabilities. Partly for lack of data, the needs of Hispanics and Asians/Pacific Islanders with disabilities have been largely ignored.

Recommendations for Improving the Accuracy of Demographic Data:

• The Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, working with NIDRR and the National Center for Health Statistics, should develop alternative methods for tracking the prevalence of disability within racial/ethnic minority communities at the national, state, and local levels.
  
  
• The Census Bureau should make affirmative efforts to hire minority and bilingual individuals with disabilities as part of the workforce that will assist with Census 2000.
  
  
• NIDRR and other federal research entities should conduct studies that explore the intra-ethnic experience and prevalence of disability.

NCD believes that every person with a disability, regardless of race or ethnicity, should have the opportunity to realize the promise of freedom and equality made in ADA. The importance of racial and ethnic diversity must be recognized as a key component of the disability civil rights movement in the new millennium. These recommendations are submitted in the belief that they will promote that recognition and begin the process of tearing down the shameful wall of exclusion that has prevented minority racial and ethnic individuals with disabilities and their families from participating fully in all aspects of American society.

On July 26, 1990, President George Bush signed into law one of the most sweeping civil rights laws ever created, the Americans with Disabilities Act. During the signing ceremony, President Bush emphasized the historic importance of the signing of the Act by comparing it to the recent fall of the Berlin Wall. "And now I sign legislation which takes a sledgehammer to another wall," he said, "one which has, for too many generations, separated Americans with disabilities from the freedom they could glimpse, but not grasp. Once again, we rejoice as this barrier falls, proclaiming together we will not accept, we will not excuse, we will not tolerate discrimination in America."¹ Then, as he lifted his pen to sign ADA, Bush exhorted, "Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down."

Nine years later, as the 10th anniversary of the signing of ADA approaches, this majestic declaration of inclusion and equality rings true for many Americans with disabilities. For a large segment of the population, however, and particularly for those from diverse cultural and ethnic communities, the shameful wall of exclusion is still a reality. The declaration of equality made in 1990 remains hollow for these individuals as they continue to struggle against the persistent barriers of poverty, inequality, and discrimination.

On October 21, 1992, the National Council on Disability held a public hearing in San Francisco to determine how minority group members with disabilities were faring under ADA. The testimony reflected what is now a well-documented fact: that people with disabilities from diverse cultural communities not only experience poverty and disability at a disproportionately higher rate, they also face language, cultural, and attitudinal barriers that significantly impede their access to resources and accommodations. Based on these and other findings, NCD in 1993 produced its report, Meeting the Unique Needs of Minorities with Disabilities. In it, NCD articulated an agenda that identified the unmet needs of minority individuals with disabilities as a national policy priority² and set a vision for inclusion and equality for minority group members with disabilities in society.

About six years after the original hearings, on August 5, 1998, NCD held a second hearing in San Francisco to examine how well ADA and other public policies related to minority communities. NCD found that in spite of the progress made in disability policy in the decade of the 1990s, minorities with disabilities are still plagued by the poverty, inequality, and discrimination that they testified about years before.

At the 1998 NCD hearing in San Francisco, 69 advocates, people with disabilities, and their families, from diverse cultural communities in California and Hawaii and other Pacific islands, came forward to ask that NCD revisit the agenda it had articulated in 1992 and work to realize immediate change so that the promises of ADA and other disability laws would be felt in these diverse communities. In effect, they wanted to cash in a check that had been given to them that historic day in 1990 on the South Lawn of the White House. When the architects of ADA wrote that "the nation's proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency,"³ they signed a promissory note for all Americans with disabilities, regardless of the color of their skin.

Based on the testimony of witnesses at the 1998 hearing, it seems that America has defaulted on this promissory note to minority citizens with disabilities. The similarities between the policy problems that emerged in the 1992 and 1998 testimonies are a grim reminder that the wall of exclusion still exists, and that it continues to separate minority individuals with disabilities from the freedom they only glimpse, but do not yet grasp.

At the 1998 hearing in San Francisco, people with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds issued a challenge to each other, as well as to their governmental representatives and respective cultural communities--a challenge to take immediate action, to "tear down this shameful wall" of exclusion once and for all, and to demonstrate a commitment to profound change. In succinct and pointed testimony, Leroy Moore, Jr., co-founder of the Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization in the Bay Area, took the lead in issuing this call to action:

It's up to us, not our leaders, not our ethnic or disabled organizations, but us, to come together, organize, let our voices be heard, and talk about racism and disabledism within our organizations that are supposed to serve and advocate on behalf of us....This is our issue and our time to be advocates, be delegates and teachers of our communities and organizations. I was here at the same conference in 1992, and I have to say very little has changed because we the public are not taking this issue into our own hands....Please don't let another [six] years go by before we get back together again.

David Freeman, of the San Francisco State University Institute on Disability, echoed this sentiment:

Everything we have done up until this point is not enough. Simple platitudes will no longer placate us. Broad and bold steps need to be taken. We have to go further than we have ever gone before.

Underlying these two statements is a fierce sense of urgency and a denunciation of the policy of gradualism that has characterized efforts to address the unique needs of people with disabilities from diverse cultural populations up until now. The lessons from the 1990s make clear that the "shameful wall of exclusion" will not come "tumbling down" through enactment of laws. Concrete steps are needed to ensure that the unique needs of minority individuals with disabilities and their families are adequately met. Institutional requirements of compliance and accountability must be established that will have the full force of the law behind them. Minority individuals with disabilities themselves also need to heed the "call to action" and spearhead the effort to generate change within their cultural communities, thereby collectively altering their social status within those communities.

The ideas and proposals that NCD discusses in the following pages are significant because they were developed in the spirit of this "call to action" through the assistance of a Report Team made up of three women and three men who have a variety of disabilities and the majority of whom are members of different ethnic minority groups (including an Asian American, a Latina, a Native American, and an African American).

Many of the issues at the San Francisco hearing were consistent with issues that NCD has identified as important for all people with disabilities, regardless of racial or ethnic identity. For example, a large number of people testified about the dehumanizing and degrading experience of going to a local Social Security Administration (SSA) office to apply for benefits. Much of this unfortunate experience was related to disability, and much was directly related to race and ethnicity. Many individuals with disabilities, for example, complain of a typical pattern of disrespect at SSA offices, regardless of their racial or cultural background. In addition to this disrespect, individuals with disabilities from diverse cultural communities often face other challenges from SSA personnel, including a lack of cultural competence or understanding, communication differences, and failure to deal with cultural specifics and language needs. Although all individuals with disabilities who are members of racial and ethnic minority groups encounter the same challenges as other individuals with disabilities, persons with disabilities from ethnic populations face unique problems because of socioeconomic, cultural, and other factors which must be addressed if they are to benefit equally from public policies and programs.⁴

The primary goal of this report, therefore, is not to identify the general issues and problems that exist for all people with disabilities, but rather to focus specifically on the barriers encountered by individuals with disabilities from diverse cultural communities because of their racial and ethnic status. NCD identified within the testimony three primary barriers to equality for people with disabilities from minority communities. These barriers are a lack of resources, culturally inadequate service delivery, and inadequate and misleading demographic data.

The following pages propose specific steps to address these barriers. This report outlines an agenda that requires immediate attention. If implemented, this agenda will be a sledgehammer on the "shameful wall of exclusion" that continues to exclude minorities with disabilities from full participation in American society.

1. Overview

This chapter discusses barriers that minorities with disabilities confront in getting access to resources they need to become independent, economically self-sufficient, and an integral part of their communities. The disadvantages of ethnic and disability status have a combined effect that is often greater than the sum of the parts. Federal disability rights and services tend to be monitored less closely in minority communities. Small gaps in communication can result in major disparities in the understanding of laws.

NCD recommends that the U.S. Department of Education strengthen efforts to include minorities with disabilities as equal beneficiaries of all education, rehabilitation, and independent living programs. NCD recommends that the U.S. Departments of Interior and Justice work together to promote rights and services for Native Americans with disabilities within Indian communities. NCD recommends that the U.S. Department of Transportation provide more technical assistance and public education to improve transit accessibility in diverse cultural communities.

2. Analysis

In his testimony at the 1998 NCD hearing in San Francisco, H. Leon Cain, of Resources for Independent Living in Sacramento, requested that the "National Council on Disability identify any progress that has been made" since the "previous hearing" in 1992. The testimonies presented at the 1992 and 1998 NCD hearings in San Francisco reveal a disturbing similarity in the issues raised. As Leroy Moore, Jr., said in his testimony, "I was here at the same conference in 1992, and I have to say very little has changed." Rather than being a decade of progress, the 1990s has, in some ways, been a decade of decline for people with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Evidence of this decline can be found throughout the service delivery system, but it is most apparent in the area of access to resources. Minority individuals with disabilities experience tremendous "difficulty in gaining access to the resources needed to become self-sufficient" and it remains essentially as true today as it was six years ago. Almost 50 percent of the people who testified at the 1998 NCD hearing identified the lack of access to resources as the main problem facing minority individuals with disabilities today. Although the concepts of "access" and "accessibility" are routinely associated with issues of physical and architectural access, when considered in the context of the unique needs of people with disabilities from minority communities, these words take on a different meaning. "Access" for some minority individuals with disabilities involves not only issues of overall physical access (such as architectural, technological, geographical, and environmental accessibility), but also culturally defined issues of access, such as access to information, language and communication needs, and culturally competent service delivery. Because of these additional barriers and accessibility issues, minority individuals with disabilities face an even greater challenge than other people with disabilities in gaining access to necessary resources. Judging from testimony presented in 1998, that challenge has arguably increased in scope and intensity over the course of the past six years.

Almost 40 percent of the people who testified in 1998 expressed difficulty in gaining access to employment; more than 20 percent had difficulty getting into public accommodations, and another 20 percent had difficulty using public transportation. Examples drawn from the testimony illustrate the extent of the difficulties that minority individuals with disabilities currently face in getting necessary resources in the areas of employment, public accommodations, and transportation.

a) Employment

According to the report of the 1992 hearing, one major finding was that "persons from minority backgrounds with disabilities...do not have appropriate training and career development opportunities," and they "are unable to take full advantage of ADA and other disability policies because of a lack of...economic opportunity." In order to address this situation, NCD recommended in its 1993 report that "appropriate funds" be given to "public agencies and private community-based entities to develop and implement training and to provide opportunities for economic independence for minorities with disabilities."⁵

One organization that acted upon this recommendation was the Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC) in San Francisco. In 1994, ARC San Francisco received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to administer a three-year demonstration project called the "Multicultural Employment Program." According to the 1998 testimony of Shiva Shultz, director of the program, the main focus was to "assist immigrants with disabilities from Chinese, Filipino, Russian, and Hispanic communities in becoming employed in integrated work sites in the community." By taking the approach of "focusing on the positive aspects of these immigrant cultures" and "matching the cultural needs of individuals to their job placements," Ms. Shultz and other Multicultural Employment Program personnel were able to provide better "outreach, employment training, and higher quality person-centered services" to the "unserved and underserved populations" in question. When the funding for the Multicultural Employment Program ended in September 1997, ARC San Francisco continued to promote the objectives of the program through "Projects with Industry," another grant-funded program that expanded service to people with disabilities from African American communities. In her testimony, Shiva Shultz said that the focus of this project is "on getting jobs for clients in minority-owned businesses." When directly questioned about the success of the project, however, Ms. Shultz admitted that ARC is having difficulty placing minority group members with disabilities in minority-owned businesses because "minority populations are not always interested in working with individuals with disabilities because the stigmas within the community make it less desirable."

Ms. Shultz's last comment suggests the entrenched nature of the barriers to employment that exist for minority individuals with disabilities, starting at the most basic level of getting access to job training and employment opportunities, followed by discrimination by employers even after someone is job-ready.

People with disabilities from diverse cultural communities still have great difficulties in finding culturally appropriate job training and career development opportunities. An overwhelming majority of the comments related to employment at the 1998 NCD hearing centered on this issue. In videotaped testimony, Rudy Stefany, a student from American Samoa, explained:

For job training and vocational rehabilitation, I would say that I have not really seen any job training for people with disabilities. There are probably programs available, but I have not seen any people with disabilities out in the community looking for jobs or getting vocational training.... I do not know if the...private sector agencies or government departments realize the need to provide job opportunities for people with disabilities. It is very hard for us to get around and go out there and see if we can get a job for ourselves.

One hearing participant from San Francisco, Wilbert Liang, devoted his entire testimony to this subject:

I want to point out that there are not many work-related training opportunities provided in San Francisco. We, as disabled, need to work and live. I think the government should provide more work opportunities and training courses for us so that we can rely on ourselves.

Esteban Gómez, the Latino Community Services Coordinator at the Independent Living Resource Center in San Francisco, expounded on the need for job training and work opportunities in his testimony, and offered a practical solution:

I would like to emphasize the need for job opportunities for people with disabilities. I think it's probably one of the biggest obstacles that we face. We don't have many opportunities, and we don't have the proper training.... History tells us that we have a great deal of problems with getting jobs. And the ones that are actually getting jobs, they're getting jobs paid at very low wages. Mostly minimum wages, and they don't get any benefits.... The reality is that we need Congress to offer these employers some kind of an incentive so they could hire more people with disabilities. It could be tax exemptions or something.... Unless these people are willing to hire people at decent wages, prevailing wages, they're not doing anything for us.

In oral and written testimony, Mary Kwan of San Francisco echoed the need for effective job training and presented another solution to promote the economic independence of minority group members with disabilities:

The first thing I thought is to establish training agencies. In reality, the so-called disabled have some kind of ability in many areas. By receiving training, they can have skills to support themselves. The second thing is to set up funds to loan to those who have skills, so we can carry on a small business with our ability. Just loan a small amount of money, for example, to those who can do translating and they can open up a translation service center, et cetera. This can help us to support ourselves and reduce the burden to the community, and make a new work force. They will become more confident.

Rudy Stefany also felt that promoting entrepreneurial opportunities for minority individuals with disabilities was a viable way to increase access to employment as well as visibility within the community:

Some changes or recommendations that I would make for our community down here, I would like to see a person with a disability or a group of people with disabilities run their own business, or run their own show, in order for them to really stand out and make the community notice that we are here.

In addition, witnesses repeatedly described the failure of the vocational rehabilitation system to address minority community needs. In testimony after testimony, minority individuals with disabilities reported the difficulties they have in finding culturally appropriate job training and employment opportunities through the California Department of Rehabilitation. Hector E. Mendez, executive director of La Familia in Hayward, asserted that "rehabilitative services available to our disabled community are almost nonexistent." Judy Quan-Gant noted that even if rehabilitative services are available, they are often completely ineffective:

I personally have been trying to get help to find a job. I've been to the California Department of Rehabilitation and they are looking down their nose at me, and just shuffling papers here and there, and not helping me at all.

According to the 1992 Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the inequitable treatment experienced by Ms. Quan-Gant, and by other minority group members with disabilities, has "been documented in all major junctures of the vocational rehabilitation process."⁶ To address this pattern of inequitable treatment, a new section was added to the Rehabilitation Act in 1992, Section 21, which called for the establishment of a Rehabilitation Cultural Diversity Initiative to improve service delivery for minority individuals with disabilities in the state-federal vocational rehabilitation program.

Despite the addition of Section 21, the quality and quantity of vocational rehabilitation services for minority individuals with disabilities in California has declined in recent years. In July 1993, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights conducted a Title VI compliance review of the California Department of Rehabilitation's Vocational Rehabilitation Services Program and found statistically significant racial disparities in the delivery of vocational rehabilitation services. In response, the California Department of Rehabilitation implemented a voluntary resolution plan in December 1993 to "assess Departmental processes and policies and their impact on services and vocational goal achievement for consumers of color."⁷

To be fair, California statewide statistical reports of consumer status by race do reveal modest "improvement in successful minority client outcomes." Between 1996 and 1998, there was a 1.28 percent increase in the number of minority applicants accepted for services, and the rehabilitation rate for minority clients increased by as much as 1.72 percent.⁸ When the statewide data are disaggregated, however, and the district level figures are examined, a different picture emerges. Last year in the Chico district, for example, fewer than 13 percent (12.18%) of the applicants accepted for services were minority, while almost 88 percent (87.60%) were White. Of the clients successfully rehabilitated, only 10.74 percent were minority, while 88.87 percent were White.⁹ These racial disparities are also evident in the statewide closure data for fiscal years 1996-97 and 1997-98. For example, the most frequent reason cited for the unsuccessful closure (status 28) of minority clients was "failure to cooperate," but the explanation most often cited for unsuccessful closure of White clients was "other reasons."¹⁰ The fact that minority clients are more frequently perceived as being "uncooperative" suggests that the department's interventions have not been "effective in monitoring and responding to potential service inequities," especially inequities that exist as a result of communication difficulties based on cultural differences.

Unfortunately, the ineffectiveness of the Department's interventions is perhaps most evident in the area of job training and placement services, the area that participants at the 1998 NCD hearing described as being the most problematic. According to California statewide reports on training and placement services for the 1997-98 fiscal year, minority clients received significantly less educational and vocational training and job referral and placement services than did White clients. Almost 76 percent (75.92%) of the clients who received some type of aid from the department to attend a four-year university were White, and fewer than 24 percent (23.70%) were minority. This racial disparity is consistent throughout the range of academic training provided: two-year colleges (63.71% White/ 35.82% minority); "other academic" (60.47% White/ 39.02% minority); "business school" (68.09% White/ 31.91% minority); "vocational school" (52.89% White/ 46.50% minority). Although the racial disparities are less obvious in the area of job referral and placement services, there is still on average approximately a 20 percent gap between the number of Whites and minorities receiving those services: "on the job training services" (57.13% White/ 42.58% minority); "job referral" (57.88% White/ 41.72% minority); "job placement" (57.50% White/ 42.14% minority); and "miscellaneous training" (63.50% White/ 36.10% minority).¹¹

Even if minority individuals with disabilities are able to navigate through the vocational rehabilitation system and gain access to necessary training and career development opportunities, other barriers to employment still exist. It has been said that people with disabilities from diverse cultural communities face "double discrimination" because of the stigmas that society attaches to both minority group status and disability. In her testimony, Erica Li, a member of the San Francisco Chinese Blind Support Group, pointed out how this "double discrimination" can often be tripled for people with disabilities from minority communities whose native language is not English. "We are minorities," she said, but "when we look for jobs, we also come across language barriers. For example, when being interviewed for a job, we will be told that we have too much of an accent." Ms. Li added that "when they see a disabled person plus a heavy accent," employers automatically assume that the person is incapable of doing the job. They make false assumptions about the applicant's abilities in terms of their overall physical capability, and in terms of their specific language capacity. Ms. Li attributed this discrimination to fear and ignorance and suggested that "there be more education available" for employers "so that they won't be too scared" to hire minority individuals with a disability for whom English is a second language.

Regina Schneider agreed with Ms. Li in her testimony, arguing that "education needs to happen at all levels" of the employment process in order to address the whole range of barriers to employment that exist, including those faced by family members of children with disabilities from diverse cultural communities. Minority individuals with disabilities and their families stressed the need to incorporate their issues into the overall disability policy agenda.

One issue repeatedly mentioned at the hearing was the prevalent lack of access to necessary childcare for parents of minority children with disabilities, particularly after-school programs. In her testimony, Sew Gan Ching, a member of the San Francisco Chinese Family Support Group and a parent of a child with a disability, described how this lack of access to after-school programs has directly affected her ability to be gainfully employed:

I would like to request an after-school program for San Francisco, that more kids can enter that program. Because not many kids can join the program, sometimes even though there are after-school programs available in some centers, they only take the good students, or the ones that don't need much attention. But like my son, he runs, jumps and attacks. They don't like to take him. So it is very hard for the middle, lower class people like us to get a job. In fact, I do have some abilities to work, but I have to stay at home and can't go to work. I think it is a pity. I used to be a nurse before. I haven't been able to achieve things and contribute to society; instead, I have to ask for resources. My son spent a lot of society's money. I don't think that is right. I want very much to work. However, if there are no after-school programs available for him, I still can't leave home to work. I feel guilty.

Jen Sermoneta, a member of the Oakland Youth Project for Inclusion of Minority, Low-Income, and Disabled Youth, cited several reasons for the lack of access to after-school programs for minority children with disabilities. To begin with, very few after-school programs are available in California for all children, let alone programs that are affordable, integrated, and accessible. In addition, the programs that meet these criteria tend to have year-long waiting lists. Existing programs are rarely staffed with employees trained to work with children of varied abilities and cultural communities. This circumstance presents a no-win situation for all parties involved, but particularly for the minority children with disabilities themselves, who end up being the true victims.¹²

In order to deal with the lack of access to child-care and after-school programs, minority parents are often forced to take drastic measures. Like Sew Gan Ching, some parents have to stay home with their disabled children and forgo valuable employment opportunities. Other parents cannot afford this option. Given the reality of their particular economic circumstances, these parents must go to work to simply feed and clothe their children. As a result, they sometimes resort to such extreme measures as locking their disabled children in their rooms. Several people at the 1998 hearing noted this unfortunate practice. According to the testimony of Lydia Kadik-Gutierrez, these parents "are very attached to their children" with disabilities, but "the children are warehoused, or kept in rooms or closets, because (the parents) don't know what else to do with them." In his testimony, Antonio Valdillez, a member of the board of directors of the Golden Gate Regional Center, stressed the need to ensure that minority parents have the option of sending their children with disabilities to a "good and safe place." Otherwise, he said, "there will still be parents that keep their sons and daughters locked in their rooms.... To me, that's unbelievable. We are almost in the year 2000, and there are still disabled people locked up in their rooms wasting away." Mr. Valdillez held everyone at the hearing accountable for this situation, including himself and the members of NCD, "because you are letting this happen." When the employment needs of minority individuals with disabilities and their families have not been met, it is disabled children who have suffered as a result. The fact that minority parents feel they must lock their children with disabilities in a room because they cannot gain access to affordable, integrated, and accessible childcare indicates the desperation of their situation. It also underlines the urgent need for action to address barriers to employment.

In addition to the employment barriers noted (the lack of job training, the language barriers, and the lack of access to childcare), minority individuals with disabilities and their families must contend with the employment barriers faced by all people with disabilities, regardless of race or ethnicity. The barriers most frequently mentioned at the 1998 hearing were Social Security work disincentives, lack of physical and architectural access to places of employment, and failure to provide reasonable accommodations in the workplace.

Recommendations

It is clear that people with disabilities from minority communities still have tremendous difficulty gaining access not only to appropriate training and career development opportunities, but also to a host of additional employment resources that are often available to the larger community. To address these barriers, NCD recommends the following action:

• The Department of Labor, the Small Business Administration, and the Department of Education should expand funding for culturally appropriate job training and career development opportunities, and should require all federally funded programs to demonstrate their ability to meet the language, cultural, and disability needs of all populations in their service area.

According to witnesses at the 1998 hearing, one of the main barriers to finding appropriate job training and career development opportunities is the failure of the vocational rehabilitation system to address minority community needs. It is evident from testimony and data reviewed that in spite of the Rehabilitation Cultural Diversity Initiative started in 1992, significant racial disparities continue to exist in the delivery of vocational rehabilitation services. In California, these disparities are particularly apparent in the areas of job training and placement services. To change these disparities and improve service delivery for minority individuals with disabilities in the state-federal vocational rehabilitation system, NCD recommends that the following actions be taken:

• The Rehabilitation Services Administration should address the racial disparities apparent in the vocational rehabilitation system, particularly in the areas of job training and placement services.
  
  
• RSA should expand long-term funding for culturally appropriate job training and career development opportunities.
  
  
• RSA should strengthen and increase the number of interventions outlined in Section 21 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires vocational rehabilitation agencies to take action to better address the needs of underserved groups within their service areas.
  
  
• RSA should conduct compliance reviews of all state departments of rehabilitation to determine the extent to which their efforts to comply with Section 21 of the Rehabilitation Act have produced better outcomes for people with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds in their states.
  
  
• The Small Business Administration, working with the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities, should provide more entrepreneurial opportunities for people with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds to promote economic independence.
  
  
• Federal, state, and local policy makers should incorporate the unique needs of family members of individuals with disabilities from diverse cultural backgrounds into the larger