Re: The Americans with Disabilities Act

[Guest guest]

This is very much dependant on the particular situation and is rather nebulous. It would be one thing if a potential employee wanted a more quite or private place to work and another if the person had significant disability. So, if someone with AS needed a more quite place to work, either a particular office could be set up, they could be given strong headphones to block out the noise and officemates could be asked to turn down phone ringers and things like that. Likewise if a person was in a wheel chair, they could be given an office on the first floor with a little more space to it.

On the other hand, some businesses have been forced to hire blind people to work on computers. This required special keyboards, programs and other things that amounted to several times the cost of regular equipment and also often required the hiring of a second person to act as a "reader" to read the screen to them, watch their typing, read emails and paper memos and so on. Essentially the company was forced to have two workers doing on job. This is not a good use of the law. There are things that blind people could do, but this is not an efficient means of employing them.

[Guest guest]

>

> " On the other hand, some businesses have been forced to hire blind

people to

> work on computers. This required special keyboards, programs and

other things

> that amounted to several times the cost of regular equipment and

also often

> required the hiring of a second person to act as a " reader " to read

the screen

> to them, watch their typing, read emails and paper memos and so

on.

> Essentially the company was forced to have two workers doing on

job. This is not a

> good use of the law. There are things that blind people could do,

but this is

> not an efficient means of employing them. "

I think the clause in the law that states it must not be a hardship

on the company is an important one in many cases because many small

businesses are only just making it and I don't want to watch small

businesses go out of business and there to be only large corporations

and monopolies left. I think it's a complicated situation so I don't

know what the answer is regarding how much the disability laws should

provide for the disabled versus the companies' rights. Workers

Compensation favors employees and is hugely abused at the expense of

the employers. But I don't know what people should be helped/allowed

to do. As an Aspie I wouldn't insist on being a waitress because I

know it's one of the worst jobs I could pick for myself. Or a

salesperson. I also got irritated when one of the radio stations here

had a lisping d.j. I want to listen to someone with a good voice and

I think that if you have a poor voice you shouldn't insist on being a

radio person just because you want 'equal' rights or you have

something to prove--there's plenty of other fields to chose from. I

also don't want people to not try hard and improve themselves because

there's a law as a safety net. But on the other hand, if someone

could do a good job if they just had a few compensations and having

those compensations made all the difference in the world, they should

get them. I'm willing to accept less than perfect service from

someone who otherwise would not have the job. Hiring and working with

people who have bad personalities or poor work ethic or dishonest

practices is much worse and dreaded by employers and employees than

having to make a few compensations. Then there's the overall

unfairness of the world and how many people 'fall through the cracks'

because they're not 'good enough' to make it in society, which is a

travesty. I don't think there's any easy answers.

>

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 2/16/2006 7:17:17 AM Eastern Standard Time, BSTL@... writes:

Claiming that the method you describe "is not an efficient way of

employing (the blind)" is a flat-out lie. The more people you have,

the more efficient your operation is. American business is totally

inefficient not only because of illegal discrimination, but also

because of the increased use of unreliable computer technology. The

only reliable technology is PEOPLE.

More people does not mean more efficiency, in fact it is usually the opposite. If more people were more efficient then businesses would still be using the huge secretarial with computers rather than just a few. They don't because those few can do the work of the many with new technology. This is an efficient use of manpower and technology making the best use of available people.

Hiring two people to do the work of one is inefficient and not sustainable. It works like this. Each worker provides a company with a certain amount of productive capacity. This capacity is applied to each unit of production, wether the company produces goods or services. Each worker also represents a fixed cost to the business. To illustrate this simply, let's say a division of a company produces 10 units and has one employee. Those 10 units represent the production and profit to a company beyond the costs of the employee and production. Now let's say they hire the blind person and their spotter to do the work of that one employee. Now you have two people generating the same 10 units, or seeing a reduction to 5 units of production in the unit. It efficiency is reduced by half. In order to regain efficiency, they would have to at least double output, which would be incredibly unlikely to begin with.

Saying that all Aspies would be willing to work for minimum wage for life is like telling employers we will be a willing slave workforce. Most people want better than that and they do it by getting other jobs, getting education, or other ways to improve their employment standings.

I am aware that the vocational programs don't work that well. Most of those programs have less than a 1 in 3 graduation rate and an even lower job placement rate. These would be consider dismal failures in the private sector, but the government calls it a great success, this even though it costs upwards of $30,000 per person in each of these programs, making it roughly $90,000 and up for each person placed in a job. ONly the government could get away with inefficiency like that.

[Guest guest]

,

Claiming that the method you describe " is not an efficient way of

employing (the blind) " is a flat-out lie. The more people you have,

the more efficient your operation is. American business is totally

inefficient not only because of illegal discrimination, but also

because of the increased use of unreliable computer technology. The

only reliable technology is PEOPLE.

The most reliable way to do this is GIVE THEM A FAIR CHANCE! As in

giving them a fair chance to make an honest living, even in a society

that roots AGAINST them.

[Guest guest]

,

Claiming that the method you describe " is not an efficient way of

employing (the blind) " is a flat-out lie. The more people you have,

the more efficient your operation is. American business is totally

inefficient not only because of illegal discrimination, but also

because of the increased use of unreliable computer technology. The

only reliable technology is PEOPLE.

The most reliable way to do this is GIVE THEM A FAIR CHANCE! As in

giving them a fair chance to make an honest living, even in a society

that roots AGAINST them.

[Guest guest]

The only answer is to force companies to hire QUALIFIED people with

disabilities. And most are MORE QUALIFIED than able-bodied,

insensitive, NT people.

Actually, it's less expensive to hire a person with a disability

than an able-bodied person. Many can be paid minimum wage ($5.15 per

hour in 49 of the 50 states, $6.50 per hour in Illinois) vs. much

higher salaries for their able-bodied, insensitive NT counterparts.

The adaptations will pay for itself in lower labor costs without

offshoring American jobs to India and Communist China.

People with disabilities (especially those with AS) are SECOND CLASS

citizens in the United States, and need a constitutional amendment

to protect their rights. Women could not be full members of U.S.

society until 1919. African-Americans could not be full members of

U.S. society until Brown vs. Board of Education struck down the Jim

Crow laws, as well as the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

We are not going to enjoy the same rights everyone else enjoys until

an amendment is added to the U.S. Constitution protecting the rights

of people with disabilities, especially to hold down paid employment

for a livable wage. In the eyes of the U.S. government, Asperger's

Syndrome is classified as a disability. You have no choice but to

accept that.

We are good enough to make it in society. We have to get rid of the

destructive prejudices against us.

[Guest guest]

ROFLMAO!

If you believe this statement to be true, then you've clearly worked

with perfect immortal human beings

Seriously, to elaborate on that, while computers are not 100% reliable

(they can never be 100% reliable 100% of the time, because there's

always many humans involved somewhere, somehow... wait, that goes back

to your statement " The only reliable technology is PEOPLE. " so perhaps

I shouldn't bring that up ) the more people you have involved in

some task, the more room there is for things to go wrong, or right,

depending on the group of people. There are so many things wrong

about your statement that it's not even funny, really. If you had

said " The most *flexible* technology is PEOPLE. " I could have agreed

wholeheartedly. After all, where did technology come from, other than

people?

People as a general rule are not 100% repeatable given the same

apparent set of conditions. As long as the conditions are identical

each time, and the hardware is not malfunctioning and the software is

written correctly, you will have 100% repeatability with computer

technology. A large part of that is due to the fact that computers

don't really think: they merely follow very strictly defined laws of

physics, combined with a set of instructions that control the hardware

according to those laws. A human being, on the other hand, has

feelings and all sorts of other things that get in the way of

performing their assigned task, such as immune systems that may/may

not be working up to par, or may be working perfectly well, but the

results are less-than-ideal for the body/mind doing what was expected

when they get sick. How many computers do you know that take sick

days? Take " personal days " ? Complain about their pay? How many are

passive aggressive? How many develop (or already have) bad attitudes

towards the work they've been assigned, or the people they've been

assigned to work with?

On the other hand, on the positive side of human technology, the exact

strength of computers is also their exact weakness when it comes to

real-world situations that require thinking outside of the box: a

computer can only think inside of the box (itself) to the extent the

humans that programmed it to handle situations, and unfortunately,

even for the things that it was designed to handle, it may not handle

them correctly. Humans are far more flexible, and more readily

capable of making more valid judgments with all the inputs that are in

the gray area. Well, at least that may be true where the human(s)

involved are experienced in the domain of the problem, but where the

human(s) involved don't have sufficient experience or choose to not

care, the results may be no better than handing those decisions over

to a computer running software written by (again) other humans, who

may not be any wiser or more knowledgeable in regards to the problem

domain than a human that knows how to do it without using a computer.

In other words, computers merely amplify the

knowledge/judgment/experience of the people that use/program them: if

the input is garbage, the output will be garbage, but the nice thing

is that the input/output will be very reproducible (once again,

assuming the human that wrote the software at least was very

particular about certain things like initializing all variables before

first use, freeing resources and not exceeding their array bounds, and

a few other things, and they didn't screw up in handling multithreaded

code, if that exists) which once again, points back to the fact that

humans are far from the only reliable technology, and in fact are the

source of all unreliability (short of physical defects altering the

function) of other technology. A computer and its program is a copy

of knowledge made manifest, where the source of the embedded knowledge

represented in the software source code and the design/implementation

of the hardware is also derived from the limited minds of one or more

humans with all their faults.

So, idiots designing hardware and software to replace humans= hardware

and software that efficiently produces bad results. Computers are

merely a tool, to be wielded towards good or evil by their humans, and

cannot be blamed for unreliability any more than humans.

><SNIP> The

> only reliable technology is PEOPLE.

> <SNIP>

>

>

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 2/18/2006 9:49:47 AM Eastern Standard Time, BSTL@... writes:

That's not what I'm getting at. An actual human being is more

reliable than an unreliable computer. The government is actually

MORE EFFICIENT than private business...while the government

continues to survive, many private businesses have gone bankrupt

because they're either TOO CHEAP to hire qualified personnel, or

they have too few people to be a truly efficient operation. The only

efficient operation is our government; they offer better benefits,

better pay and better conditions to people with disabilities

(especially those with AS) than inefficient private industry.

Well, I just told Inger that I would let this drop and I will. However I will make one point. The government is not like private industry. Private companies can fail because all they is provide some service for profit. If they suffer from mismanagement or the service goes out of style, then they fail. Their failure is the success of other companies with better plans or more desirable products. Therefore, because a business fails it is not the end of the world and indeed the market is probably better off.

The government on the other hand, is a public entity. Its purpose is the command and control of the nation in so far as it is allowed by the Constitution and other laws. It does not operate by the same "laws of physics" as private business. It does not have to balance its books, it does not have to limit its debt and it does not have to even get anything right. It exists solely because the people want it to. If the people no longer wanted the government, it would fail in favor of a new model. However since history shows that if a Democracy falls it is almost always replaced with a dictatorship, then it is best to keep the current system running.

[Guest guest]

More and more anti-American conservative rhetoric, !

That's not what I'm getting at. An actual human being is more

reliable than an unreliable computer. The government is actually

MORE EFFICIENT than private business...while the government

continues to survive, many private businesses have gone bankrupt

because they're either TOO CHEAP to hire qualified personnel, or

they have too few people to be a truly efficient operation. The only

efficient operation is our government; they offer better benefits,

better pay and better conditions to people with disabilities

(especially those with AS) than inefficient private industry.

Take a radio station, for example. A radio station is run more

efficiently if you have a person on the station's premises 24 hours

a day, seven days a week, rather than let an inefficient computer

run the station, which has a risk of breaking down and putting the

station off the air for an extended period of time. And as for

your " two person " description; two persons can do the job better

than one. For instance, if you have two persons doing the same job,

then production would not be cut in half. It would be DOUBLED. So,

if you have two people doing the same job, they would not be

producing five copies of the same product, but rather, twenty. And

they will do a QUALITY job. Fewer people means shoddy workmanship,

lower quality products and fewer products to sell. That means more

money for the company; they should pass this down to the workers,

not the fat-cat CEOs.

I'm right on this one, ...you're DEAD WRONG.