Former New York Yankee Jim Abbott, who once pitched a no-hitter, is now campaigning on behalf of a government effort to encourage businesses to hire individuals with disabilities.

Abbott, 40, was born without a right hand and played 10 seasons of major league baseball. Now he’s joined forces with U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), and has been appearing at major league stadiums to underscore the message that employers should look past the disability to the valuable person within.

He’s hoping to turn around some profoundly discouraging statistics. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, in 2006, the employment rate for people with disabilities was 37.7 percent, compared to an employment rate of 79.7 percent for people without disabilities, a 42 percent difference.

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From BBC, AP/MSNBC:

The National Federation of the Blind has announced plans to stage protests against the movie “Blindness” at 75 theaters across the country when it opens this weekend.

The NFB says the movie, a Miramax Films release starring Julianne Moore, reinforces inaccurate stereotypes by portraying blind people as helpless, perpetually disoriented and unable to care for themselves.

“We face a 70 percent unemployment rate and other social problems because people don’t think we can do anything, and this movie is not going to help — at all,” said Christopher Danielsen, a spokesman for the NFB.

Based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago, the film depicts a mysterious epidemic that causes residents of a town to go blind, resulting in a collapse of the social order. Blind people are portrayed as quarantined in a mental asylum, attacking each other, soiling themselves and trading sex for food.

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Writing in The Progressive, Kathi Wolfe says people with disabilities want to hear specifics about what candidates are prepared to do to address issues like health care, education, employment, access and technology. Wolfe, who is blind, would like to see the campaigns talk about:

• Assuring health care coverage for people with disabilities,
• Assuring full funding for education for people with disabilities, and
• Removing barriers to employment that leave 70 percent of people with disabilities without jobs.

In this presidential campaign, the candidates have an opportunity to pay more than lip service to our issues. I hope they will seize it.

From the Hartford [CT] Courant:

Walgreens Co. is nearly finished building a $175 million distribution center in Windsor, CT, in which one-third of the projected 550 jobs will go to people with disabilities.The center will serve 275 drugstores.

In a similar Walgreen facility in Anderson, SC, 42 percent of the workers have one or more disabilities. The driving force behind the company’s disability hiring effort is Randy Lewis, the company’s senior vice president of distribution and logistics. Lewis’ son has autism.

Walgreens worked with technology experts to create equipment and software that meets the needs of people with disabilities. Company officials anticipate that the technological improvements will “increase worker productivity by 20 percent and boost long-term job retention in all of its modernized distribution centers.”

Earlier posts here and here and here.

From the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), the Ottawa Citizen and The Canadian Press:

A recent Statistics Canada survey reports that parents of three out of five children with a disability make adjustments in employment as a result of their child-rearing responsibilities. Mothers said overwhelmingly that their jobs were affected. The study did not include comparisons with families of children without disabilities.

Parents said the adjustments could include working fewer hours, arranging work schedules to accommodate children, turning down promotions, or quitting jobs. The survey also found that parents experience challenges finding day care. One out of five respondents said that day care facilities or programs had refused to accept their children with disabilities.

From the [Portland] Oregonian:

Oregon legislator Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, says families of people with disabilities struggle every day to keep their heads above water and hold their families together. “They deserve more than Sarah Palin’s empty words, and should not be exploited as pawns in the presidential election,” she says. An excerpt:

Being the parent of a child with Down syndrome does not ensure that Palin will be an effective advocate for people with disabilities, any more than Dick Cheney being the parent of a lesbian daughter has made him an effective advocate for equality. In fact, a McCain/Palin administration will likely set back the cause of people with disabilities to achieve dignity, independence, health and full employment.

… To families of kids with special needs, I have a message: Please look carefully at what candidates up and down the ticket will actually do for your children. Demand more than words and promises. Ask for plans, and see if they match your vision for your child’s future.

Grelser is the mother of a teenager with developmental disabilities.

Editors of the Washington Post say the ADA Amendments Act that was recently passed by Congress will significantly broaden protections for people with disabilities.

Business and disability groups are pleased with the final version of the bill and said that collaborating on the legislation should reduce the number of lawsuits over its implementation. The direct language of the bill, and the laudable cooperation that forged it, should also improve employment levels for the disabled. Two out of three people with significant disabilities are unemployed, a disturbing statistic that disability organizations say is unchanged from when the original ADA became law. This time, Congress’s intent is clear, and we hope the courts follow it.

Earlier post here.