Federal Jobs for Disabled Drop

Secoolish eventually won the boss over with her hard work, and later workplace experiences were better. A supervisor at EEOC once quashed complaints by subordinates that Secoolish was getting favored treatment because she did not have to review legal cases with audiotaped depositions. (She handled cases with transcripts instead.)

"I never failed to pull my share of the work, and he knew that," she said.

Although Secoolish considers the federal workplace receptive to people with disabilities, she said officials could do more to publicize job openings and the special rules that allow disabled applicants to bypass much of the cumbersome federal hiring process.

"The application process to government jobs is very intimidating," she said. "I don't think that they advertise that they are looking for people with disabilities." Melanie Brunson, executive director of the American Council of the Blind, said newer technology used in government offices is not always as accessible to disabled individuals as it should be. And one of the biggest problems is a lack of awareness by human resources officials of the capabilities of people with disabilities, Brunson said.

"No matter what the law says, I think there's a certain number of people who are going to shy away from hiring somebody with a disability because they are not going to know how to cope with it," she said.

W. Roy Grizzard Jr., assistant secretary of the Office of Disability Employment Policy in the Labor Department, said the success of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which opened many private-sector doors, may help explain the decline in disabled federal workers.

"A lot of those people are being hired in private industry," he said.

The Bush administration, through the New Freedom Initiative, is promoting opportunities for disabled people by increasing access to technology, integrating disabled people into the workforce, and expanding educational and transportation options, Grizzard said. One such effort is a recruitment program that this year will provide more than 340 students or recent graduates with summer internships in government offices, he said. About 15 percent of the participants get permanent government jobs, Labor officials said.

Agency leaders also are personally encouraging the hiring of individuals with disabilities, he said. A May 24 memo from Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld urged agency heads to take part in the summer jobs program.

"There is a concerted effort in this administration to begin to turn that ship around," Grizzard said. The federal employment Web site, USAJobs (www.usajobs.opm.gov), has assistive technology such as screen readers to ensure that job listings are accessible to everyone, said Michael Orenstein, a spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management.

Also, OPM Director Kay Coles James has proposed changing hiring rules for people with disabilities to remove a requirement that the Department of Veterans Affairs or a recognized rehabilitation agency certify that job seekers are disabled, he said. The proposal would allow other federal agencies to certify a disability in some cases.

"If it's clearly obvious that the person has a disability, then why run them through the wringer of having to get things certified?" Orenstein said. "It's bureaucracy at its worst."

Peter Blanck, a law professor who is director of the Law, Health Policy & Disability Center at the Iowa College of Law, said employment opportunities for the disabled need to be improved across the board, and the federal government is no exception.

"The government has typically been a model for hiring and accommodating and has led the way for the private sector," he said. "And my hope would be that in the federal government we would not be seeing negatives."