Despite Law, Jobs Are Scarce for Disabled : Work: Employers still balk at hiring, fearing costs, complications.

Teri Hester never knows what reaction she’ll get when she calls employers on behalf of a deaf job applicant. Usually, questions start with the basics: Do they talk? Do they drive? Often, employers confuse the word deaf with dead . And some simply hang up.

“They don’t have time to deal with a disability or they don’t want to,” said Hester, who works as a job placement coordinator with the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness in Burbank. “A few will be very blunt. They’ll say, ‘We don’t want a deaf person.’ ”

Welcome to the front lines of the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, billed as a sweeping civil-rights law that would open occupational doors to people with disabilities. The anti-discrimination act was phased in between 1990 and 1994, capping three decades of political activism by people with disabilities who wanted equal job opportunities.

But since ADA became law, the unemployment rate among people with disabilities is still estimated at a sky-high 66% in California and nationally, said Chuck Kassis, associate director of the California Governor’s Committee for Employment of Disabled Persons. And in the San Fernando Valley, the recent recession made jobs scarce for the able-bodied and the disabled alike. The defense industry, traditionally a leader in hiring people with disabilities, has been among the hardest hit.

So job hunting for many of those covered by ADA is still what it’s always been: a frustrating process of educating employers--phone call by phone call, interview by interview. “A lot of employers don’t even know there’s a law,” said Hester, whose persistence has helped get jobs for people such as Samar Saado, 29, of Canoga Park, who was hired eight months ago to do data entry part-time for Interactive Security Systems in Van Nuys.

Saado is deaf. She’s also competent. “She does more in a two-hour period than most people with five senses do all day,” said her boss, Flip Marco.

Despite that, it took Saado five years to find this job. She’s lost count of how many interviews she’s had. Each time, she would bring an interpreter and talk about her qualifications. But employers “would look at me, and they would be kind of puzzled. . . . They just weren’t used to it,” Saado said with a shrug.

The slow pace of change is all the more frustrating because historically California led the nation in creating opportunities for people with disabilities. California’s climate was preferred by people who use wheelchairs because it made everything from getting dressed to moving about easier, said Chuck Fleming, ADA program manager with the state Employment Development Department. California’s low-cost public universities allowed people living on disability benefits to get a first-class education. The state was also among the first to make public buildings accessible to people using wheelchairs, he said.

But for people like Saado, prejudice remains a barrier. She has two training certificates in data entry, having repeated her certificate program after four years of job hunting yielded no result. Born in Syria, she speaks four languages: Arabic and English, Arabic Sign Language and American Sign Language. All this might seem to be ample preparation for data-entry work. But Saado thinks her deafness made many employers wary, even if they didn’t say so outright.

Her boss now communicates with Saado using a combination of gestures and notes.

“She is so focused. She doesn’t gossip,” Marco said. “She doesn’t get on my nerves by asking a lot of questions.” But Marco has also had to be flexible. The chore of answering phones, for example, must be delegated to other employees.

Despite occasional success stories, employers’ resistance to hiring people with disabilities is persistent.

“It’s a tough sell,” said Miriam Gottlieb, who coordinates a job program for disabled students at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. Terri Goldstein, coordinator of an internship program at Cal State Northridge, organizes a career fair each year for disabled students. Job seekers show up in droves, she said.

But when it comes to employers, “there is a lot of fear,” Goldstein said. She said a job fair in October drew only about a dozen Valley companies--mostly those that already have a track record of hiring people with disabilities.

“It’s really made me more cynical,” Goldstein said.

Hester, of the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness, said she waits until an employer agrees to interview one of her clients before revealing that the client is deaf or hard of hearing. “If I say, ‘Hi . . . I have a deaf client,’ they automatically shut me off,” she said.

Sheila Chulick, 35, a senior in industrial psychology at CSUN, is legally blind because of albinism, and has been looking for work for several years in human resources without success. She uses a magnifying glass to read small print and needs a large-print screen to use a computer. Employers are averse to such potential extra costs, she said. And “sometimes I think they are just scared. It’s a little new to them, they are a little apprehensive.”

Some evidence suggests that, so far, the ADA chiefly has helped disabled people who already have jobs. At Blue Cross in Woodland Hills, the number of disabled employees on the payroll has gone up by about 30% in the last two years, in part because of employees identifying themselves as disabled. These workers are now less fearful of requesting accommodations such as shifting duties or hours, said Craig McMillan, ADA administrator for Blue Cross.

But for many disabled people, especially those who have been unemployed for most of their lives, a lack of education and work experience--and fear of losing government benefits--work against their chances of landing jobs, said Jim Hammitt, disability specialist at Cal State Northridge.

Hammitt knows from experience. He was born with cerebral palsy in 1942, a time when doctors still mistook the condition for mental retardation. When he graduated from high school, a counselor told him not to look for a job--he would never be hired. “I bought it hook, line and sinker,” he said. “I went into a six-year depression.”

Hammitt lived with his parents, read books and watched soap operas until he could stand it no more. He became an activist for people with disabilities, edited a magazine and earned a college degree.

Today, he teaches disabled students at CSUN to know their rights. But in reality, he said, many workplace problems are best handled as a byproduct of personal interaction between boss and employee, not with the threat of legal action.

Hammitt’s own speech, for example, can be difficult to understand: “See how long this takes?” he said, after being asked to repeat himself several times. “These are the kinds of issues that can only be dealt with by individuals.” At work, he said, disabled workers “must put the employer at ease. . . . Once you develop a comfort zone, you can begin dealing with . . . what has to be done.”

Sandra Alotta, a part-time receptionist earning minimum wage at the state Department of Rehabilitation office in Canoga Park, got her job with the help of a state job-placement counselor. Alotta, 58, had her first stroke at age 30 and her second six years later. The strokes affected her mobility and her hands. She uses a walker to get around, writes slowly and types mainly with one hand. It took her more than two years to find her current job.

“I really got discouraged,” she said. “I don’t know why, but people feel it’s not only your body that’s disabled, it’s your mind too.”

Alotta’s current boss, Allan Abrams, said he’s found in Alotta a steady and motivated employee. He provided Alotta with a phone headset that connects to a tape recorder so she can tape messages. Later, she types them with one hand.

Abrams is also flexible about Alotta’s start time, because she depends on a shuttle for the elderly to get to work. Arranging transportation “is harder than the job,” Alotta said.

The Americans With Disabilities Act requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodation” to people with disabilities so they can perform their jobs. A recently completed case study of Sears, Roebuck and Co. by the Annenberg Washington Program concluded that, for most disabled employees, the average cost of accommodation was $36. In 3% of the cases, the survey found that accommodation cost more than $1,000. And in a few cases--for example, a reading machine for a blind employee--accommodations cost more than $10,000.

Many employers still fear that hiring any disabled person will cost them thousands of dollars, said CSUN’s Hammitt. Fleming, of the state Employment Development Department, said his office gets calls from overanxious employers asking for names of specially trained engineers to modify workplaces. Or “they think you have to bring in a bulldozer to knock down the restroom,” Fleming said. Engineers and bulldozers aren’t usually necessary, he said--just ask a disabled employee how to make the restroom more convenient.

Felix Munoz, manager of the North Hollywood division of Cinema Secrets Inc., a company that makes props and costumes for the entertainment industry, has dealt with the accommodation issue firsthand. He has hired about 15 workers with disabilities, including one who uses a wheelchair. “We had to put rails in the bathroom,” Munoz said. “They cost about $35.”

Large companies, because they have more resources, have an easier time tackling accommodations. Blue Cross, which has more than 100 workers with disabilities, began a host of architectural changes in 1991 to improve accessibility. Aisles were widened, drinking fountains lowered and bathrooms altered throughout its headquarters at a total cost of about $250,000, said administrator McMillan.

Today at Blue Cross, complying with the ADA has less to do with architecture than with common sense and courtesy, McMillan said. In some departments, employees sign up to take turns helping a disabled co-worker get out the car. Ray Perez, 20, who sorts claims in Blue Cross’ document-management section, uses crutches and has only partial use of both legs because he was wounded in a drive-by shooting when he was 16. The only special help he needs on the job is occasionally asking someone to help him carry something, Perez said.

At Film and Video Stock Shots, a North Hollywood provider of stock footage for movies and television, five of the 10 employees are deaf, reflecting a deliberate effort by President Stephanie Siebert. Siebert has bought specially equipped telephones and blinking smoke detectors. But patience and individual effort are also key. For instance, the firm’s hearing employees agreed to take courses in American Sign Language.

Siebert’s willingness to hire deaf workers is exceptional among small-business owners, who are often preoccupied with potential costs. But she also sympathizes with employers who are frightened by the ADA.

“It is not a picnic,” she warned. Sometimes, she said, she walks into the office and “all the phones are ringing and someone’s knocking at the door, and no one is answering. . . . Or so many times people walk away when you’re not finished talking to them,” she said.

More important, Siebert said, she fears that gray areas in the ADA law can be interpreted differently by employer and employee. For example, a dispute arose when one of her deaf employees complained of discrimination because she was not given more challenging tasks. The employee had been hired to do only data entry.

“I was floored,” Siebert said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, could I be sued here?’ ” The experience didn’t sour her, Siebert said. She recently hired another deaf person to replace someone who quit. But “I’m being really honest here. . . . It isn’t the easiest way to go,” she said.

That’s why the ADA is just a starting point, said CSUN’s Hammitt.

It will take years for education among people with disabilities to improve, he predicted, and for attitudes in the workplace to evolve. Despite problems, he maintains that the ADA has set a course toward freeing vast numbers of disabled people from dependence on public handouts and giving them a shot at what he calls “the basics--a job, a family, a big television set--the same things any citizen wants.”