Inability to Type Not a Disability 266
gizmo_mathboy writes: "The 9th Circuit Court has ruled that not being able to type does not give one protection/privilege under the Americans with Disabilities Act(ADA). This article on Yahoo! has information concerning the case."
Re:Doesn't seem right (Score:3, Interesting)
Articles like this always tend to freak me out. I'm one of the more autistic geeks out there- couldn't finish school, couldn't keep a normal job because of 'Asperger's Syndrome', a sort of communication-enabled autism. Nobody knew what the hell it was when I was growing up. I developed an ulcer and tried everything from pizza cook to inventory and stockroom for a guitar pickup company, continually getting 'fired in sorrow' by people who knew that I was killing myself _trying_ to do what they wanted, but something was just not fitting somewhere. I turned to drugs (BAD F**KING MOVE) which helped stave off suicide for the time being. I ended up in debt, in a homeless shelter, from there to a psych ward (voluntarily- beat the homeless shelter as long as I behaved well enough to be legitimately allowed to refuse psych meds) and it was there that I found an advocate that got me on social security Disability.
That has meant a lot over the last 6 years or so. I'd never been able to live free from fear of homelessness or hunger before. Your mention of 'skiing holidays' was wonderful because it put things in perspective- I live on about $6K a year. No car (I don't consider myself fit to drive), no DVD player, no cable TV, yada yada. And yet being free from hunger and the destruction of my former life is such a blessing that I feel guilty when reading the harangues of people with ten or twenty times the income and resources of me!
I used to be lazy- or something that looked like it but was more like being stressed into immobility. Once I had the ability to define things on my own terms for a while, it turned out I wasn't lazy, and now I even court RSI ( ;) ) doing things that I like, or things that I mostly like that seem to be a path out of Disability towards a niche I can actually handle. For instance, I'm doing things related to costuming and finding there are actually people out there who'll pay money for that. Great! And so I do that for 12 hour days, alternating with days where I can't face it and sit back and don't do it anymore. I always liked audio and sound engineering, and one thing I taught myself over the last couple years is programming (in 'REALbasic'- sort of RAD language like a cleaner VB), and I now maintain an audio mastering program that I wrote for my own use- but GPLed.
*ramble* sorry for the ramble. All this strikes _very_ close to home. The upshot is, actually, that I don't have total sympathy for this reporter. I think it's great if she gets SSI and is allowed to live on about 6K a year (trust me, one can) to provide a space for her to learn what else she can do. I _don't_ think she is entitled to stick to what she _thinks_ she 'is' in life. At different times, I've thought I 'was' a cook, a stockroom person, a writer for The Absolute Sound (got several articles published actually), a Mac tech, etc. I don't believe any of these things really were so suitable that I should have been allowed to _stick_ myself in that role permanently. I'm glad I moved on from those things, and can draw on all of it as I continue in life.
I think the biggest reason this woman deserved to lose this particular case is because life changes, seemingly faster and faster, and you can't put down an anchor. The most you can ask for is a damn good life raft. I have that, I use it- I don't bitch that the government doesn't give me more money or expect it to under-write the possible paths _away_ from disability for me. It'll take longer for me to chisel out a niche in society this way. That's okay. By the time I do, the niche may not last, but I'll have got good enough at chiseling out niches that I'll no longer fear anything.
My advice to this reporter would be: can you sit back and take stock without fear of homelessness and starvation at this point, and what other roles in life could you see yourself filling?
Re:Disability is about more than "whining". (Score:2, Interesting)
Or put another way, you mention that you use a walker. Would you file a discrimination suit if you got turned down for a job as a jogging instructor?
As I was expecting -- another invalid comparison I've seen bandied about in this thread... because obviously I wouldn't have been applying to be a jogging instructor in the first place, I'd be looking for a job that fit well with my skills AND disability. There is a key difference which a pat one-liner like this ignores...
The situation here is not someone looking for work and being turned down, it's someone who had work in the first place and was quite capable of doing the work, then we have an injury scenario and the disability arises. There are always alternatives to giving someone the boot if accommodations won't allow them to continue on in their current role.
I'm reminded of a situation in the World Wrestling Federation (probably not a popular show with /.'ers, but read on) where a wrestler named Darren Drozdov was paralyzed from the neck down due to an on-job accident in the ring. Clearly he would not be wrestling again -- but the company paid for his therapy and continued to employ him as a columnist for their website instead rather than ejecting him for being unable to continue his then-current job. If a guy who can't even MOVE his hands can write a weekly column, why can't something be done with the reporter in question? She has value in her talents as a writer, even if the physical process of writing is an obstacle. If not having her continue in her same role, maybe in a similar one where her talents can be used while working around the accident.
However, I will grant that if nothing else can be done, if there are no roles she wants or they want her for and the injury simply is too debilitating, then her continued work for the company is not likely. That's where REASONABLE comes into the phrase Reasonable Accommodations; there's a fuzzy line after which it's too much to be expected to cover. Once you exhaust the possibilities, it is time to move on and find some other direction to take with your life. I'm simply not certain that is the case here.
I will commend the company for going out of their way to help her out and try to make things work; under ADA, they were compelled to do SOMETHING, but they've done more than the bare minimum. (That may be the source of dissent, that her accommodations can be seen as luxuries to folks who haven't experienced her disability. 'Daily massage' would sound like a luxury to someone who doesn't suffer chronic, crippling back pain.) I'm simply wondering if they couldn't do more given how other people with more crippling disabilities are still capable of doing jobs like hers with accommodations, like Darren Drozdov. Maybe they couldn't, but maybe they could and simply gave up before that point of unreasonablity.
(Of course, it's a concise Yahoo style article, so we don't have all the facts. Keep in mind we're dealing with a lot of speculation in all directions. Oh, how I hate the Reuters style...)
Other accommodations? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a wholehearted supporter of the ADA, but so many suits today are on the fringes of what the original legislation was supposed to protect. And, regardless of the fact that employers win over 90% of ADA related cases (many due to the "undue burden" clause), frivolous cases such as this only spawn more frivolous cases.
Keyboarding not a must. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hrmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
bias (Score:3, Interesting)
Now imagine if one day you stopped being able to type... Its not impossible... Maybe you suffered nerve damage in your hands, or you lost a few fingers in a farming accident. There are lots of ways to gain this particular disability. You wouldn't be able to work, you wouldn't be able to play computer games, and you wouldn't be able to chat on IRC. Worst of all, you wouldn't be able to post comments about your plight on message boards like SlashDot that have no provisions for those suffering from this particular disability.
Re:I think the issue is missed (Score:3, Interesting)
What happens when a 55 yo programmer has carpel tunnel or arthritis? If he is smart, and has planned well, he bids his currrent employer a tearful goodbye, and spends the rest of his days in the carribean.
Just my take on the matter.
If she'd been blind... (Score:3, Interesting)
There was one comment on slashdot recently about a man who owned a small computer company, who was completely blind, but walked around without a cane or any sort of guide, built, troubleshooted, took apart, added to, computers by touch, using brail or text-to-speech for interaction with the computers, etc.
However, if they had fired this reporter because she'd gone blind, she would likely have won without trouble.
Voice recognition is COMPLETELY viable, even in 1997 it was usable, esspecialy if the user had some use of their hands to allow for manual corrections when neccisary. All they would have had to do was spend a few hundred dollars on Dragon Naturally Speaking, and a few bucks on a microphone, and everything would have been fine.