George Washington University, Cynthia Richardson-Crooks
From the management perspective some of the major business reasons for hiring persons 
with disabilities is to tap into the untapped market of qualified individuals to fill your 
workplace shortages.  That is one of the reasons but I would also suggest that it is just a 
good business practice to engage in particularly if you look at it from a diversity 
perspective you want to have a work place that is as diverse as you can have it there are 
so many different aspects of the workplace that people from different backgrounds, 
different ethnicity groups and different disability groups would bring to enhance your 
work experience. The experience you would have in the work place.

The impact that we've experienced at the George Washington University from hiring 
persons with disabilities is that people have gotten or become more accustomed to 
working with people who look different from them.  For instance, a place at the George 
Washington University where a person with a disability is currently employed, the people 
that actually work there and are this person's coworkers are not as unfamiliar with seeing 
a person in a wheelchair for instance.  It is common knowledge to them, the person is not 
viewed any differently now than anyone else   of the coworkers, where as before it took 
awhile to train people that this person will be joining the workforce, this person will be 
joining the staff and they will look a little different from you.  Now it is sort of 
understood and it is no big deal.

The George Washington University is so vast and so large we have a disability office that 
supports students with disabilities so from that perspective both staff members and 
faculty members it's not uncommon to see a person with a disability. I'm speaking now 
ofcourse about people who have visibly discernable disabilities that would be another 
position if we were talking about persons who have hidden disabilities.  But in the first 
case it wasn't so new because you see students on campus with disabilities so that would 
be the way that I would approach that answer because it wasn't something that we had to 
just go from point A to point Z in terms of sensitizing people.  But one of the things that I 
have done in my role of director of EEO and also I serve as the chair of the District of 
Columbia Business Leadership Network (BLN) since the George Washington University 
is the lead employer, and that is to provide disability etiquette training and once people 
get that kind of training they understand that it is really ok to make a mistake and it is 
really okay to be yourself and to be comfortalbe with a person that looks very different 
from you.

Well if your working with a company that as I say is really at step 0 in terms of being 
exposed to hiring persons with disabilities I would suggest joining the BLN in your local 
area.  The BLN provides free training for managers, also I would suggest contacting the 
equal employment opportunity commission they provide onsite training as does the BLN 
so that people can atleast get over that first step of hesitation.  The other thing that I 
would suggest is to certainly inform managers that it's not only the right the to do from 
the perspective of hiring a person with a disability for diversity purposes but it's also a 
business thing to do in as much as their bypassing, particularly with the recruiters, they 
are bypassing a viable source of employees, potential employees.

Well the George Washington University in as much as it is not really considered a 
corporation our environment is one of non profit we are an educational facility and in 
terms of how we attract persons with disabilities again we are the lead employer for the 
District of Columbia, we are known as a disability friendly employer throughout the 
general area anyway, certainly throughout our local recruiting area so in that sense when 
a person with a disablity contacts one of the providing agencies and they make reference 
to and I refer to the George Washington University so in that sense we are known 
throughout the disability communities as a disability friendly employer.

In terms of advancement of people with disabilities we don't really differentiate between 
what we do in terms of strategies to advance persons without disabilities, with persons 
with disabilities.  Generally whatever we follow we follow with everyone. 

Being recognized as a disability friendly employer means that service providers contact 
us regularly, when I say service providers I mean people that work with severely disabled 
or all types of persons in the disability community they work with them in terms of 
placement, job placement and job training, they know that to contact George Washington 
University that they would be met with an encouragement to apply for positions, that's 
not to say that we hire any body that is referred to us certainly however being a disability 
friendly employer means that people within the disability communities recognize it's an 
environment that I would be encouraged to disclose my disability if I so choose to do so.