eNews Mar/06 | Defining Your DDQ: Disability Diversity Quotient by John Kemp

Special Article

Defining Your DDQ: Disability Diversity Quotient

By John Kemp [view bio]
Disability rights advocate and principal at Powers, Pyle, Sutter and Verville, P.C.

Prelude

I've seen significant societal transitions occur in my humble 56 years of living with a disability in these blessed United States. I admit that sometimes I didn't like it because the advantages I once enjoyed by being 'special' and 'different' with my obvious disability have been replaced by mere equality. Oh, great, progress, I would moan. Yes, progress!

As a child using four prostheses (my scooter days were yet to come), I sometimes experienced pure exclusion from inaccessible arenas and thoughtless, ignorant people who just didn't have to bend an inch to assure my participation in a program or service. If permitted to participate in some way, I was given the choice to conform to the physical demands imposed upon all or 'voluntarily' withdraw or stay away. Either I 'passed' as non-disabled, or I stayed away.

Then came the disability rights revolution of the late '60's and '70's, and with it Sections 503 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Covered entities and society as a whole slowly came forward to accommodate some of us some of the time. And some of us reaped many benefits from kind and unwitting people, and we loved it. For instance, as a semi-frequent airline traveler, I was upgraded to first class too often, and soon there were many of my fellow persons with disabilities asking for wheelchair pushes that they didn't need to arrive at the departure gates hoping for the grand reward — the first class disability upgrade! And, indeed, they received them. With great irony, sometimes I would not receive the coveted disability upgrade, only to find someone who didn't look like they needed one, sitting in first class. And I resented them, probably just like people resented me when I'd score a disability upgrade. In fact, when seated in first class with an unearned disability upgrade, I developed a "disability snobbery", not looking at those folks stumbling by to coach seats, for fear I'd be 'outed' by a known, or resented, oh my!!

Mind you, it wasn't just airline upgrades I was given — it was also 'advance to the front of the line' treatment at DisneyWorld, hotel suite upgrades, close parking when no one else was permitted parking at all - and it was embarrassingly ... sweet! Finally, it ended, and I was devastated. As more and more people with disabilities emerge into society, thanks to greater accessibility in the built environment, a heightened social consciousness, and the arrival of the ROI customer service model in business, I must now resort to the same airline upgrade method as all my fellow air-travel warriors do: we earn them the hard way — with our butts squeezed firmly into a coach class for most flights!

So what's changed? In a selfish way, I really miss it, but it just had to end (and secretly, I am happy about it!). Fundamentally, corporations realized it was unfair to the many paying customers who really deserved those upgrades before me — they traveled much more often, and equity was on their sides. Probably enough of them complained delicately to the airlines about this unfairness, and the business case for taking care of your best customers prevailed. In doing so, corporations got it right!

The Present

Today, diversity programs address numerous human resource issues across the spectra of age, race, disability, gay/lesbian/bisexual, religion, language and others in a more meaningful manner. Nonetheless, newspapers report major civil unrest in European countries long thought to have included peoples from diverse cultures — certainly the twenty plus days of car fires several months ago in France exposed deep-seeded feelings of economic injustice driven by race and cultural discrimination throughout the country. Ease of travel and pursuit of economic opportunities allow peoples of the world to migrate almost anywhere, and with these movements come an even greater need for understanding, tolerance and acceptance.

In the United States, and within the disability population, migration to major metropolitan areas often occurs to find accessible transportation, health care, housing and maybe even a job — economic justice in our oft-rearranged lives. Yet while many newly-disabled people flee to more hospitable places for services and opportunities, some magnificent disabled individuals are not going to be displaced by disability onset or advance, away from family, home, church, school — and job.

DDQ

So we find ourselves sixteen years into the second stage of the disability rights movement (first was the movement of the late '60's and early '70's) with the counterintuitive dilemma that something so easily understood as equality and fairness at a reasonable price for people with disabilities seems so difficult to promote and implement in the face of an exploding disability/aging population. As such, for the next ten to fifteen years, we might consider measuring our progress in terms of a "DDQ"- a Disability Diversity Quotient that scores identifiable characteristics that address the following five factors —

Progress on accessibility in the built environment (and repair/removal of the old inaccessible environment);
Examination of policies, practices, and procedures that promote inclusion and equal access, such as capital and software purchases, and test new ways to identify how work can be performed;
Current and recurrent training, education and awareness programs that advance these inclusion principles among staffs, vendors and customers;
Adequacy or ability of Corporate America to meaningfully and fairly police its compliance with its own, forward-moving standards and guidelines to achieve inclusion; and,
Rewards, recognition and transferability of this acquired knowledge, skills and lessons to other corporations who hire and serve customers with disabilities within a wider, completely diverse workforce and society.

Over the next five issues, we will dig deeply into each of these areas, offering ideas, suggestions and solutions, as well as a measurement tool, so we can begin together to add diversity and disability coherently and contextually into the fabric of our corporations, our countries and our cultures.

True, there may be fewer disability upgrades given kindly and gratuitously to me simply because I present with an obvious disability. But there will also be a future where each of us contributes, is valued and is rewarded without fear or bias, and based on merit and opportunity. Let's go there together. See you next issue.

John D. Kemp is a long-time disability rights advocate and principal at Powers, Pyle, Sutter and Verville, P.C. Please direct questions for John to .