<p>I’d like to work someplace where there are no slow workers allowed, does that really exist? You make it sound like it does. Of the three people I supervise, two are slow as snails. On any given day, they accomplish less than half of what I could do when I did their job even though they seem to be doing their best. Based on the obnoxious things I’ve heard them say about people with disabilities, I can guess with pretty high confidence that they are not disabled-- just damn slow. Where is the uproar? Why are slower disabled people unemployable but they are not? I am a little slow at the mathematical aspects of my job due to my disability, but my colleagues are a little slow at most of their jobs just because they’re slow-- I don’t think I should be walking around with an asterisk any more than they should just because there’s a diagnosis to explain my slowness.</p>
<p>I think people who haven’t really had the opportunity to come into contact with lots and lots of disabled people in different settings tend to imagine a worst case scenario where a disabled person is completely incapable of dealing with their life, which fortunately just isn’t reality for so very many disabled people. There are people who are so severely disabled they just can’t cope, surely, but there are thousands of people who are only somewhat disabled who manage to blend in perfectly fine. You have to be careful not to make statements which sweepingly generalize the entire disabled population, it can come across as a little insulting to those who struggle but are perfectly capable of working with you despite it.</p>
<p>ETA: And I understand that, in theory, this thread is about the people who ARE so truly very disabled that they can’t meet the demands of their job, but the ADA doesn’t protect your right to do something you can’t do with <em>reasonable</em> accommodations-- reasonable typically meaning small and relatively insignificant, we all understand that, right? Employers are not required to go above and beyond to change the rules or substantially change the nature of the work for their employees-- there is no such thing as a legal requirement to eliminate deadlines for an incapable employee. If you think these severely disabled people are the only class of disabled people you are talking about, you are talking about a problem which isn’t really a problem. Nobody is forcing a company to tolerate a shoddy worker who can’t perform the basic functions of the job-- and no rational person is arguing that they should be forced, that’s not what ADA is about. That is what makes me detect an undertone in some posts here of complete lack of tolerance for people who have any level of disability that requires simple and reasonable accommodations, which is really indefensible.</p>