Proceedings of: Workshop on Improving Building Design for Persons with Low Vision

Introduction

Twenty-four Initiatives on accessibility have been started by new Commissioner.

iCAN instituted to streamline solutions and assistance for employees with disabilities (slide 1).

IRS has approximately 10,000 employees with disabilities.

Disabilities covered: blind, low vision, deaf, hard of hearing, mobility impairment, loss of limbs, psychological, and cognitive (slide 1).

Focus Groups being conducted at IRS Facilities

Managers find it time consuming and often confusing to find the right reasonable accommodation process and other disability-related help (“Took hours to find up to date information on the Reasonable Accommodation process because the information was scattered in different places”) (slide 2).

Safety for employees with disabilities, particularly during emergencies, was a recurring theme among managers and employees (slide 3).

Building accessibility and navigation were raised as problems in several locations (slide 3).

Conclusions

Employees would like to be empowered to resolve their own problems using a Web site like iCAN (slide 4).

Managers need a tool to save them time and to get issues resolved quickly so their employees can be fully engaged and productive (slide 4).