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

Issue 20: Why should we embark on a new guideline?

Kurt, you touched on one thing, and even though we’ve sat here and talked about this subject for two days now, and many have thought about it for years and very concentrated over the past couple weeks in preparation, we have to define the problem again maybe in our own group. Why do it? Why are we embarking on a new guideline? How can we define that as a need? When you go to your various leaderships, we have to take a step back from what we’ve actually talked about today and begin to add some definers of why we’re doing this.

Response by Kurt Knight: And VA is an easier sell because our average patient is older, has many more chronic conditions of mental health and alcohol and other psychological issues. Our typical patient is quite different than the private sector hospital. So from a safety perspective, and trust me, VA, safety, it drives you. It goes over the top. We’ve had a few suicides, and there’s been a series of mandated looks at all of our hospitals, everything imaginable that somebody could commit suicide doing, and there’s been changes in what you use in bathrooms and anything you can hang something on and a lot of direction and emphasis on that.

So I think it needs to be tied to safety. I think it needs to be tied to security and the energy issue, whether pro or con, whether it uses more or less, I mean, that can be debated and I am doing that but certainly those are issues that we could tie into, separate and apart from low vision. I mean, again, [in] this integrated approach, safety is a very strong issue. Security is a very strong issue. And, again, I think we can achieve [safety, and security while meeting] both energy and the range of issues.

Comment by [Participant]: You can anchor it, then, on your patient population because you’re VA.

Response by Kurt Knight: Yes. Because you can actually say our patient population is older, they’re injured, they’re here for care, and so low vision is an actual tangible percent population that we have to address. And I would say -- just to jump in, and then I’ll turn it over to you -- Social Security, the SSA has a mandate to bring people with disabilities into their workplace.

Response by Marsha Mazz: Every federal agency does. Every federal agency is mandated by an executive order to bring in people with disabilities, every single one.

Comment by Debra Babcock: It’s basically what I was going to say. There’s an executive order that mandates that federal agencies hire people with disabilities and veterans, and most federal agencies have disability initiatives, like you heard me discuss the IRS does, and I know this is going to sound cheesy but I feel very passionate about this subject, and one of the main reasons we should do this is because it’s the right thing to do.

As we hire these people and bring them into our agencies -- and we do a great job at the IRS recruiting them. We go to Alliance World. We have all these recruiting programs, and we bring them in, and then we do a horrible job of taking care of them once we bring them in. I mean, sometimes they sit there for six months waiting for assistive technology applications in order to do their jobs and they quit.

As I go around and interview these people, they’ve waited three, four, six months for an application for them to do their job and what have they been doing? They’ve been sitting there waiting and it’s horrible. It’s actually a crime, in my mind, and that’s why I feel so passionate about it. Because it’s great to say you have these hiring initiatives but if we don’t take care of these people with disabilities once we bring them in, or even our employees that develop disabilities, as Marsha has a wonderful little saying, that we all could develop a disability. Who’s going to take good care of us? Are we going to be sitting there for six months waiting for an application that will help us do our jobs? So, sorry y’all, I know I’m preaching to the choir, but –

Response by Marsha Mazz: I just wanted to say that there is a law and that law is the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, okay? And so for over 30 years the federal government has been required under section 501 to provide its employees with disabilities reasonable accommodations in order to do their work. I’m appalled to hear that people at IRS wait for months. I have several acquaintances who work for IRS at perhaps higher levels, and people and acquaintances with disabilities who haven’t [had] that experience, but I think that there is an issue with bringing in people at lower levels and then perhaps not seeing to their needs or maybe they’re not well-informed of their own rights.

But just because we talked about this the other day, the federal government has a nondiscrimination in employment policy. It isn’t a recommendation. It’s a law. And employees with disabilities have avenues to complain about these issues, and in fact there’s all kinds of recourse they have. So like the ADA, in the workplace, people have a right to accommodations. As we talk about improving the building, I think it would be a good idea to talk about improving the building perhaps in areas where you may have a less clear way to an accommodation.

You have a right to an accommodation to enable you to sit at your desk and do your job. If that means you need additional lighting, if that means you need assistive technology, then you should get it. I get mine within days. So I don’t know what the problem is at IRS. But you have a less clear right to be able to navigate the building, to be able to get lunch, to be able to socialize with staff or get to a meeting room. So maybe we should be looking at perhaps first providing guidance in the spaces where there is less support for the employee with a disability.

Comment by Debra Babcock: One thing I do want to add on to that is in headquarters, we have employees that get their applications right away. The locations I’m talking about are at the campuses, [where] they work at night and they receive even less support.

So some of the more obscure locations I think is really where my focus has been, and that’s why we developed the website in the first place so, even though they may not even have a computer, they may have a kiosk that they can go to and look up and try to find out facts. We have the JAWS applications on those computers and the zoom text. If you went into a lot of these federal headquarter buildings, I don’t think you’d see as much occurrence as you do in these more obscure locations out in the campuses and I think that would go for a lot of the service, federal agencies.

Comment and Question by [Participant]: So Marsha, from what you’re saying and what I’ve heard here at the table is that there is the germ of language in the current law that doesn’t exclude the issue of persons with limited sight. In fact, that could be the beginning of a foothold to say, well, those people are disabled and they should be accommodated for. Are we saying that there’s already the germ of some law –

Response by Marsha Mazz: No. I mean, it’s more than a germ. I mean, you know, it’s a full-blown infection. The law, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968, ensured people certain rights. The ABA, the barriers act, is essentially, you know – operates like a building code. You build it, you mess with the building, you comply with the barriers act. And we write the standards, and we are to write the standards to benefit people with disabilities at reasonable cost and we always have to balance cost and benefit. And people with low vision are not excluded from the group of people that we are obliged to address in our guidelines and the resulting standards.

That said, that’s a generic accommodation that we would offer to a class of individuals. So for example, and I think I used this example and I apologize, yesterday, we say that for people who use wheelchairs, you design a ramp. You never exceed a 1 in 12 slope and if your ramp doesn’t exceed a 1 in 12 slope, then the ramp is compliant. But it may not meet certain people’s needs and we know that. We know that when we pick 1 in 12 that there are going to be outliers, people who will not be served. But on the whole, it serves a very broad range of individuals with mobility disabilities.

When that individual has his own unique needs which are not met, he has to then – he cannot file under the Architectural Barriers Act completely because the building is compliant. He has to go to his HR office and he has to say to the people in HR, I’ve got a problem, I can’t use this building that meets the standards and so I need you to develop an individual accommodation for me that meets my own unique specific disability-related needs.

So it’s the difference between building standards which address John Q. Public with a disability and an individual employee accommodation which addresses the unique special needs of John Jones, who is a real person, and so those two work together because the building standards give you a minimum level of accessibility that addresses a lot of people’s needs. But when they’re not met, you go to HR, you say, I need a reasonable accommodation. The reasonable accommodation might be for that guy who can’t get up that 1 in 12 ramp that we’re going to move your office so you don’t have to traverse the slope.