Ready, willing, and working

"More people are coming to us for employment that we don't think would have come to us five years ago," Ms. McCary says. "For some people [with disabilities] it can be pretty daunting to come to a large employer, so the more we go out and talk in the community, the more people say, 'Yes, I could envision myself working at a bank.' "

McCary is also chairwoman of the national Business Leadership Network, a coalition of employers who see hiring people with disabilities as an important part of their diversity goals and business strategies. She sees strong momentum among companies of all sizes, partly because, with high turnover and job vacancies in certain industries, "they're looking for any concept they haven't tried before."

Others say it's not time to celebrate yet.

"We've not seen the kind of progress we'd like in the area of recruiting," says Edmund Cortez, president and CEO of the National Center for Disability Services in Albertson, N.Y. "A few years ago when there were complaints about a future shortage of workers, there should have been a surge of employers coming to our [disability-employment] organizations ... but there wasn't.

"One company was using [prison] inmates to produce their product, and I wondered, why haven't they come to us? It's ignorance.... They just didn't know about the well-trained people available."

That ignorance persists partly because extending civil rights to people with disabilities was a sort of "afterthought" to the activism of the 1960s, Mr. Cortez says.

In 1973, the Rehabilitation Act prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities in workplaces that received federal funding. But it wasn't until the employment-nondiscrimination portion of the ADA went into effect in 1992 that the message went out to all employers.

And interpretations of the law are still being sorted out. "If the employer and the worker can work out a solution, that's the best," Cortez says.

If not, the courts continue to give the law teeth. This summer, hearing- impaired employees settled a class action lawsuit against UPS for nearly $10 million. It is thought to be the largest monetary settlement for an employment-discrimination claim under the ADA, says Caroline Jacobs, a lawyer for the UPS employees from Disability Rights Advocates in Oakland, Calif.

The plaintiffs claimed they were not given written materials or sign-language interpreters during important training sessions, and that in some cases they were discouraged from seeking promotions. UPS did not admit to any discrimination in the settlement, but a mechanism is being set up to monitor policies it put in place after the lawsuit was filed. These are intended to improve what the company considers a strong record in recruiting and accommodating employees with disabilities.

The dispute over promotion opportunities speaks to the challenges that can remain in workplaces even after basic adjustments are made.

"Accommodation is the easy part ... and we see people with disabilities out in public life and work life more than ever before, but attitudes are still a problem - the low expectations of people with disabilities," says Patricia Murphy, director of the Disabilities Studies Program at the University of Toledo in Ohio.

Pity and condescension means "we don't think of them as workers, as someone who may compete with us for a job," she says.

The barrier is not always on the employer side. People who depend on government benefits for medical expenses, for instance, might find themselves disqualified once they were employed, even if their income didn't cover medical needs. Others are held back by transportation difficulties or family members who discourage them from working.

For many of the people referred to Triangle, the first step is recognizing their own talents, says CEO Michael Rodrigues. Triangle earns 90 percent of its funding by employing people in its gift-product and packaging ventures and by contracting with local businesses for various services. It also offers computer training, sports, and social activities. People greet each other in the hall as members of an extended family.

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