The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA) was signed into law on September 25th.This newest act corrects some of the inequities left unaddressed by the original ADA that was passed 16 years ago but, it won't impact staffing until corporations recognize the value of a truly underappreciated and underutilized labor pool

documented several laudable efforts by companies who make a difference. Two examples mentioned in her article:

-Rich Donovan, a former Merrill Lynch Trader who has cerebral palsy founded LimeConnect in 2006 with Merrill as a his first partner to help people with disabilities find jobs. With the addition of Pepsi, Google and Goldman Sachs, Donovan’s firm last year “sourced more than 300 disabled internship candidates from two dozen universities.�

The National Business & Disability Council with the initial help of Booz Allen Hamilton supports “Emerging Leaders�, a diversity internship program that has placed 75 students in summer internships in the last three years. AIG, KPMG, Liz Claiborne and P&G are among the 30 firms who support the program today.

- Before accommodation there is the interview process. Companyu Affinity Networks of people with disabilities can offer staffing leaders and their recruiters significant insight on the hiring on the hiring of people wioth disabilities. (The Suzanne Robitaillearticle singles out networks at KPMG, Eastman Kodak, IBM and Pepsi.)

Our final report was included in a WSJ article and we received a great deal of response- including one email from a young man who had recently graduated from NTID and whose story is worth repeating.

He had graduated with a Computer Science degree near the top of his class and spent a frustrating 6 months applying to positions (after lots of initial response that quickly tailed off as recruiters learned that he required a TTY.

He persisted however and was thrilled to have recently received an offer. He had a question though. A week earlier he had been online at a company’s staffing pages reviewing an entry level programming job when he was offered an opportunity to enter a chat-room to talk with a recruiter- which he did. After getting a positive response from the recruiter he was given a code to an online test- which he passed with flying colors. Then he received the offer, conditional of course on a background check.

His question? “I start work next week�, he said. “When should I tell them I’m deaf?�

“Now, would be a good time� we responded.

We renewed our acquaintance with one of the NTID career services professionals at the National NACE conference earlier this summer. Despite improvements it is still telling how few firms seek top engineering and computer science graduates at RIT-NTID. It is about walking the talk…so to speak.

Our belief is that recruiters are a critical piece of the solution when it comes to hiring quality candidates who may also be disabled. Learning how to examine the candidates ability and not be distracted by their disability is a part of it.

Ensuring a recruiter is trained to easily accommodate a range of disabilities in the recruiting process is also and obvious competency – and yet no public seminar geared specifically  to guide recruiters in this effort is readily available. A partnership between Cornell and the NJ SHRM Council is close (but what we think will resonate is still a step away).