Email   Print   Share By Jose Saucedo, EEO Office

Facebook Digg Delicious October 4, 2012 | Editorial

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and the occasion celebrates and recognizes the accomplishments in the workplace of men and women with disabilities and reaffirms the commitment to ensuring equal employment opportunities to all citizens.This month, we rededicate ourselves to bringing down barriers and raising aspirations for all people, regardless of disability.

Approximately 54 million Americans live with a disability, yet, individuals with disabilities have an employment rate far lower than that of individuals without disabilities, and they are underrepresented in the federal workforce.

Individuals with disabilities currently represent slightly more than 5 percent of the nearly 2.5 million people in the federal workforce, and individuals with targeted disabilities, which include blindness, deafness, missing extremities and paralysis, currently represent less than 1 percent of that workforce.

The federal government has an interest in reducing discrimination against Americans living with a disability, eliminating the stigma associated with disability, and encouraging Americans with disabilities to seek employment in the federal workforce. President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13548 in 2010 calling on federal agencies to increase recruitment, hiring and retention of people with disabilities because America’s workforce should reflect the diversity of its people – including people with disabilities.

Today, more people with disabilities work for the federal government than at any time in the past 20 years.

Kelly Keck, a GS-11, arrived at his position as a result of this initiative.

An Army medic, then-Staff Sgt. Keck was on his first deployment to Afghanistan with the Special Troops Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, when he stepped on an anti-personnel mine Sept. 13, 2008, suffering severe injuries.

Keck was assisting other injured Soldiers when the mine detonated and took three fingers on his left hand and his right leg below the knee.

“It was quite an ordeal,” the soft-spoken retired Soldier said. He underwent amputation surgeries in Afghanistan and was airlifted to Landstuhl, Germany, and then to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he spent four months in in-patient recovery and therapy, and was in out-patient status for a year and a half.

Kelly was medically retired from the Army in 2010 and was hired under Schedule A authority – the shortcut name for the hiring authority an agency can use to hire people with disabilities for any job they qualify for – after his retirement. Kelly is the first Wounded Warrior intern assigned as an Equal Employment Opportunity specialist with the Army Training and Evaluation Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.

Here at the Great Place, in honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, the Fort Hood EEO Office will sponsor an Assistive Technology Fair from 1-3 p.m. Oct. 18 in the East Atrium of III Corps Headquarters.

The theme of the fair is “A Strong Workforce is an Inclusive Workforce: What Can YOU Do?”

Assistive and adaptive technology, accessibility tools and information on reasonable accommodations will be available for inspection and hands-on application.