>> Lawler: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Erin Lawler and I am delighted to be speaking with you today on this topic. [Slide start] Disability and employment law: Practical information for job applicants. I think this topic is so important. A few words about myself before we start. [Slide end] I am a public policy specialist with the Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities and I was formerly a staff member of the governor's committee on People with Disabilities. I am also a lawyer which brings me to my next slide. [Slide start] I have to offer you all a disclaimer. The information, materials, and technical assistance provided as part of this presentation are presented solely for informational purposes and should not be interpreted as legal advice. So in other words, although I am a lawyer, I am not your lawyer. [Slide end] We should have an opportunity for questions and answers at the end, so because I can't give legal advice specific to a situation, I can only give general legal information, if you would just help me out, if you want to ask me a question about a specific situation, just say, hypothetically before you ask your question. Thank you. [Slide start] I also have to say that opinions and jokes are my own and do not represent the opinions of the Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities. [Slide end] Now, I mentioned that I think this topic is so important. And one of the reasons for that is that job applicants with disabilities have protection against discrimination and that protection comes from a pretty sophisticated legal framework. But you can't take advantage of that framework unless you are familiar with it, unless you know how to trigger those protections. [Slide start] And I think that trying to make sense of disability law can sometimes look like my next slide. [Slide end] [Slide start] And this is actually a picture of me preparing for this talk. I am looking glum and surrounded by a pile of papers and snack foods. [Slide end] [Slide start] So what I'd like to do is just make this easy. [Slide end] I talk to employers pretty often about their obligations under disability law. And I always tell them that the law is a set of common sense rules. So I am excited to be speaking to this audience in particular because I can tell you all the things that I usually tell employers and help you get some insight into what might be going through an employers' mind as they are interacting with an applicant with a disability. So I'll be giving you all of my secrets. [Slide start] Here is our agenda for today. As I said, it's just going to be a series of practical questions and answers. So questions like do I have rights? Do I have to disclose my disability on a job application or in an interview? Am I entitled to a reasonable accommodation in the application process? What kinds of questions can an employer ask me in an interview? And then I'll be happy to take your specific questions at the end. [Slide end] And as we go through this presentation, I will be answering these questions as if I am speaking directly to a job applicant with a disability. So parents, teachers, social workers, job coaches, any kind of specialists who may be listening in, I hope that you'll be able to just step into my shoes with this material and just give these same answers if you ever encounter these questions. Feel free to take these materials with you and use them. That's what they're there for. I'll be presenting both legal information and some of more what I would call soft skills about how to conduct yourself in an interview. The legal information I did not make up. I want to emphasize that. You'll encounter these same pieces of guidance online, on federal agency websites. If I were to make up law, they take my license away and I wouldn't be a lawyer anymore. So this isn't my own creative work. This is just lingo guidance that you can find in other places as well. And on the nonlegal side I want the give some credit to one of my colleagues. The information I'll be presenting about soft skills and positive disability disclosures comes from a man named David Ondich, who is the Americans with Disabilities Act Coordinator for the City of Fort Worth. And he is a colleague of mine and a member of the governor's committee on People with Disabilities. So I'd like the give him credit. Let's start with the first question [Slide start] which is I'm a Texan with a disability. Do I have rights when I apply for a job? This is sort of the fundamental question. [Slide end] [Slide start] And the answer is, yes. Yes you do. The Americans with Disabilities Act which I'll be referring to as the ADA, I'm sure many of you are familiar with it already, is a federal civil rights law. And it contains employment protections for people with disabilities. Now, federal law applies all over the United States no matter what you may ever heard it still applies in Texas. In addition to the protections found in the ADA, we have the Texas Labor Code which is a state law. And it contains mirror provisions and it also incorporates the ADA by reference. And it's important to know that these protection that we see in the ADA and in Texas State Law apply throughout the life cycle of employment. [Slide end] I think sometimes people think I don't have ADA protections until I'm an employee. You know, employment protections don't attach until after I've been hired. And that's just not the case. The ADA protects people throughout the life cycle of employment, as I said. So we'll be focusing on that before piece. What kind of protections are there before you actually are offered or accept a job. But some protections attach and you know, carry through all the way even after your employment has ended. Protections related to confidentiality for example. How long does an employer have to keep disability related information confidential? Forever. Our next question is, basically well, this is sounding really good. I like the sound of these protections. [Slide start] But wait, how I do know if I'm covered by these laws? Well, the ADA contains a definition of disability [Slide end] [Slide start] and it's a three‑pronged definition, a definition with three pieces. So if you want to picture a fork with three prongs on it. Three groups of people are protected or are considered people with disabilities under the ADA. The first is people with an actual disability. And the definition of actual disability found in the law, this is the legalese, is a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. [Slide end] We'll be delving into that in a minute. I don't love that use of the word impairment. I don't think that's very people first language but it's the language from the law so that's what I'll be saying. That's the first group, actual disability. Second group, people with a record of a disability. [Slide start] In other words, a person who has a record of such an impairment of prong one. The third group are people who are regarded as being a person with a disability. That's a person who is regarded by others as having such an impairment. [Slide end] That one tends to trip people up. How could someone possibly be regarded as having a disability when they don't? When they don't have any kind of disability? And why would the law protect people like that? What's the harm in not protecting them? And there's a little bit of history to that piece of the definition. The ADA was passed in 1990. And the lead up to it was quite a different time than where we are today and there was of a lot more stigma surrounding disability and some disabilities in particular. So this provision was useful then and now in protecting people who for example might be regarded as having HIV or AIDS when they don't. And we saw that, you know, more 20 years ago. Someone who has scars from burns or something like that could be mistaken as having HIV or AIDS by their employer who might terminate them on that basis. That doesn't sound very fair, does it? Whether the person has AIDS or not, they shouldn't be being fired for that reason. So because of that, there's a protection built in for people who are simply regarded as having a disability whether they have it or not. [Slide start] And lastly, there's some limited protections for people who are discriminated against because they have a known association or a relationship with an individual with a disability. [Slide end] So I find that piece of the law pretty intriguing and I think some of you might as well. The idea that a person who does not themselves have a disability but who has an association or a relationship with a person with a disability also has some protections. So that means that a mom who doesn't have any disabilities but who's caring for her child at home who has disability has some protections. I think we're going to see a lot of activity in this area coming up in the coming years because in part we're seeing what they're calling the sandwich generation. You know, the generation of parents who are caring for their own children and also for aging parents. So if that's something you'd like to hear more about, I'd love to talk more about it. So tell the folks at TSBVI to have another one of these TETNs and I'll come back and talk about that.