ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 3, 1996 TAG: 9609030169
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ARLINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Patricia Gail Whritenour has cerebral palsy, but that hasn't stopped her from getting a job. She's one of the growing number of disabled Virginians who are working outside the home.
The number of people with severe disabilities in the work force continues to rise, driven by the Americans with Disabilities Act, new technology, increasing openness on the part of employers and, most importantly, the determination of the disabled to stake their claim to a place in the labor force.
``People need to look at what people with disabilities can do, not what they can't do,'' said Whritenour, 50, of Arlington. ``It's real good that more people with disabilities are working. It needs to continue.''
Whritenour got a job three years ago in the research department at the Environmental Protection Agency, where she uses a computer to identify who in the agency should get poorly addressed mail.
``It's a great job,'' Whritenour said. ``It's very important to me to be independent. That's the way I was raised to be.''
According to the Census Bureau, the proportion of people nationwide with severe disabilities who are employed has risen from 23.3 percent in 1991 to 26.1 percent in 1994, the last year for which statistics are available. That represents 800,000 additional jobs.
``A lot of barriers to work are falling: physical barriers, people's attitudes,'' said Linda Schulte, a vice president at NISH, a Virginia-based nonprofit agency that finds jobs for people with severe disabilities.
NISH helps local rehabilitation programs across the country to bid on federal contracts to provide products or services to the government. And the company says the number of disabled people working on such contracts has more than doubled to 30,000 in the last 10 years.
Virginia has the largest number of severely disabled people working on federal contracts, largely because of its proximity to the government.
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