A Workplace For The Disabled

The Washington Post:

Debra Ruh’s daughter Sara always wanted to be a nurse, but because she read on a kindergarten level when she was in the sixth grade, her parents knew that Sara’s dreams may be out of reach.

They looked into the possibility of Sara becoming a nurse’s aide, but to take those tests she needed to read at the 5th to 8th grade level.

Someone suggested that Sara, who has Down Syndrome, eventually might find employment by collecting carts at a grocery store. Another suggested that Ruh, who is a self-proclaimed terrible cook, open a bakery to hire her daughter because “they knew of a bakery that employed people with disabilities.”

These suggestions gave Ruh pause. “Those ideas weren’t necessarily bad ideas, but they made me think ‘You haven’t taken the time to get to know who my daughter is.’” Ruh said she worried about the limited opportunities that might be available to Sara.

Today, at age 21, Sara reads at the third-grade level and has found a new calling.

Ruh, 49, decided that there should be more companies offering opportunities to the disabled. She ditched her lucrative career as a bank executive specializing in information technology and in 2001 founded TecAccess, a firm offering IT consulting and training to corporations as well as government and educational institutions.

Technology levels some of the playing field. “What I needed to do is to create a business that hires people with disabilities and sees how creative and innovative they are…You already have to think outside the box if you have a disability because the world is made for the average person,” said Ruh. “My senior vice president of government affairs is 3′11″…She has an amazing background and has been a presidential appointee but she’s had to be creative and innovative.”

In 2001, TecAccess had two employees. Today, the company has about 60 full-time and contracted employees, most of whom have developmental or physical disabilities ranging from bipolar disorder, blindness, brain injury or cerebral palsy to quadriplegia.