SCOTT THIGPEN/Special

"Our No. 1 issue is to help students be better self-advocates," said Alan Muir, executive director of Career Opportunities for Students With Disabilities.

Some of the biggest employers in the nation say they want to hire college graduates with disabilities, and they back up the talk by paying high-ranking executives to figure out how to improve the effort. Like most college graduates, those with disabilities would like to start careers soon after they get their degrees.

So why is the unemployment rate of college graduates who have disabilities estimated at about 40 percent?

Nearly 15 years after the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, plenty of barriers remain. While most public buildings have ramps leading to the front door, other barriers mean that many disabled people who are tenacious and smart enough to earn college degrees are unemployed or underemployed.

Even employers that reach out in a public way, such as Paralympics sponsor Home Depot, have trouble finding potential employees who have disabilities.

"I don't think we get a lot of applications from people who are disabled," said Layne Thome, director of associate services for the home improvement retailer. "In our college recruiting programs, the career services group is not always plugged in with disability services. So when we're doing our recruiting on campuses, disabled applicants aren't coming to those job fairs."

One of the big reasons for the disconnect between companies that would hire graduates with disabilities and the would-be workers who have degrees is that colleges often separate disabilities services from career services, said Alan Muir, executive director of Career Opportunities for Students With Disabilities, a Knoxville-based association of universities, corporations, government agencies and nonprofit groups that focuses on the employment of college graduates who have disabilities.

"You primarily have disability services focusing on the accommodations that are necessary," Muir said. "But then students are not encouraged to go over to career services, where the employers are. So all of these employers are asking, 'Where are the students?'

"And they're not using career services. That's why the bridge has to be built between the two of them."

Using the Web

To help close that gap, Muir's organization is launching a Web-based service called COSD Gateway, which is designed to help match employers with college students who have disabilities. Students will be able to post résumés and other documents so employers will find an easier path to recruiting them.

"What we're trying to do with the format is taking existing technology and adapting it to a slightly different use," Muir said. "It's the every-day recruiting technology that employers and colleges have used to interact with each other for years and years. We're taking that technology and focusing it on students with disabilities — and not just on a school-by-school basis, but on an individual student basis on a nationwide scope.

"When an employer goes into COSD Gateway, they are looking at not just my school at which I recruit; they are looking at all schools that are participating, and all those students that are on that database are available. It's a centralized point to find the most qualified people."

Katherine McCary, a vice president with Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks, said she sees more than one benefit for employers who will use the Web site to recruit.

"It's going to provide us linkage to candidates that we haven't had in the past," McCary said. "That's the best reason to have it. But it also will represent the employers as companies that want to hire people with disabilities.

"And that does so many other things, besides what it does for the applicants. It creates an awareness in the community, and people know SunTrust Bank wants to hire people with disabilities."

At a June conference in Atlanta, Muir's organization brought together students, employers and administrators from college services departments to talk about the challenges of matching students who have disabilities with potential employers. The employers are already convinced there is a business case for including disabled employees in their diversity mission statements.

Renea Fuller, senior vice president of diversity at Cingular Wireless, echoed an explanation offered by other attendees at the summer conference.

"It helps us understand the cultural and consumer needs of people with disabilities," Fuller said.

Better preparation

While employers and college services departments work to improve communications, many students who have disabilities need to prepare better for career searches. Often, McCary said, college graduates with disabilities don't have résumés that are as well-rounded as those of others.

"Even if we have 500 employers and we all said we want to hire students with disabilities and college graduates with disabilities, then we look at them and say: 'Well, this population hasn't taken advantage of career services. They don't know how to interview. They haven't gotten summer jobs. They haven't been involved with internships or mentoring,' " she said. "So kids who have gotten through college have a lot to offer, but they also have to compete."

The COSD Gateway, McCary said, will go a long way toward matching students who have disabilities with internships as well as with full-time work to address this problem, she said.

"We can lower the barrier and help them take advantage of the things other college students are taking advantage of," McCary said.

And, Muir said, employees with disabilities need to learn to speak up and let employers know how an accommodation might help them get a job done, as opposed to giving up on an opportunity when an obstacle presents itself.

"One young lady had a very valid complaint because she was not able to reach the card reader in the parking garage of the place she was working," Muir said. "So she needed a different way to get into that garage. It isn't necessarily workplace accommodations, [which] are easily seen and are very tangible. We're talking about more work/life [issues] and improving the method of people getting to work and being more productive."

At the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Muir's organization works with students to develop the confidence to speak up for themselves, something most college students are only beginning to learn.

"Our No. 1 issue is to help students be better self-advocates," Muir said. "That young lady made the right decision by going to her employer and saying, 'I need things this way.'

"You don't want a student to say, 'I can't do that and you're not providing it for me.' You want a student to say: 'That's true; I can't do that. But here is an alternative way that will work for both of us.' That's a hard skill to teach."