Working with a Chronic Disability

Managing a chronic disability and holding down a job isn't easy. I recently came across an article, Life, Wired by Bridget Murray Law, in Momentum magazine, about how Assistive Technology(AT) can help people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Here's an excerpt from a sidebar in that article:

AT to Keep Your Job
The right technology may help you keep your job: In the MS Technology Collaborative survey of some 2,400 people with MS, 40% said AT was helping them stay employed.

What are the most requested MS-related job accommodations? Flexible scheduling and AT to support screen reading, typing, and moving the mouse, said Eddie Whidden, MA, senior consultant at the Job Accommodation Network (JAN ), a free federally supported consulting service designed to help people with disabilities stay employed or become employable. JAN is at jan.wvu.edu.

Whidden spends his day at JAN helping people figure out which accommodations will serve them best, and which ones they might request from an employer under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

To read the rest of this sidebar, open the article (which is a PDF you can view on your screen) and scroll to page 31.

The sidebar in this post is reprinted here with permission from the publications division of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.