IRS expands support for disabled 
By Orlando De Bruce
Federal Computer Week - August 2, 1999 - page 34

The Internal Revenue Service recently beefed up its support for a program
that will enable more of its employees with disabilities to join the
information technology work force. 

The IRS expanded the mission of the Information and Resources Accessibility
Program (IRAP) to ensure that employees with disabilities have access to a
diverse selection of specialized electronic resources, according to IRS
officials. 

"People with disabilities are an under-represented group in the US IT
workplace," said Paul Cosgrave, the chief information officer at the IRS.
"With programs like this, we are doing our part to address this issue and
take advantage of a highly productive source of talent."  

IRAP's predecessor, the Computer / Telecommunications Accessibility Program
(CAP), was founded in 1992 with a mission to make certain that personnel with
disabilities were provided the latest technology to perform their jobs. The
IRS changed the name of the program this year and expanded its focus, in
part, to offer a greater variety of technology to its growing number of IT
workers with disabilities. 

"There were only five employees who worked in the CAP program;" said T.J.
Cannady, program manager for IRAP. "We've more than doubled that number to
13. That's terribly significant. Frankly, there weren't enough people to run
the program. We increased the staff to devote resources in testing products.
We are testing more products to determine how they will work with adaptive
technologies. The people need to have the proper tools to do the job."  

Cosgrave said he noticed while in the private sector that people with
disabilities were under represented in the IT work force, even though there
was a shortage of labor. "In all my work with private industry, I never saw
this level of attention given to accessibility programs," said Cosgrave, who
spent 25 years working in the technology industry. 

IRAP will help determine the adaptive technologies required to assist
employees with disabilities; provide technical support to users of those
technologies; ensure "mainstream" applications are compatible with adaptive
technologies; and educate IRS managers and employees on IT accessibility
issues. 

"The program is more than just buying equipment," Cosgrave said. "People who
work in the office solve problems on the front end, so we deliver systems to
disabled employees that have been thoroughly tested for accessibility."  

Cannady said the strategies will enhance the efforts of IRAP to comply with
federal laws that require office automation and telecommunication systems to
be accessible to people with disabilities. For example, the program offers
computers that come with Braille printers or talking screen readers for
visually impaired people and special keyboards for mobility- impaired people. 

For privacy reasons, the agency declined to give a specific count of its
workers with disabilities. But Cannady said the number nearly doubled since
last year, and an agency spokeswoman said the IRS employs thousands of
workers with disabilities.