EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS FOR DISABLED.

One of the primary goals of the American disability rights movement has been to temper the economic oppression of persons with disabilities by decreasing our unemployment rate -- stuck between 65 and 70 percent of working-age people with disabilities for the last 30 years. Since the 1970s, civil rights laws and other liberal policy reforms have been enacted to advance the opportunity to earn a living on par with nondisabled peers.

There is little evidence that these measures have done much to improve the material conditions under which most people with disabilities live. A 1997 comparative study showed that state and federal anti-discrimination laws have not produced the gains in employment levels or wage rates for people with disabilities that advocates expected.

Despite a hot economy and an official unemployment rate of 3.9 percent, the lowest in 30 years, the unemployment rate for the working-age disability community has remained chronically high. One-third of adults with disabilities live in a household with an annual income of less than $15,000, compared to one-eighth of those without disabilities -- a 22-point gap. And the gap between persons with disabilities and nondisabled persons living with very low incomes has remained virtually constant …