Doug Henwood wrote:
> [The WSJ website includes a link to a slick webzine, WeMedia
> <http://www.wemedia.com>, targeted at this market. Marta, any
> comments?]
>
> Wall Street Journal - December 15, 1999
>
> People With Disabilities
> Are Next Consumer Niche
>
> By JOSHUA HARRIS PRAGER
> Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>
> Handicapitalism.
snip
Comments yes, yuck and no surprise to me that the propaganda is flowing so freely in the Wall Street Journal. A few thoughts:
WE is one predictable outcome of a movement which was largely steered by the likes of Evan Kemp (Invacare) and Justin Dart Jr. (Dart Industries, Rexall) and other Republican pwds who believe in capitalism. The ADA, which this article demotes as less relevant to pwds "success" than the profit motive *is* a free market civil rights bill produced in the spirit of 1990s consumerism. It was drafted from a pro-business mentality.
WSJ: "In 1995, according to the latest available census figures, there were about 48.5 million people 15 and older with disabilities in the U.S., with annual discretionary income totaling $175 billion. "
I find this really hard to accept. The same census bureau says that poverty is disproportionate amongst the 54 million Americans who have some level of disability. Statistics tabulated by John McNeil of the Census Bureau (1994-1995 data) show the poverty rate for people with no disability to be 13.5 percent compared to a poverty rate of 20.2 percent for those with disabilities. The 1998 National Organization on Disability (NOD)/Louis Harris Survey, found that fully a third (34 percent) of adults with disabilities live in a household with an annual income of less than $15,000 compared to one in eight (12 percent) of those without disabilities - a 22 point gap. Furthermore, the gap between disabled and nondisabled persons living in very low income households has remained virtually constant since 1986 (four years prior to passage of the ADA).
And the NOD/Harris Survey annual income cutoff at $15,000 doesn’t paint a complete picture of the depth of poverty some pwds endure. For example, since $720 is the average per month benefit that a disabled worker received in 1998 from Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and $480 is the average federal income for the needs-based Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the real income of over 10 million pwds on these programs is between $5,000 and $10,000 - far below the $15,000 mark.
Data from John McNeil of the Census Bureau shows a negative association between earnings and disability. In 1995, workers with disabilities holding part time jobs (pwds are more likely to work part time) earned on average only 72.4 percent of the amount nondisabled workers earned annually. Such wage differentials were observed for pwds working full time. Median monthly income for people with work disabilities averaged about $1,500 in 1995 - 25 percent less than the $2,000 earned by their counterparts without disabilities (the yearly mean income of pwds was $7,812 in 1992).
Of greater significance is the chronic unemployment of pwds. A 1998 Survey by the National Organization on Disability/Louis Harris found that among working age adults with disabilities (18 to 64), three out of ten (29 percent) work full or part-time compared to eight of ten (79 percent) of those without disabilities, a gap of fifty percentage points. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities remains much higher than for the population as a whole, with only one-quarter of persons with severe disabilities working. The overall combined (severe and nonsevere) disabled unemployment rate is 65-70 percent. Among people with disabilities who are not employed, 79 percent of working age pwds report that they would prefer to work but John McNeil of the Census Bureau finds that pwds are less likely to have a job than people with no disability. For those ages 21 to 64 with no disability the likelihood of having a job is 82.1 percent. For people with a non-severe disability, the rate is 76.9 percent; the rate drops to 26.1 percent for those with a significant disability.
The name "WE" seems rather assumptive. Who are the WE crowd? I would guess they are the aspiring wanna-be yuppies. Ignoring or ignorant of the wage gap between disabled and nondisabled, the high unemployment rate, the enduring below poverty living conditions of millions of pwds, WE crowd produces this glossy lifestyle magazine which glorifies disability consumerism in the face of gross inequality. Millions of pwds could never afford these products WE revers so highly. If some do acquire them it is because a government program will pay for it! There is the government supporting booning business of disability products! What happens when government cuts back on durable medical goods, assistive technology devices, and other "buying power" of pwds? Then there are those few who have inherited wealth, and won it in medical malpractice or other lawsuits. But I would guess that most of the buying power comes from the more elder disabled population who have had a lifetime or near lifetime of working (acquring a bank account) before they became disabled.
These WE wanna be disabled yuppies follow the same misguided path as most Americans who believe that prosperity can be theirs. A few of them will, no doubt, become the darlings of the business world for following the corporate line and will be rewarded handsomely for perpetuating a giant hoax. This makes it seem as though pwds are more prosperous than we are.
It is highly disappointing to me to see the word handicapitalism fostered onto the world - when pwds in developing nations sleep in the streets, remain the outcasts of the world, and when pwds in developed nations still have no access to libraries, jobs, etc because there are no civil rights to enforce establishments to provide a ramp or braille or interpreters. Disappointment is to put it mildly - these WE people suck.
Marta
>
>
> It's a brand-new term that describes what's behind a dawning
> realization in business: People with disabilities shouldn't be viewed
> as charity cases or regulatory burdens, but rather as profitable
> marketing targets. Now, mainstream companies, from financial services
> to cell-phone makers, are going beyond what's mandated by law and
> rapidly tailoring products to attract them.
> A new training video from Norwest Mortgage Inc., a unit of Wells
> Fargo & Co. in Des Moines, Iowa, details a number of products it
> offers, including vehicle-conversion loans and home-modification
> loans especially for the disabled. The video, a call to arms for its
> sales force, offers a stark rationale: "Fact: People with
> disabilities have money!"
>
> In 1995, according to the latest available census figures, there were
> about 48.5 million people 15 and older with disabilities in the U.S.,
> with annual discretionary income totaling $175 billion. With last
> month's passing of the Work Incentives Improvement Act, a bill
> expected to funnel tens of thousands of disabled people into the work
> force, their purchasing power will only grow.
>
> Already, businesses are becoming more direct in their appeals. "We've
> been called gimp, cripple, and our new favorite, retard," begins an
> ad heralding the recent launch of wemedia.com, an Internet portal
> that posts wheelchair-accessible real-estate listings and links to
> employment services that specialize in placing job seekers with
> disabilities. "You can start calling us Mr. and Mrs. $1 trillion in
> consolidated buying power."
>
> "If this were charity, I wouldn't bother," says Cary Fields,
> president and chief executive officer of wemedia, whose corporate
> partners include HotJobs.com Ltd., a job-search site. "These people
> are here," he adds. "If you want their money, go deal with them."
>
> More companies are raising their profiles among people with
> disabilities. Johnson & Johnson sponsored a few sessions at last
> year's annual convention of the Society for Disability Studies.
> Earlier this year, the company launched Independence Technology, a
> unit that will produce and market products for people with
> disabilities. Johnson & Johnson has invested more than $100 million
> in the company, whose first product is the IBOT Transporter, an
> all-terrain wheelchair.
>
> DaimlerChrysler AG's Dodge brand and Barnes & Noble Inc. have agreed
> to sponsor AdaptZ.com, another one-stop shop for the disability
> community, launched last month. And, in the past year, more than 100
> companies including Nike Inc., Pfizer Inc. and portal site Snap.com
> have aired commercials featuring people with disabilities, according
> to Advertising Age magazine.
>
> Some of the activity has been spurred by federal regulations. In
> November 1998, Olli Kallasvuo, chief financial officer of Finnish
> cell-phone company Nokia Corp., sent a letter to employees about the
> Telecommunications Act of 1996, which mandated that companies in the
> U.S. ramp up access to technology for people with disabilities.
> "Passage of this law presents a tremendous opportunity for Nokia," he
> wrote. "Enhancing our accessible product line ... offers Nokia the
> opportunity to reach a developing global market of almost 750 million
> people with disabilities."
>
> For people with hearing problems, Nokia sells phones that flash or
> vibrate. It also offers a "loopset," a wire with a microphone in it
> that hangs around a person's neck and plugs into a hearing aid.
>
> 'Sticky Keys'
>
> More companies are forming in-house disability teams. Last year, for
> example, Microsoft Corp. created its Accessibility and Disabilities
> Group, with more than 40 researchers, marketers and product
> developers. The group has engineered such products as a mouse that is
> less sensitive to tremors. For people who can't press several keys at
> once, Microsoft makes "sticky keys" configured to hit control, alt
> and delete keys, say, with a single stroke.
>
> Accessibility enhancements can be as simple as varying colors. People
> with vision problems, for instance, are aided by contrasts. "The cost
> of white plastic is the same as gray plastic," says Jim Tobias,
> president of Inclusive Technologies, consultants on technology and
> disability, in Matawan, N.J. "And a few more million people will be
> able to use it."
>
> Several years ago, Bell Atlantic Corp. launched an in-house market
> research project on people with disabilities. The company determined
> that the market was ripe for such assistive devices as light-flashing
> caller-IDs and voice mail that alerts people to take their medicine.
>
> Last year, Bob Baublitz, Bell Atlantic's first manager of marketing
> to the disability community, led the launch of an accessibility Web
> site touting Bell Atlantic's disability-friendly products. Earlier
> this year, BellSouth Corp. advertised its services in three
> disability-oriented magazines.
>
> Bell Atlantic won't disclose its sales figures but says the products
> are selling well. "They're just scooping them up," says Marilyn
> Benoit, manager of Bell Atlantic's center for customers with
> disabilities. "This was a very good business decision."
>
> Indeed, handicapitalism (a term that Johnnie Tuitel, a lecturer with
> a disability, is seeking to trademark) has nothing to do with
> regulatory change or the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act,
> passed in 1990. That law, which mandated that companies treat people
> with disabilities in an evenhanded way and make "reasonable
> accommodations," prompted companies to install wheelchair ramps for
> workers and hire interpreters for deaf employees, among other things.
>
> Still, pinpointing what is considered legally "reasonable" remains
> tricky. Last month, the National Federation of the Blind sued America
> Online Inc., alleging that it violated the federal disabilities law
> by being inaccessible to blind users. The Baltimore group's complaint
> charged that AOL's software doesn't work with computer programs that
> dictate text and otherwise help blind people operate applications and
> Web sites.
>
> "It would be more productive to everyone if we could deal with this
> as a technology issue and not a legal issue," says Tricia Primrose,
> an AOL spokeswoman. She says that the next version of AOL's software
> will be screen-reader-compatible and so accessible to people with
> visual impairments.
>
> Other advocates for the disability community say they prefer products
> and services to be spurred by profit potential, not by compliance.
> And targeting people with disabilities for purely altruistic reasons
> "isn't going to get the return on investment," says Cheryl Duke,
> president of W.C. Duke Associates Inc., a disability-consulting firm
> in Woodford, Va. "If you do it because it's a moneymaking project, it
> will continue."
-- Marta Russell author Los Angeles, CA Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract http://www.commoncouragepress.com/ramps.html