GovernmentExecutive.com

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has launched the public face of a new initiative to increase federal hiring and retention of people with disabilities.

On Wednesday, EEOC rolled out a Web site for the Leadership for the Employment of Americans with Disabilities initiative. The effort started in June and aims to reverse a trend of declining federal workforce participation by the severely disabled.

According to EEOC data released in June, the number of federal employees with targeted disabilities -- blindness, deafness, complete or partial paralysis, mental illness, mental retardation, convulsive disorders and distortion of the limbs or spine -- has dropped during the past decade.

The agency's Annual Report on the Federal Work Force for fiscal 2005 indicated that the federal workforce grew by 3.1 percent, or 78,000 employees, between 1996 and 2005. But the number of employees with targeted disabilities fell 16 percent over that period, representing a loss of 4,788 people. Of the 2.6 million federal employees in fiscal 2005, 0.96 percent had targeted disabilities, the report stated.

"In order to improve the overall employment rate for people with targeted disabilities, we have to begin with the federal government," EEOC Commissioner Christine Griffin said when she launched the program in June. "Congress directed the federal government to set the example for all other employers. Our example needs improvement."

The LEAD initiative seeks to reverse the downward trend through two major components. A series of seminars for government officials and the public will help both sides understand special hiring authorities that are available and how to secure workplace accommodations, while focus group sessions with federal managers and hiring officials will look at causes for the falling number of disabled employees and how to address the problem.

Jo Linda Johnson, an assistant to Griffin and the point person for the initiative, said the agency is coordinating closely with the Office of Personnel Management and will devise a series of recommendations on how to boost federal employment of the disabled. She said the agency has not yet decided what groups to work with from the disability communities.

Heidi Burghardt, a Homeland Security Department employee who spoke in her capacity as vice executive director of Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Government, an employee-based advocacy organization, said the initiative has not received much publicity within the federal community. Members of the employee group say they did not learn about the effort through their agencies, she said.

Burghardt described the initiative's focal areas of educational events and discussion forums as a good start. "We hope [LEAD] will be more productive in the very near future," she said, adding that her group has yet to meet with EEOC to "discuss ... how to be more involved in addressing the problems and creating viable solutions."

Burghardt said her organization hosts a federal job fair where agencies are invited to interview deaf and hard of hearing candidates, and has plans to increase the event's visibility this year. She said group members have brainstormed on ways to increase the representation of disabled people in government, and she looks forward to working with the initiative.