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Entrepreneurs with Disabilities: Understanding Accommodations for Business Success

By Alice Weiss Doyel, The BOLD Consulting Group, LLC

This paper contains excerpts from No More Job Interviews! Self-Employment Strategies for People with Disabilities, by Alice Weiss Doyel (2000). Used with permission of the publisher, Training Resource Network, Inc. Toll-free order number: 1-866-823-9800

Introduction

After over eleven years with the Federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers know that it is illegal to discriminate against a qualified individual with a disability because of the individual’s disability in:

• job application procedures;
• in hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees;
• employee compensation;
• job training; or
• other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.

In order to increase the opportunities for employment for people with disabilities, “reasonable accommodations” are provided for a qualified employee with disabilities, e.g., modified job duties, job assistance, physical workplace access, flexibility in work place and/or hours, assistive technology. Despite this legislation, employment for people with disabilities is still very low, with only 22% working full-time and an additional 10% working part-time. Even those persons with slight disabilities only have a 51% full-time employment rate. With employment rates this low, many people with disabilities are looking at self-employment as a means for economic self-sufficiency and employment satisfaction.

Beyond the low employment rate, many employees with disabilities find that the quality of their jobs, compensation, and benefits are less than that of the general population. Out of 153 people in the 2000 N.O.D./Harris Survey of Americans with Disabilities, who worked full-time while having disabilities, over a third reported having encountered discrimination in the work place. Their responses regarding discrimination included being:

• refused a job interview
• refused employment
• denied a workplace accommodation
• given less responsibility than co-workers
• paid less than workers with similar jobs and skills
• denied promotions
• denied health insurance
• denied other work-related benefits.
  
  

Although self-employment is not always a solution to all of these problems, business ownership does provide the opportunity for reaching both employment and personal goals, because entrepreneurs with disabilities can structure their companies to create:

Salary and Financial Incentives

• income potential directly related to their ability to reach their market and satisfy their customers’ needs.

Equity

• ownership and entrepreneurial control of the company.

Benefits

• a benefits package that suits the business owner with disabilities, and which can expand as the business grows.

Working Conditions

• work activities and goals that fit the person’s interest, capabilities, and personality.
• long-term employment, growing with the person’s interests and capabilities.
• the work place, work space, work hours, and other accommodations that make the person and the business effective and successful.
• accommodations that can be modified over time, with changes in the business, the person’s capabilities, and the disabilities.

Quality of Life

• opportunities for learning and growth, intellectually and personally.
• opportunities for accomplishments that increase self-esteem.
• a place in the world where the person’s accomplishments have value.

Working Conditions and Quality of Life

• a culture for the company that suits both the business and the person with disabilities.
• a group of people with whom to work in a manner that is positive for the business and for the person with disabilities.
• connections with other business people in the community.

The BIGGEST Accommodation: Overcoming Myths and Misunderstanding

The biggest hurdles that people with disabilities have regarding entrepreneurship are the misconceptions about their capabilities as business owners. Many of the “myths” about entrepreneurship give the impression that people with disabilities will fail.

Myth: Entrepreneurs Are All Strong and Healthy

Open a book on “how to start a business” and one of the first points is typically:

A person must be strong and healthy in order to run a business. He or she must have the endurance to work long and hard for the business to succeed.

Such statements might lead you to believe that no person with a disability should even try to start a business or consider self-employment. However, factual information contradicts this assumption. The United States government report, Re-charting the Course (1998) states:

In spite of severe obstacles, people with disabilities have historically shown strong interest in entrepreneurship. Information from the 1990 national census shows that people with disabilities have higher rates of self- employment than people without disabilities (12.2 % versus 7.8 %).

It is important to remember that some people with disabilities owned businesses before they became disabled. They do not need to learn how to run their businesses, they only need to learn how to make the changes and accommodations necessary to stay in business.

Myth: Entrepreneurs Have Specific Characteristics

While there are some specific characteristics and capabilities that are found in many successful entrepreneurs, there is no set formula for predetermining self-employment success by a test or checklist of characteristics and capabilities. These tests, “profiles,” and checklists quickly, and unfairly, eliminate people with disabilities from being considered as prospects for successful self-employment.

• The number of types and sizes of businesses is so great, that a single “profile” would not fit all of these settings and situations.
• Different personality types can successfully run the same type of business with different approaches and different strengths.
• One person does not need to bring in all of the attributes of running the business. Partners, employees, and outside resources can, and usually should, provide some of the capabilities in designing and running a successful business.
• Motivated people can learn many of the capabilities. Many personality characteristics can change if the person wants success with his or her business. In fact, the opportunity for individualism and innovation can motivate these personality changes.

Myth: Entrepreneurship is Risky

Entrepreneurs are often perceived as risk-takers, but that does not mean that they take blind risks or wild gambles. Most successful entrepreneurs take well thought-out risks, based on knowledge of their business, the market, competition, pricing, cost and availability of supplies/employees/ resources, and other pertinent factors. They work at determining what it takes to be successful in their particular industry.

Business risk can affect people with disabilities in a number of ways.

• If the business fails, the person can lose self-sufficiency. However, conventional employment has a similar risk.
• If the business fails after the person has put personal assets into the business, or has substantial debts, this could create a financial loss having long-term effects on his/her life. However, if the business is successful, it will create long-term financial security.
• Another major risk for a person with disabilities is the possibility that his or her disabilities could be adversely affected by the business, work load, and stress. This aspect should be evaluated as part of the business plan. If the person’s health might be impinged upon, the plan should address accommodations that alleviate or lessen this risk.

People with disabilities should not be dismissed from being entrepreneurs due to the risk involved. They need to evaluate the risk that relates to their disabilities along with the other business risk factors when they determine if business ownership is the right employment option.

Myth: Entrepreneurs Are Independent Individuals

An entrepreneur may be a “take charge” person, self-reliant, self-directed, a leader, a person willing to tackle new avenues of endeavor. However, to accomplish the goals of the business, he or she must work with a wide range of people who form the natural supports for the business. These resources include business partners, employees, vendors, business consultants, other business professionals, and computer technicians, to name a few. People with disabilities use these same resources to make their business work. Sometimes they may need these resources to a greater degree than people who are not disabled. However, if the business plan can demonstrate that the company can afford to pay for these resources and still make a profit, the business owned by a person with disabilities has a reasonable chance for success.

Myth: People with Disabilities Can Only Handle One- or Two-Person Businesses.

Although the majority of businesses owned by people with disabilities have few employees, some entrepreneurs with disabilities own larger businesses, employing a substantial number of workers.

Myth: People with Disabilities Can Only Handle Simple, Home-based Businesses.

The types of businesses that people with disabilities own is expansive. The range of businesses demonstrates that creativity and diversity of ideas thrives with entrepreneurs with disabilities.

Accommodations as Part of the Business Plan

The Operations Plan should include accommodations for the owner’s disabilities. These accommodations are not just for the physical attributes of the office, e.g., access, furniture, equipment. These accommodations should take into consideration the people who will be part of the business, or closely associated with it, and the customers. Whether they are business partners, associates, employees, vendors, family members or support providers, these people are an integral part of making the business work. Their role in supporting the person with a disability is integrated into their business function.

As is true for all business expenses, estimating costs, prioritizing, and timing of work accommodations are critical to establishing a successful business. If this planning is not done properly, the business can flounder haphazardly. Errors can occur by doing these processes too quickly or too slowly. If money is spent too quickly, there may not be sufficient cashflow for day-to-day operations. If too many decisions are made before the concept of the business is clear, expensive spending errors can occur. If decisions are made too slowly, important work accommodations may not be in place at critical times.

The Financial Plan may also have a focus for people with disabilities. Many people with disabilities have few assets of value to help secure a business loan. They may have lived for years in poverty, unable to establish a sound credit record. They may have poor credit due to an unexpected health emergency or accident that created large medical expenses at the same time that they were no longer able to work. For many of these reasons, people with disabilities may not be able to find adequate financial resources for their businesses. However, when business owners with disabilities invest their own money or borrow on a repayable loan, their businesses are more likely to succeed. When they risk their own money or have a loan to repay, they work harder at achieving the goal of having a successful business. Micro-loan programs are a viable resource for many of these potential entrepreneurs with disabilities, if they can demonstrate the ability to manage money for their personal use and their businesses.

Sometimes people with disabilities accept a lower level of profitability in order to pay for their business resources, but still find business ownership a preferable option for their employment. Major reasons for this preference include:

• Self-employment allows a person with disabilities to avoid having to wait for employer acceptance.
• By working at home (or a location of one’s choosing) transportation, often a challenge or limitation to employment, can become controllable.
• Within the financial limits of the business, a person with disabilities can create his or her own accommodations, whether they are equipment related, flexible work times, defining the job to fit abilities as well as disabilities, or having appropriate assistance and support.
• Along with other life skills, people with disabilities bring the accommodation skills that they learned to live successfully with their disabilities. They learned how to use both their own abilities and outside resources to live a meaningful life, and will do the same with their businesses.

Whole Business Accommodations

When a person works for another employer, the focus of the work accommodation is on increasing the capabilities and productivity of the individual with a disability. When people with disabilities are business owners, they create accommodations that take into consideration the success of the entire business. The Whole Business Accommodations take a totally different perspective than determining accommodations for the individual. The accommodations should include:

• Everything you would have for similar conventional employment.
• Accommodations that can go beyond those used in conventional employment, since the person with disabilities is the business owner. The questions to be answered are:
  1. Can the accommodations be paid for?
  2. Is this an effective use of limited company funds?
• Accommodations that can help other aspects of life, as long as the primary purpose of the accommodation is assistance with employment.
• Accommodations that can help the entire company work more effectively.
• Job (business) coaches and natural supports that have an expanded role for small business owners with disabilities, including teaching effective management techniques.
• Natural supports that include resources from outside of the business, e.g., SCORE, SBA, economic development organizations, CPAs, payroll services, business associates, vendors, business consultants, computer and communications experts.
• Business partnerships that can be used as an effective accommodation.

From my own experience as an entrepreneur with disabilities, I am often pleasantly surprised at how an accommodation for my health disability improves my capabilities as a business owner and helps me to serve my customers in a more effective manner. At the beginning it happened more by chance than by planning. As time went on I realized that when I needed to utilize an accommodation, I should actively see how it could enhance the entire business. This strategy also puts a positive personal outlook on what might otherwise be a discouraging situation.

Whole Business Accommodations expand to be effective throughout the entire business. A few examples are:

• Including a variety of marketing approaches in the business plan. Marketing is often the business function most affected by the owner’s disabilities. Determining potentially effective marketing approaches during the planning stage will provide the business with the ability to test and determine the best ways to reach and sell to customers. Some people with disabilities think that an Internet web-site is the answer to their market needs. However, the Internet should almost always be used as a secondary marketing approach. The owner with disabilities, other company owners or employees, or sale representatives must be direct marketing in order to create a successful marketing effort.
  
  
• Including borrowing from micro-loan programs in the business plan, for those business owners who do not qualify for conventional bank loans. The micro-loan programs provide technical assistance for the business owner, usually through the life of the loan. This shortens the business owner’s learning curve and increases the probability for success for the business.
  
  
• Including alternative means of transportation in the business plan, e.g., hiring a driver, finding volunteer drivers (family members, friends, human service organizations), determine effective methods for using public transportation and/or taxi services, teleconferencing instead of in-person meetings. Transportation needs are a challenge for many people with disabilities. If this issue is not addressed in the planning stage, it can have an extremely detrimental effect on the business’s ability to succeed.
  
  
• Company business policies that assist or protect the entrepreneur with disabilities from working in a manner adverse to his or her health. Developing these business policies requires the owners/managers to evaluate and determine the most effective means to run the business. This type of analysis can lead to more effective and profitable management of the entire company.
  
  
• Creating an office that is totally accessible for the entrepreneur with disabilities. As long as the cost is within reason, the office can be designed around the owner’s disability needs. Many of the ways to accomplish this accessibility are free or inexpensive, e.g, arranging office furniture and equipment for the greatest ease of use, telephones with easy to read displays, telephones with large keys, speakerphones or head sets, open storage shelving for easy access, mouse and keyboard that fits the owner’s physical needs, free MicroSoft accessibility utilities, tables and desks with comfortable wheelchair access. The owner’s time and energy are often limited by disabilities. Time and energy saved by the use of good office design allows for more time and energy to be put into the business.
  
  
• Working flexible hours determined on a day-to-day basis, balancing the health or disability needs of the individual with the demands of the business. This is critical for many owners with disabilities! Family needs should also be balanced into this equation. During the business planning process, disability and family time needs must be determined in order for the prospective business owner to make a realistic assessment of the amount of time and energy that he/she will have available for the business.
  
  
• Creating a positive, supportive work culture for the business. This would include a culture that values everyone’s abilities and supports the concept that disabilities do not decrease a person’s humanity or value—that for many people, the challenges from their disabilities are a means for personal growth. This work culture will be a positive environment for all employees who share these values. Those employees who find people with disabilities “uncomfortable,” or see them as people to belittle or victimize, will not fit into the company’s culture and will need to look for other employment.
  
  
• Hiring a full-time or part-time employee who does work that is difficult or not possible for the entrepreneur. This is a common practice in all businesses; however, here the focus is assisting in the area of the business owner’s disability. The same employee can serve other functions for the business, using his/her time more effectively and bringing more capabilities to the company. For example, a person hired to drive for a business owner who cannot drive a vehicle, can also function as an office worker, production worker, or sales person.
  
  
• For people with Personal Care Attendants, having them function as a support for the business, e.g., answering telephones, providing transportation, assisting with retail sales, assisting with computers.
  
  
• Creating a sound benefits package that fits the business owner’s needs is an accommodation. Although it takes time and profits to develop a strong benefits package, small businesses owned by people with disabilities can put together sound benefits packages for themselves and their employees. Some of the advantages of being the business owner are:
  
  
  • Choosing the health insurance provider and package that best fits the health needs for the owner with disabilities, within the company’s budget and the company size limitations. (I always make sure that my doctors are “in the network” for the health insurance provider I choose for our company.)
    
    
  • The above situation holds for getting prescription drug coverage that covers drugs the owner with disabilities uses regularly.
    
    
  • Depending on the type and degree of the disabilities, the owner may be able to purchase group long-term disability insurance where he/she can get coverage. The owner with disabilities has the ability to “shop” insurance companies for possible coverage.
    
    
  • The insurance provider may include group life insurance at a low cost for all employees. This insurance can be beneficial to owners with health disabilities that make it prohibitively expensive for them to get life insurance on their own.
    
    
  • Cafeteria (125) Plans can pay for medical care, dependent care, and the employee’s share of medical insurance premiums with pre-tax dollars. Many owners with disabilities can use the maximum allowable amount for their medical expenses.
    
    
  • Flexible Time Off—rather than structured holidays, vacation, and sick days—is a positive benefit for all employees. For the owner with disabilities, Flex Time provides flexibility to work around health and disability needs.
    
    
  • Paying Employee’s Fees for Related Professional Activities. This has an added benefit for owners with disabilities, allowing them to get out in the business community where they can have more professional and personal interactions.

Partnerships as a Whole Business Accommodation

• Partnerships are often used to create a company where the owners have complementary business or technical skills. An owner with disabilities can find partners with the skills, time, or energy to compensate for his or her disability needs. The partners may be able-bodied, or they may be other people with disabilities.
  
  
• Key employees can take on a partnership role in the business. Although they may not be actual owners of the business, these employees can serve the same functions as partners for the owner with disabilities.
  
  
• Partnerships often serve as a means for bringing needed financial capital into the company. This can be particularly important for people with disabilities, whose assets and credit may not be adequate to start a business.
  
  
• Family businesses are a strategy for those people with disabilities who have strong family support. Sometimes these family members are partners in the business, other times they are employees. In either situation, family members can provide emotional support and disability assistance, as well as being productive employees of the business.
  
  
• Group owned businesses have been created primarily by people with psychiatric disabilities. A number of people will create a business, with all of the employees being owners—all with the same or related disabilities. They understand the needs of their disabilities and provide disability and emotional support to one another, as well as a collaborative work environment.
  
  
• Minority ownership is another way that people with disabilities can become business owners. They provide skills or assets to a company, which make them valuable as minority owners. The ownership levels can start at 5% to 10% ownership. This ownership can increase if the people with disabilities are able to bring more assets or “sweat equity” to the business. [Note: Legal guidance should be used to assure that there are exit strategies for both majority and minority owners.]
  
  
• There are informal partnerships, where individuals from different companies work together for their mutual benefit. This is often a good strategy for people with disabilities, who may wish to provide a variety of services or products but want to limit the size of the business they own or the number of employees that they want to manage. These informal partnerships often become successful, long-term arrangements. There can also be short term informal partnerships, sometimes relating to a single business opportunity.

Business owners with disabilities report a wide range of positive experiences in using their Whole Business Accommodations to provide their customers with better products and services or to run their businesses more effectively. Disabilities do put limitations on business owners, but using accommodations to overcome those limitations is a powerful tool for success in business and in living a complete and satisfying life.

Summary

Regardless of the type or degree of disabilities, we all have dreams for ourselves and for the people with whom we are closest. That is a primary reason why so many of us who have disabilities search for business ideas that will allow us to pursue self-employment. We want work where we can enjoy what we are doing as well as where we can make money. We also want work that allows us pride in our accomplishments, that gives us the chance to learn and grow, where we interact with a variety of people in our communities, where we are appreciated by our customers, and where we can make positive contributions to our communities. Self-employment is not just about earning a living; it is also about enlivening the human spirit. It is that spirit that keeps us pushing for success!

Resources

2000 N.O.D./Harris Survey of Americans with Disabilities; conducted by Harris Interactive, Inc., Commissioned by National Organizations on Disabilities; Sponsored by Aetna, Inc. and The JM Foundation. New York, NY: Harris Interactive pp.30-31.

(November 15,1998) Re-charting the Course: First Report of the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities; Produced pursuant to Executive Order No. 13078.

Contact Information

Alice Weiss Doyel’s book, No More Job Interviews! costs $29.95 plus shipping and toll free at (866) 823-9800, or visit TRN’s web-site at www.TRNinc.com. No More Job Interviews! is also sold through www.Amazon.com, www.BN.com, and Barnes & Noble book stores.

Alice Weiss Doyel
The BOLD Consulting Group, LLC
“Businesspeople Overcoming Limitations from Disabilities”
www.bold-owners.com
(800) 213-1433 or (303) 831-0219
adoyel@bold-owners.com