FINISHED FILE

SOCIAL POLICY RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
MAY 21, 2020
2:00 PM CST
STATEWIDE CROSS‑SYSTEM TRAINING ON WIOA SECTION 188: BROADENING ACCESS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES & OTHER BARRIERS TO EMPLOYMENT 

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   >> REBECCA SALON:  Hello and welcome to the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Section 188 Statewide Training. Today’s webinar is brought to you by the National Center on Leadership for the Employment and Economic Advancement of People with Disabilities (LEAD), led by Social Policy Research Associates (SPR) and the National Disability Institute (NDI), and funded by the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).
The recording and transcript of this webinar will be posted on the LEAD Center's website at www.leadcenter.org.  These products have been funded either wholly or in part with Federal Funds from the U.S. Department of Labor from the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), and the contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Labor, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement of same by U.S. government.  The recipients should review the civil rights materials in 29 CFR Part 38 to better understand their legal obligations.
I am Rebecca Salon, Co‑Project Director of the LEAD Center, and I will be moderating today's session.  So that you can all fully participate in today's webinar, we wanted to share some additional information.  The session is being live captioned.  Use the controls above the captioning stream to adjust font and sizing.  Use the scroll arrows to review earlier content.  We encourage you to ask questions and there will be time at the end for questions and answers.  If you have questions during the presentation, please type them into the chat pod below the slides.
If you are experiencing any technical issues or have questions for the technical support team, use the controls in the upper ribbon to raise your hand.  I am very pleased to introduce Melissa Turner.  Melissa Turner is the Director of Special Projects in the Office of the Assistant Secretary at the Department of Labor Office of Disability Employment Policy.  She previously worked on ODEP’s Employer Policy Team Leaders to increase employment, hiring, retention, and promotion of individuals with disabilities in the workplace.  Melissa also has experience in the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, analyzing education and disability budget, policy, legislative and regulatory proposals for the U.S. Department of Education.
While at OMB, she developed regulations to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, WIOA and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA.  Prior to OMB, Melissa worked at the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs, providing technical assistance to state special education and general education programs to improve results for children with disabilities.  Melissa, we welcome you to the webinar and I’ll pass it to you.
   >> MELISSA TURNER:  Thank you for that introduction, Rebecca.  Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the webinar,  Statewide Cross‑System Training on WIOA Section 188:  Broadening Access for People with Disabilities and Other Employment Barriers.  I'm Melissa Turner, Director of Special Projects Office of Disability Employment Policy.  I hope you and your families are staying healthy.  We understand the many ways Americans are adjusting their lives to ensure they are staying safe during the pandemic.  We have created resources to help individuals and families during this time and I urge you to check out our website at www.DOL.gov/ODEP to learn more.
ODEP funds the LEAD Center that is hosting today's webinar and gathered today's excellent group of speakers.  During this webinar we'll be joined by speakers from Virginia Equal Opportunity Office, WIOA Adult and Dislocated Worker Programs, and Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Resources that will share approaches and how to effectively engage staff and workers across all four WIOA titles to implement equal opportunity access.
I also want to take this opportunity to let you know about an important anniversary that is happening this year.  ODEP is working on a series of events and resources to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA, which was signed into law in July of 1990.
The ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of life.  It's their job to make sure people with disabilities have the same rights as everyone else and now more than ever it couldn't be more important.  We invite you to learn more about the ADA during this important year.  With that, I turn it back to Rebecca to tell us more about Section 188 in WIOA and how you can best support workers in your state.
   >> REBECCA SALON:  Thank you so much, Melissa.  We just wanted to review the objectives of today's webinar.  During this webinar, you will have a chance to review WIOA Section 188 with a focus on programmatic access and reasonable accommodations.  You will learn how to gain essential cross‑title and cross‑system supports to implement effective equal opportunity policies and practices and learn about Section 188 training approaches implemented statewide in Virginia, including current EO scenarios and solutions.
We have a wonderful set of speakers today and we're very excited with the information that they'll be able to share.  To get started, I want to introduce our speakers to you for today.  These four speakers have leadership and on‑the‑ground experience and expertise that they bring to this webinar.  Jamie Robinson is with Financial Empowerment and Workforce Member of the National Training and Technical Assistance Team at the National Disability Institute.  Jamie specializes in workforce systems change with a focus on equal opportunity and financial capability strategies into service delivery systems and has worked for several years with the other presenters from Virginia.
Sinclair Hubard works for the Virginia Department of Aging and Rehabilitative Services, as the WIOA Manager and Disability Employment Initiative Lead.  Sinclair is also the Project Lead for three rounds of the Department of Labor's Disability Employment Initiative implemented by Virginia WIOA Titles 1 and 4.  In addition, she's responsible for the statewide VR Partner Memoranda of Understanding and AJC cross‑allocation plans with local workforce areas.
Constance Green is a Virginia WIOA Adult and Local Program Statewide Coordinator.  Constance is responsible for developing policies and providing guidance and technical assistance to the one‑stop system partners on Title 1 and dislocated worker activities, as well as staffing Virginia's Accessibility Taskforce which you'll hear about today.
Dr. Sylvia Berry is Virginia's Equal Opportunity Employment Specialist, and Dr. Berry is responsible for investigating internal and external charges of discrimination and also assists in administering the agency's statewide human relations program, serves as the agency ADA Coordinator, and assists in developing training products and services.  With that, I would like to turn this over to Jamie Robinson.
   >> JAIME ROBINSON:  Great.  Thanks so much, Rebecca.  Hello, everyone.  It's really good to be with you all today.  I'm going to review some of the key elements of the WIOA Section 188 so we can kind of all get on the same page, and then I'm going to pass it over to the Virginia Team, and they will have a little bit more exciting information about the strategies, the practices they're using to not only meet 188 compliance, but to expand partnerships, to improve accessibility, and the ultimate goal of increasing employment for people with disabilities.
So, Section 188 of WIOA implements nondiscrimination and equal opportunity provisions for workforce services, activities, and programs across race; color; religion; sex, which also includes pregnancy, child birth, related medical conditions, and transgender status and gender identity; age; disability; political affiliation or belief; national origin, including limited English proficiency; and citizenship status.
So here is the link: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2018-title29-vol1/xml/CFR-2018-title29-vol1-part38.xml.   You can go to it and reference all of today's information and we encourage you to do so.
Okay.  So, under Section 188, AJC programs are required to provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities to ensure equal access and opportunity.  And reasonable accommodation is defined as a modification or adjustment in the way a program is administered that enables an individual with a disability to receive any aid, benefit, service, training, or employment equal to those provided to individuals without disabilities.
So, a job seeker who voluntarily discloses a disability in that AJC will want to work together to identify if any reasonable accommodations are needed, and also if they are, to implement it as quickly as possible to avoid delaying access to service.  And this is why it's really important for AJCs to not only have the written policies that explain those obligations, but really important that staff, AJCs, and customers understand the processes of implementing those solutions.
So, an example of an AJC having both policy and processes in place could be a deaf customer requesting a sign language interpreter.  If that AJC has a plan of action to secure that qualified interpreter, they know who to contact, they know how they're going to pay for it.  The customer's access is likely going to keep on moving, right, it's not going to be delayed.
But if an AJC has an accommodation policy, which we all know they do, but they don't have the processes to operationalize it, that could delay the accommodation and the services and we could miss out on working with that customer, too.
In limited circumstances, the AJC programs may not be required to provide a reasonable accommodation if they can establish that doing so would cause undue hardship.  Kind of keep in mind that limited circumstances are important, but accommodations are going to depend on each situation.
Let's kind of take the same example of the deaf individual and assume the AJC did provide the interpreter and then that individual was deemed eligible for a training program which is months long, and so who provides the interpreter then?  Well, you really have to look at each situation individually, lots of different factors, and maybe the person doesn't need an interpreter for the whole training, right.
But if this concept of undue hardship comes up, there are other ways to work with it or work around it.  This could be a good opportunity for the AJC and the training provider to provide or partner with VR if the customer were to also choose that option and agree to it to leverage costs of the interpreter throughout the training program.
So this is a situation I've experienced myself and I've also seen it happen in the field with people with all kinds of disabilities, and this kind of collaboration can be successful, so really important to explore the different options, different partnerships, especially when a cost of an accommodation might seem a little high.
So, who does Section 188 apply to?  Well, recipients are defined as any entity to which financial assistance under WIOA Title 1 is extended, and you can kind of read there that many of you fit into a lot of those categories.  I'll point out a few: one‑stop operators, job centers, service providers, including eligible training providers, and OJT employers and partners part of the one‑stop delivery system that are operated by one‑stop partners. That's important because any program or activity that touches the AJC is going to have to have an awareness of Section 188, nondiscrimination regs and equal opportunity practices, and that then typically falls on workforce staff and EO officers to help educate those partners and programs, including the training providers or employers.
If you haven't heard of this resource yet, I highly recommend it, it's pretty invaluable:  http://www.leadcenter.org/system/files/resource/downloadable_version/Promising-Practices-in-Achieving-Nondiscrimination-and-Equal-Opportunity-A-Section-188-Disability-Reference-Guide.pdf  It's called the Promising Practices in Achieving Nondiscrimination and Equal Opportunity, a Section 188 Disability Reference Guide, and if you want to understand more about 188 in terms of everyday practices beyond compliance, which is important but it's also about what's effective and how is it working.  This is really an incredible resource. The guide was jointly developed by the Civil Rights Center Office of Disability Employment Policy with support and assistance from the LEAD Center and the promising practices in the guide directly correlate with the nondiscrimination equal opportunity requirements of Section 188.
So, you basically just have a lot of different examples, a lot of approaches, a lot of different strategies, of how you can comply with Section 188 and how you can ensure access.
Also, important to note that the guide does not create any new legal requirements or change any current legal requirements.  The promising practices in this guide do not preclude you all from devising alternative approaches.  We know you are -- we hope you are, and hopefully we'll learn about them and add to this guide in the future.
Adoption of promising practices, of course, won't guarantee compliance, but what we do know is that the examples and the strategies in this guide really highlight what's working across the country, so I definitely recommend everyone check this resource out.
So within this guide, you're going to see many examples of how WIOA partners and programs can work to ensure equal access to services, and each of the bullets on this slide are really emphasized in the guide.  For example, how to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities: you're going to find different training approaches for AJCs that help reduce bias or stereotypes of people with disabilities.
If providing reasonable accommodation, you'll find strategies that AJCs and their partners are using from the point of somebody walking in the door, to registration, to assessment, to providing accommodations throughout the entire customer flow of service delivery, and it's actually broken down like that in the guide.
You'll also learn how workforce systems are ensuring the same processes for all customers and programs, so examples on how some AJCs are making sure that people aren't being screened out of programs.  That's really layered, right, and you can read about that.  Learn how your AJCs are administering programs in the most integrated settings for individuals with disabilities. What does that mean?  Well, it can mean working to ensure that job seekers with disabilities are not automatically referred to your state vocational rehabilitation programs, and that choice of the customer is at the forefront. How do you do that?  How do you help people connect with VR if that's something that might work for them, but not make it an automatic referral?
You can also review practices that ensure effective communication, and that can start with AJCs understanding that phrase that is on all their forms: “We provide auxiliary aids upon request.”  You can help other agencies train AJC staff to know what that means.  It may mean the ability of assistive technology, knowing you have closed captioning for workshops or knowing you have a policy for interpreters.
Also, you will find examples on how to make programs programmatically and physically accessible and examples of how AJCs are partnering together to co-enroll customers and leverage expertise from partners in the community. There are lots of examples on these points that can kind of help you understand what is behind them.
So, as we talk about equal access today under 188 it’s important to keep in mind that WIOA aligns these four core programs to provide a coordinated and comprehensive approach and services. I'm sure you're all familiar with these four titles, but you're going to hear from Virginia on how they're coordinating their training efforts for the first time across all core partners and what that has meant to their state. Also, bringing together their required partners and their disability expertise because it's really made a big impact on how they're all serving people with disabilities.
So we know from states like Virginia that this coordinated approach under WIOA offers this really vital opportunity for all core partners to look closer at accessibility and have a chance to improve it under 188 through AJC certification.  So local workforce development boards must follow procedures and criteria that are established by their state to certify AJCs and their networks at least once every three years.  Some states opt to certify every year or every two years, but you must do it once every three, and that includes comprehensive and affiliate job centers.
The criteria must evaluate, among many other things that are evaluated under AJC certification, physical and programmatic accessibility, including communication access in accordance with Section 188.
So many states will often use a type of checklist to evaluate physical accessibility, and that might work because there are a lot of measurements and things involved with physical access, but programmatic access can be a little bit more layered.  So, this is where you can consult with your state, regional, and national project partners and experts to understand customer experience of how people are experiencing access across programs and how disability partners are experiencing collaboration.
So, with AJC certification, it's pulling in the partners to have a much closer look than ever before at programmatic access.  Here you have the definitions that we've been talking about, and all these areas are also in the guide. There are many different examples of what these mean, how to get there, how to achieve compliance, and how to boost access.
I want to highlight the fourth bullet here of providing appropriate auxiliary aids and services, including assistive technology where necessary to afford individuals with disabilities equal opportunity to participate in and enjoy the benefits of the program or activity.
So not just getting in the door, not just getting in the door, getting to the activity or the program, but enjoying the benefit.  For some, it could mean reaching their goals, acquiring skills, and being able to get employed.  This is something that I talk to one‑stop‑shops about a lot: access, not just for the sake of access, but how to ensure that people with disabilities, all different kinds of disabilities, are getting through the program and reaching their end goal.
This definition is different than the similar term of program accessibility in the ADA Title II, which refers to accessibility of facility, programs, services, technology, and materials for individuals with disabilities.
Programmatic disability is a WIOA term that is more encompassing and requires one‑stops to ensure equal access for people with disabilities from policy to practice.
So, I'm about to hand it over to the Virginia team.  I just want to mention a few areas that they're going to expand upon that I've had the opportunity to experience firsthand over the years.
The first is they have an incredible accessibility taskforce.  I've never really seen anything like this before in terms of the diversity of partnership.  It is cross‑title, it is cross‑system, they have representation from the Commission for the Blind, they have representation from deaf services, Virginia Centers for Independent Living, Vocational Rehabilitation, and Equal Opportunity. Everybody is at the table, and it's just a level of collaboration.  It's very challenging because you have so many systems at the table and you have so many perspectives.  And remember, a lot of those agencies are not as familiar with the workforce centers so a lot of cross‑education has to happen.  This table really becomes representative of the people that they're serving, which is so beneficial and so they're going to talk a little more about that.
The second bullet here is the partnership that the Virginia Centers for Independent Living have formed.  They have really taken on a leadership role with the AJC certification and if you're not familiar with them, they have fierce disability advocates, and I mean that in a positive way, and they're a partner that you want on your side to strengthen accessibility and Virginia has formed that partnership.
The third here is leveraging the Disability Employment Initiative, the DEI.  If you were a DEI region, you know how impactful Disability Resource Coordinators have been in the workforce system.  They have been incredible partnership builders, systems change agents, advocates, and implementers. I'll say that the first time I went to their accessibility committee, DEI wasn't there, and a few of us were like where is DEI?  They have to be here, and so we brought them to the table, and so these are all the kind of partners that can work together.
And then, finally, you'll hear more on their training effort, which LEAD is a part of.  This training largely centers on scenarios that AJCs and other partners are experiencing with customers with disabilities. We’re kind of giving them an interactive safe forum for discussing these things and trying to talk about how to move forward with this and how to become empowered to implement accommodations or reach out to partners.  Part of that is through educating the management and the leadership on that, and they have been very responsive.
So, with that I am going to turn it over to Constance Green to share some more details.  I got you started, Constance, on a few of those points but I'm going to hand it over to you.
   >> CONSTANCE GREEN:  Thank you, Jamie.  Hopefully everyone can hear me now.  And as Jamie had mentioned, our approach in Virginia to Section 188 has been driven by collaboration across multiple points, specifically Virginia's Accessibility Taskforce is an integral part of the key strategies and actions moving Virginia beyond a "compliance is enough" mindset.  And the taskforce as mentioned includes all the standard titles for WIOA plus our Department of Social Services, local workforce directors, local workforce providers staff members, state‑level EO officers, Departments for Deaf and Hard of Hearing and Blind and Visually Impaired, and most interestingly for us was that collaboration and inclusion of our Centers for Independent Living on our state taskforce.
The primary tenet of the taskforce principles is that access to AJCs is everyone's responsibility and access to AJCs is for everyone.  This means that access is about individual engagement and responsibility across all levels of the workforce system staff and that access is for individuals of all abilities in Virginia.  So that's a pretty all‑encompassing perspective, and in reality in Virginia we found that WIOA has provided opportunities for all of our titles to increase access through a joint effort.
Our traditional silos have been set aside through the work of the taskforce where our team collectively has provided guidance that has contributed to state workforce board policy, played an active implementation role in the AJC certification process, and they've led the charge for statewide training efforts in support of Section 188 implementation.
We also continued to build on our strong history and collaboration in leadership at the state and local levels, especially through multiple rounds of DEI funding, which we'll talk about a little bit more.  Next slide, please.
Thank you.  So, one key to our success in Virginia is that we have created an action‑oriented accessibility taskforce.  The taskforce has set out a plan that includes targeted actions in several areas such as policies and processes, training, and communication, and these are not just for the AJC, but it's for all the members involved plus the AJCs.
As we accomplish our objectives, we're coming back together to develop new objectives to keep that ball rolling, and while we started off with compliance in mind, we really have been able to move much further into programmatic accessibility through participating in the AJC certification process along with other opportunities.
One reason that our action‑oriented approach is effective is because we leveraged cross‑partner expertise to provide critical technical assistance, and the diversity of knowledge areas and depth of knowledge within the partnership of the taskforce has allowed us to pinpoint technical assistance to the local level in a way that fosters long‑term local to local level partnerships.  The secret to that connection is the network of partnerships that are developed that last beyond the taskforce members that do the facilitation.
For example, when conducting our AJC certification site visit, the multi‑partner teams from the taskforce were able to answer specific technical questions and then make warm handoffs to their local agency counterparts for future AJC staff needs, so those are networking and relationship‑building activities that will outlast the members of the taskforce.
A final key strategy from our experience in Virginia is that combining a policy perspective with practical application will result in positive outcomes.  Having policy people like myself, for example, engaged with and educated by diverse subject matter experts has meant better policy support for useful strategies for providing outcomes for customers of all abilities.  With that I'll turn it over to Sinclair to speak about Virginia Section 188 training approach.
   >> SINCLAIR HUBARD:  Thank you, Constance.  Hello, everyone.  I just want to give you a little background that Virginia has been working with the LEAD Center, now the WIOA Policy Development Center to bring us technical assistance and training through our Department of Labor Workforce Disability Grants for over 15 years.
These initiatives have focused on making our career centers fully accessible for folks with disabilities.  Now, Constance just talked about that Accessibility Taskforce, and it was actually originated by both Title 1 and Title 4, so you had the adult dislocated worker and the VR folks getting together and they strategically invited all workforce partners to the discussion.
So, how did we get to these trainings and this strategy of our trainings today?  Well, our accessibility taskforce also includes a representative from the workforce development board directors association.  We were in a session with Jamie several years ago talking about training needs for staff and how to deliver training, and this director was very targeted in her recommendations that all of our trainings coming from the taskforce and coming out to the local areas had to be cross‑partner trainings, otherwise she said, it would just be the same old silo trainings for each agency, and here we are today.
Last year, we were invited by our two Equal Opportunity Officers at the state level to participate in a statewide conference and we invited Constance. They also said they wanted the LEAD Center to present at that conference, so Jamie came and presented with us.
What was interesting was that the scenarios that she provided, such as helping people clarify their roles, was important for people to understand accessibility better.  We then had a smaller work group after that which went into more in‑depth discussions with monitors and you can imagine that that got technical.  That was where they really wanted to know how the rubber met the road.
Following that, we went up to our DEI grant locations in Northern Virginia.  We have two regions, and we specifically sent an invitation out-- I personally called all of my partners and folks that I've known over the years to stress how important this training was, and that it was not just a management training and it was not just a frontline training, but it was a training for everyone, and that we would have our different partners in the room with us.
So, when we went to conduct these trainings, we sat partners down and some of these folks had met with each other but more from a management standpoint and they really hadn't had the frontline, “let's just sit and talk about 188, accessibility, accommodation, and disclosure” talk, all of those technical things that we always talk about when we're saying that everybody should know about these things.
So, anyway, we sat these folks down and they really were engaged by it being interactive, they were engaged by the case scenarios that were provided, and they were also engaged by resources and tools and things that the DEI staff had been bringing to their local areas. We told them that we were going to have them learn about strategies and resources to collaboratively serve customers with different backgrounds, abilities, and challenges in the spirit of WIOA. We were going to help them strengthen workforce partnerships to increase co‑enrollments and help them meet compliance requirements and enhance employment outcomes. People really like knowing that we could help them meet their compliance requirements, so next slide, please.
When we went and conducted the trainings we focused on programmatic access.  We heard from disability employment coordinators and staff members that said that staff do not always understand what that means, and so we had to focus on that.
We focused on partnerships because, as Jamie said earlier, you need to have things set up ahead of time.  You need to understand your partners’ services, you need to know what tools and resources are available, not when the customer walks in the door but you need to have those discussions ahead of time and be prepared.
The other thing that we wanted to do was provide the AJC staff with empowerment because they don't always feel like they are empowered or know the right answers for things, so having these case scenarios and these cross‑pollinating discussions help people say, “Oh, okay well that's a good idea, I can do that.”  And so, it helped them look at things even in terms of accommodations and how they could set stuff up with folks.
And the last thing that we really focused on was disclosure, and so how do you address a customer's presenting needs if a disability is disclosed?  How do you engage other partners and what services are available?
The other piece of this is really being able to describe other partners' program services to a customer and then asking them for their choice, “Would you like to be referred?”
So, for example, if it turns out to be a customer with a disability, then they find out whether they would like to be referred to vocational rehabilitation.
And then the other piece is to help staff recognize that sometimes customers don't walk in the door saying, “Oh, I have a disability can I get an accommodation?”  Usually they walk in saying, “I have an illness or an injury” or “I've had difficulty reading my whole life”, and you need to be prepared as a staff or workforce professional to be able to talk about what are the other supports, services and resources that are available, and how to access those resources in a timely manner.
We can go to the next slide, please.  And one thing to remember that I need to note here is as workforce professionals, we always need to refer to the regulations or to the Civil Rights Center resources for specific guides around disclosure.  People would say that's another whole training, but we want to make sure people really look at the guidance and follow that.
And so, I talked about the scenarios and the accommodations in a timely manner, so let me talk a little bit more about the partnership strategies and our Integrated Resource Teams.  This has been a strategy that we have been implementing since the first DEI in Round 1 and we have presented this at conferences.  We talk about servicing people with multiple barriers, and the thing I think that is important is that this strategy is a service delivery one that strengthens and develops program service collaboration and delivers coordinated resources for job seekers who are facing multiple barriers to employment.
Most importantly, this strategy enhances the power of partnerships at the local level and with a customer.  And we've already talked a lot about our state level resources with partnerships, so most recently, the LEAD Center has provided Virginia with foundational information to implement Section 188 along with strategies and promising programs.
We have learned that the ADA is consistent with Section 188 and we have engaged our state‑level EO officers to work together to develop further trainings.  Trainings initially provided last fall were DEI and were expanded statewide by the LEAD Center with funding from ODEP and now has a focus on COVID‑19.  And we're fortunate that Virginia continues to be recognized by ETA and ODEP for our previous efforts.
Thank you, and I'm going to turn this over to my colleague, Sylvia.
   >> SYLVIA BERRY:  Hello.  This is Sylvia.  Thank you, Sinclair.  I'm going to speak a little bit about teleworking as an accommodation, benefit, and/or mandate.  I want you to keep in mind the requirements of 188 do not change because of our current situation we have now with COVID.
Telework may be a reasonable accommodation by itself.  For example, an employee may have vision problems that would not allow them to drive at night because of changes in time, getting darker early in the fall, or the distance they have to travel from work to get to the job could require them to have a change in hours, so even telework could be an option.
Other accommodations could be a change in supervisory methods, so the supervisor could give the employee written instructions.  Also, acquiring or modifying equipment like accessible workstations, software such as JAWs or Dragon and accessible keyboard.  Telework may be offered as an employment benefit based on the business needs of the agency.  Agencies may offer telework as a means of supporting continuity, to retain highly qualified employees, or to reduce congestion.
Telework as an employee benefit may require different accommodations than working in the office.  Telework may also be a mandatory condition of work, and in those cases, the agencies generally supply everything the employee needs to perform the essential duties of their position.
There continues to be accommodation needs for workforce professionals and job seekers with disabilities and multiple barriers to employment.  For some employees telework may not be considered a reasonable accommodation but a benefit of employment.  But for others, it may be a reasonable accommodation, especially if you must work from home.
I just want to give you a couple of scenarios dealing with the COVID situation and reasonable accommodations.  In this scenario, the office has three employees that have had severe reactions to fumes in the office, some cleaning products, such as disinfectants.  The managers had to alert maintenance regarding the employees and had an air purifier placed in the office.  The manager also advised the staff not to use cleaning products in the office and that cleaning would be facilitated by maintenance only.
The three employees have reasonable accommodations in place because of their disabilities, and remember we said that 188 does not change because of the COVID condition.  When the pandemic was declared, office staff became concerned about the spread of the disease and feared they may become ill as a result.  The other 10 staff members voiced their concern, the manager had several requests to telework from home; however, the manager stated only 5 of the positions could telework.  To make matters worse, the staff began using bleach and other products with chlorine in the office space, and even with the purifier, the air was so strong with chlorine which relieved some of the staff's concern about COVID, but immediately the three employees on the reasonable accommodation began to experience reactions that sent them home and to the doctors.
The manager was now faced with a problem because she told the staff it was okay to use the bleach to clean their areas, despite the disabilities of the other three staff members.
The manager requested assistance from our office in allowing the staff to use bleach because the manager agreed that bleach should be used.  Again, we've already pointed out that Section 188 still applies.  This manager was told that the other 3 employees with the reasonable accommodations in place, they had to be complied with and that could not change because of the current situation dealing with COVID.
In another situation, an employee in a workforce center came to the manager and told them a customer came in, needed assistance, so she asked if she had to help the customers because she also had a disability and felt in threat or danger.  The manager told her to help the customer because the customer needed assistance because of their disability and when we were contacted we told them that Section 188 was still in play and the employee did not have to assist the customer based on the employee's disability; however, in engaging and talking to the customer, the customer said they could continue doing their computer work at home and that they didn't need to do the work there in the office so that kind of settled that matter for them.
By engaging in conversation, they realized it was not necessary to make the employee do something that they already have a reasonable accommodation for.
Contact your EO officer, and you may come up with a plan of action, you may come up with training that is available to assist in providing reasonable accommodations, especially during this time.  Thank you, and I'm going to turn this over to Rebecca.
   >> REBECCA SALON:  Thank you so much to all four of our presenters, Jamie, Constance, Sinclair, and Sylvia.  That was just so much wonderful information.  We want to share a few resources with you, and then I see that many questions have come in through the chat box so we wanted to then turn it back to our presenters to respond to some of those.
Jamie talked about the Section 188 Disability Reference Guide Promising Practices in Achieving Nondiscrimination and Equal Opportunity, when you download this slide deck.  It really is a wonderful resource that was years in the making and it gives you chapter and verse for Section 188, but within that are embedded links to those practices.  So if you're wondering how to comply with different aspects of Section 188, it's an electronic, easy‑to‑use, user friendly guide where you can find best practices that have been implemented in different parts of the country, some of which are from Virginia, and so I encourage you to look at that document and share it with your colleagues.
As was mentioned, the LEAD Center has been working for several years in Virginia, and last year developed a System Innovation Brief that summarized some of the promising things that they're doing. Virginia's Cross‑System Accessibility Taskforce addresses equal opportunity and access, and there is also an Employment Brief that the LEAD Center put together that summarizing Section 188 that you might find useful.  It's a short document that you might be able to share with colleagues that you might want to engage in the conversation.
Jamie also mentioned in part of her presentation that it's very useful to use Section 188 as a lens as you're engaging your American Job Centers and WIOA workforce partners in AJC certification, and there is a three‑part webinar series that is posted on the LEAD Center website specifically focused on AJC certification in Section 188 with examples from a number of different states. So the workforce professionals from different systems are actually presenting how they use Section 188 in their AJC certification process, and so again we encourage you to look at those resources.
And as with our other webinars, there are slides, recordings, and transcripts.
So now we'd like to start with some questions that have come through for our presenters, and maybe I could start with Jamie.
Jamie, given all the systems in which you've worked, either as a staff member or providing technical assistance, why do you think Virginia's approach to engaging all of the systems together is so important?
   >> JAIME ROBINSON:  I think I've seen some of the best efforts to improve access, and they tend to happen in those local grassroots, AJCs.  They're really doing the work, building relationships, and getting people to their employment goals.
The challenge is how do you bring those efforts to scale?  And I think the only way to do it is to really get the partners together, look in your state, who are the movers and shakers, who are the folks that really promote collaboration and want to act on it?
And I do think that buy‑in from the state and disability partners informs policy.  And so, you really have to have the players come together, and also initiatives like the DEI that were so effective.   But the problem was that they stayed in their areas, they stayed there.  How can you bring those folks up to a larger platform or bring people together for training and for discussions?  I think that's what Virginia has done.
   >> REBECCA SALON:  That's great.  And I think you're right.  You can really see how there has been a cross‑system infrastructure built over time through all of the efforts that were presented over the years with the systems working together, so thank you for sharing that.
Constance, here is a question for you.  Workforce staff and partners attend many different trainings and it can be overwhelming at times.  How can we motivate AJC managers, staff, and WIOA cross‑title programs to attend trainings that are focused on accessibility?
   >> CONSTANCE GREEN:  Well, thank you.  I think there is a two‑part answer to that.  You have the carrot and the stick approach.  (Laughing).
We, by engaging our taskforce heavily in the AJC certification process, we had a little bit of a stick because of the compliance with certification component, but at the same time at the state level, we were modeling partnerships and we were transferring that as we went to the centers and did site visits.  So, we were encouraging that partnership at the local level and fostering the relationships as best we could from our state perspective.
It’s also-- you kind of have an “everything has caught fire” approach in Virginia because once a few local areas have gotten their teeth into the value of the training, they start talking amongst themselves and it has spread and now everyone wants to attend a training, and we're getting hundreds and hundreds of participants at each training event, and that's ‑‑ that's saying a lot for us.
It's also been coming down the individual pipes at the different agencies. So the Department of Education member will be sharing down her chain of command and saying to her local people that they're doing this training and you should participate with your other local people. The title 1, 2, 3, and 4 people are all doing the same thing, so we're really encouraging not just from the taskforce perspective, but also across and through the agencies, to have champions in every single agency involved in the AJCs, and I think that's been critical to our success.
   >> REBECCA SALON:  That's great.  Yeah, I'm sure that that's very important to keep the motivation going.  Thank you so much for that.  That's a great answer.
Sinclair, we have a question for you as well.  It can be difficult to address attitudinal barriers in the workforce system which can impact access to employment opportunities for people with disabilities.  How has Virginia addressed that?
   >> SINCLAIR HUBARD:  Thank you.  Well, I want folks to know that we've been working on this for years so it's not something that's happened overnight. Through our partnerships and collaborations, from the state level to the local level with consistent messages, we've been planting seeds and it's part of what Constance just talked about.  We've been bringing good trainings, relevant trainings, to the state and local levels on disability, and folks do talk among themselves and I think that has happened.
The other piece is that we've promoted the Integrated Resource Team strategy and we have included it in our state plan so now it's a piece of the fabric of how we're going to move forward, and I think that really helps for folks to understand that it's a helpful tool or strategy for people who face barriers to employment, not necessarily somebody just having a disability.  The DEI also became a disability resource and we became known for promoting access for all job seekers and promoting systems alignment, and I think all of those pieces are also seeds that we've been planting along the way, and now we really I think are seeing some of this come to fruition where people say, “I do want to go to that training, that's important for our customers.”
And one of our folks in a training said, “I thought I was uncomfortable asking what accommodation someone might need, and now I understand why I do need to have that conversation because I can go find helpful resources and tools or other services for that customer.”  Thank you.
   >> REBECCA SALON:  That's great.  That's really helpful.  Thank you so much.  Sylvia, here is one for you.  Perhaps our AJCs and partner programs all have written accommodation policy. How do we work toward having effective policies in place so that staff know what to do when a customer self‑discloses and expresses the need for more support and/or resources?
   >> SYLVIA BERRY:  Thank you.  One of the things that we're doing in the Richmond office is we set up training modules for managers and for employees.  It's a PowerPoint presentation that effectively goes over the entire policy for reasonable accommodations.  We have one set for the managers and one set for the employees, and we ask them to email us once it's done.  One of the things that we reiterate with the management staff and employees is how important communication is, and if an employee requests a reasonable accommodation and they haven't heard anything back in a minimum of 5 days, we've asked the employee to reach back out to the management official and let them know that they have an accommodation request in.
Also, we reiterate to management that the worst thing they can do is not respond to a reasonable accommodation request because no response is like saying, “No, you're not going to get the accommodation”, and that they should at least let them know that they’re working on it and if they can provide other examples of how to accommodate them to help them fulfill the essential duties of their position.
The main key is communication, training, and also there are so many resources out there through our partners that if we don't have the answer, we can always go and try to get a resource or assistance for them, so training and communication is the key.  Thank you.
   >> REBECCA SALON:  That's great.  Thank you so much.  It's 4:00 and there were some other questions about whether or not the LEAD Center is developing best practices for people who may be dislocated workers because of COVID‑19 and questions about job accommodations and something that was called job crafting, which may be customized employment and advice about disclosure.  I encourage people to go to www.leadcenter.org and there is a tab called Customized Employment that has just really rich resources on how to customize jobs.  Things have not changed now.  Being able to do good job development is really the same as is being able to accommodate people with disabilities.
There are really good resources on the LEAD Center website. There is an inclusive career pathways roadmap that gives you information on resource teams and disclosure and other resources have been mentioned here.
I want to thank our incredibly knowledgeable speakers today.  They brought so much experience and expertise to this discussion, so a special thanks to Jamie, Constance, Sinclair and Sylvia.  Thank you to Melissa Turner for her welcome and overview in the beginning of the webinar, and we hope that you'll subscribe to the LEAD Center listserve to find out about additional learning opportunities and resources that will be posted.  Stay well and take care.
(session completed at 3:00 p.m. CST)

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