Inequitable Vocational Rehabilitation Services for Deaf People: Implications and Policy Considerations

Policy Considerations for Vocational Rehabilitation:

• Deaf people face additional barriers to entry to receive and benefit from Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) services.
• VR does not account for social barriers that deaf people face in accessing services or obtaining education. For example: this includes VR counselors conflating the language skills of ASL interpreters with the language skills of the deaf client.
• VR must take education and policy-based action to ensure that allocation of services align with the lived needs of deaf populations.
• Black, Indigenous, or People of Color individuals and multiply disabled deaf people are less likely to receive services, despite the additional barriers faced and increased subsequent need.
• VR counselors should look like the communities they serve — deaf, deafblind, deafdisabled, black deaf, indigenous deaf and so on. Hiring efforts for VR should target hiring more deaf VR counselors.
• Reach out to schools to enter students in the system earlier under Pre-Employment Transition Services (Pre-ETS).
• Abolish Order of Selection (OoS) regulations that prioritize one type of disabled person over another.
• Conduct diverse research and outreach focused on deafdisabled, deafblind, BIPOC and other minority communities.
• Re-examine regulations to ensure consideration of deaf specific institutions like Gallaudet University.
• Expand the duration of VR support and provide services from entering university until graduation to better reflect the realities and needs of deaf people.

Executive Summary

A recent study¹ released by the National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes at the University of Texas, Austin has several critical findings that show vocational rehabilitation services are not satisfactorily meeting the needs of deaf applicants and consumers. Addressing these issues would result in improved education and employment outcomes for deaf consumers.

A Note: Contextual Terminology

• In this study, three subcategories are examined: deaf with no additional disability, deafblind and deafdisabled. Unless otherwise specified, deaf refers to all people with hearing loss, regardless of language modality or cultural affiliation.

Background

Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) agencies play a critical role in helping individuals with functional, psychological, developmental, cognitive, emotional and health disabilities attain their vocational goals. Indeed, this is a step in the right direction for improving the health of people with disabilities as postsecondary education is strongly correlated with positive outcomes, such as higher employment rates, higher wages and greater civic and social participation for disabled young adults.² Though a crucial intervention in increasing access and opportunities for disabled students, provision of VR services falls short in overlooking the impact of real-world disparities, barriers and attitudes on academic experiences and success.

Undoubtedly a cornerstone service in the United States’ social safety net, VR has not yet met its full potential and must reckon with the inequality in provision of and impact to specific populations. In the current rise of discussions around social inequity, much of the recent political discourse has been focused on holding lawmakers accountable to recognizing that success in vocational training is not based on work ethic or hard work, but often on demographics such as race and specific disabilities that are associated with additional barriers.

Unavailability of Services for Deaf Applicants

Key Finding:

• There are fewer deaf people under 25 in the VR system (28%) than the average compared to other disability groups (48%).

This study shows that the barriers to entry and barriers to access VR services are much higher for deaf people than it is for hearing disabled people, resulting in widening of the gap between deaf and other disability groups benefiting from VR.

Investments need to be made to ensure that deaf teenagers and deaf high school students are aware of VR and have support in navigating the system. This includes elements such as VR counselors being involved in individualized education plans (IEP) meetings and related discussions when the deaf student turns fourteen. During this phase of education for deaf students, VR counselors should proactively push for enrollment of the deaf student in pre-employment transition (pre-ETS).

Key Findings:

• 10% to 15% of all deaf people are currently on a VR waitlist — well over 10,000 deaf people.
• Deaf people are more likely to be waiting for services, compared to hearing disabled people.

VR agencies must move the vast number of deaf people off of waitlists and fund their pending services. To remedy the disproportionate number of deaf people on waitlists, VR agencies should review their criteria for waitlisting versus providing services, as this seems to be a bottleneck that has deleterious outcomes for deaf people who are trying to enter the workforce or receive a quality education. A large contributor to extensive numbers of waitlisted deaf people is order of selection (OoS). VR agencies use OoS to assess and deem who has the most “significant” disabilities to prioritize over those with “less significant disabilities.”³ OoS has a chilling effect, resulting in large percentages of deaf people being waitlisted as they are sometimes considered “less disabled” than other disability groups. The task of comparing “significance” of disability across different disability types is impossible and subjective. Abolishing OoS regulations and simply serving all disabled people should be the new standard.

As a population that has language-specific accessibility needs, non-deaf VR counselors often do not have skills or knowledge needed for appropriate evaluations of deaf clients, with their assessments confounded by language barriers, especially when communicating through an interpreter. VR counselors need to find ways to better measure functional limitations and barriers to training and employment. Most non-deaf individuals are unaware of language-specific social influences on health, so one solution is in employing more deaf counselors who are educated around deaf-specific issues, particularly socio-emotional development and language deprivation aspects. This would have the secondary gain of creating more effective communication, speed up services and reduce lead times for interpreters.

Lack of Uniform Service Provision Across Deaf Populations

Key Finding:

• Deafdisabled people are not sufficiently receiving services in the VR system or have not been identified in the VR system.

VR agencies need to increase capacity specific to specialized services to ensure that deafdisabled people are accessing VR services by conducting outreach by working with community institutions, including schools and school districts, as well as ensuring that deafdisabled students are accessing pre-ETS. Another aspect of this outreach is ensuring that different elements of specialized services within the VR system are collaborating internally, such as between deaf field services and blind field services for deafblind clients.

Accessing pre-ETS in this sense means that VR counselors need the knowledge and the ability to provide appropriate auxiliary aids and services to access pre-ETS, as outlined in the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.⁴ This could be done through mandates to ensure that schools work directly with VR agencies as soon as the deaf person becomes fourteen years old, or through mandates that VR spend resources on outreach.

Key Finding:

• Only 36% of deaf people in the VR database are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC), 8% lower than the average across all disabilities.

VR agencies and schools need to do a better job of ensuring that BIPOC deaf people do not fall through the cracks, especially during transition from the school setting to the postsecondary. New programming is needed for outreach and in terms of making resources for racial minority groups. This also means that VR agencies need to ensure that their information and programs are accessible and culturally appropriate. Agencies should also recruit BIPOC counselors who come from the communities they serve to build the best possible rapport between VR counselors and students.

Related Findings:

• States and VR offices vary in their regulations for in-state or out-of-state colleges for deaf students. VR will sometimes also require deaf students to complete junior college in their home region first. However, most colleges are not well equipped to serve deaf students.⁵
• Deaf students often are not aware that they can proceed to out-of-state options at in-state costs, even when VR prefers a different in-state option.⁵

VR agencies need to clearly communicate the full scope of options that are available to deaf people, even if the VR counselor and the deaf client disagree. For example, deaf students should be informed that the VR counselor’s decision on where they go to college is not final, and deaf students can still elect to go to their preferred college but at a lower level of support.

States and VR agencies need to re-examine regulations to ensure that there are considerations and exceptions, especially at institutions that are uniquely positioned to serve deaf people. A recent report highlights that deaf students often rate their colleges poorly on communication access and campus technology, and rated colleges poorly especially in terms of social engagement.⁶ Institutions that may be able to best serve deaf students include places like Gallaudet University. Gallaudet University is a college for the deaf that is fully accessible in all aspects — teachers, staff, campus services, and the community are all fully accessible in comparison to other colleges where access is often an afterthought, especially outside of the classroom. As a result, deaf students often have better experiences and spend less time fighting for accommodations, or less time managing accommodations and more time on being a student. Other similar institutions include places like the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the National Center on Deafness at California State University, Northridge, as well as the Southwest College for the Deaf in Texas.

Related Finding

• Deaf people take longer than average to complete a postsecondary education or take longer to go to postsecondary education on average.⁷

VR agencies need to understand that deaf people experience significant rates of language deprivation and come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Deaf students also come from a wide range of education settings, ranging from fully mainstreamed orally, to schools for the deaf with deaf teachers. As a result, deaf people take more time to complete college, and need more support in finishing college. This means that VR agencies need to plan for longer college terms for deaf students, as well as provide further support, such as tutoring and support with accommodations.

Conclusion

In order to improve the health of deaf populations, VR must recognize and account for the inequitable barriers between students and their degree. To do so, we must increase financial allocations to this crucial service and substantively expand the breadth and longevity of support. While we can’t expect consistent, perfect services and fully across various states and budgets in the near future, we can reduce the harm of structural inequity. VR agencies have to do more to support deaf people in different ways in order to ensure that deaf people are reaching their full potential.

Special thanks to Oliver Stabbe, main author of this piece. Sean A. Maiwald, MPP also contributed, and Savio Woon-Hay Chan, MS reviewed this piece.

References

¹ Palmer, J. L., Garberoglio, C. L., Chan, S. W. H., Cawthon, S. W., & Sales, A. (2020). Deaf people and vocational rehabilitation: Who is being served? The University of Texas at Austin, National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes.

² Palmer, J. L., Newman, L. A., Davidson, S., & Cawthon, S. W. (2020). Life After College: Employment, Social, and Community Outcomes for Young Deaf Adults. American Annals of the Deaf, 165(4), 401–417.

³ Workforce Innovation Technical Assistance Center (WINTAC). (2016). Steps and Process: When State VR Agencies Implement Order of Selection. WINTAC. wintac-s3.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/topic-areas/ta04-IntergrationVR/OOS_Steps_and_Process.pdf

⁴ Bradley, D. H. (2021) The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the One-Stop Delivery System. Congressional Research Service, Cornell University. everycrsreport.com/reports/R44252.html

⁵ Gallaudet University. (n.d.). Information for VR Counselors. Retrieved April 19, 2021, from gallaudet.edu/undergraduate-admissions/information-for-vr-counselors/

⁶ Palmer, J. L., Cawthon, S. W., Garberoglio, C. L., & Ivanko, T. (2019). ACCESS is more than accommodations: 2018–2019 deaf college student national accessibility report. National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes, The University of Texas at Austin.

⁷ Garberoglio, C. L., Palmer, J. L., & Cawthon, S. (2019). Undergraduate Enrollment of Deaf Students in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes