Disability and Technology May 2016

Disability and Technology May 2016

Hi, I'm Neil Jacobson. I am extremely honored that Meriah asked me to contribute a monthly blog. I love comments and questions! Please let me know what you think about what I write and any questions you may have.

As background, after 29 years of working at Wells Fargo, I retired to start a disability-focused employment company that specializes in consulting on staffing and placement issues. I quickly realized that there are systemic problems which intrinsically inhibit people with disabilities from working and being productive. Our society holds very low expectations for individuals with disabilities. Our government's definition of disability as the 'inability to work'to receive disability benefits is an inherent disincentive. I am dedicating the rest of my retirement to see that these antiquated policies do change. I am doing so by working with The World Institute on Disability (WID). To learn more about my work now, please see CareerACCESS.org

At Wells Fargo, I was a Sr. Vice President in their IT department. In the '80s, I was the architect responsible for designing the first 7 by 24 banking system in the U.S. My last assignment at the Bank was to manage the design and implementation of mobile banking. I love IT! Especially software. Software proves that there is always a way to accomplish what you want to accomplish. At the Bank, I often drove my development staff crazy. I would insist that any feature the user wanted to put into our application, there was always a way to do so, and indeed there was. I must admit, I live my life as a person with a disability in a similar fashion. Whatever I really want to do, there's always a way!

I want you also to know that before working at the bank, I co-founded Computer Technologies Program (C T P). It was 1975. The co-founder was a 24-year man, named Scott Luebking, who had a spinal cord injury. At the time, I was 22 years old, and my speech was a bit better than it is now. Scott and I set up the program, wrote the curricula, found the students, taught classes, ran the labs, found internships and found jobs for the graduates. Students were in class or in lab 8 to 12 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week. My idea was to convince the students that if they could survive me and CTP, they could do anything! I always told my students how wonderful it is to work as a computer programmer in the 'real business world.' After doing this for 4 years, I thought it might help if I actually went into that 'real business world' for a year or two so that when I returned to CTP, I could indoctrinate the students even better! To my surprise, I found that the 'real business world' is great. I stayed at Wells Fargo for almost 30 years.

My experience at Wells Fargo leads me to believe that corporations are more ready for people with disabilities than we are for them. Focusing on making a profit can be a very equalizing activity. Focusing on doing a great job rather than focusing on one's disability can be liberating. At the Bank, I found that if you did a good job and added to the Bank's bottom line, it didn't matter what color you were or what religion you practiced or what disability you had. Focusing on the bottom line also leads to creativity. There were many nights when there were system problems. Support personnel from the Bank's computer centers would call me and inevitably find a way to understand what I was saying – because they needed to! One of my favorite stories happened near the beginning of my career before there was online computing, The system crashed at 1AM. My van was in the shop, Trains in the Bay Area don’t run all night. Wells Fargo sent an armored van to transport me, and my 300 pounds powered wheelchair to the data center.

In the coming, my blogs will tackle issues including “What is assistive technology?”, “How accessible are corporate ladders?”, “Are government disability benefits work disincentives?”, and “Are expectations of people with disabilities too low?” Please let me know other topics I should address.

Go Go Go! And whatever you do, have fun doing it!