The Foreign Service Journal, January 2011

14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 I was delighted to learn that the State Department would begin to actively recruit disabled employees to implement Executive Order 13548, President Barack Obama’s July 2010 di- rective calling for an additional 100,000 individuals with disabilities to be em- ployed by the federal government. The order gives specific performance tar- gets and deadlines for each federal agency to meet. That development prompted me to consider what advice I would give a dis- abled applicant, based on my nearly 21 years in the Foreign Service as a hear- ing-impaired individual. First, I would tell my potential col- leagues that throughout my adult life, whether I was working on Wall Street or attending university, I have suc- ceeded by pushing myself harder than my non-disabled colleagues. If they worked 10 hours, I worked 12. I lived —and to some extent still do—by Avis Rent-A-Car’s motto: “We’re number two, so we try harder.” Granted, a psy- chologist might say that seeing yourself as second-best is not the healthiest mindset, but it has enabled me to com- pete on an extremely uneven playing field. And the same is true for any dis- abled applicant. My journey as one of the first hear- ing-impaired members of the Foreign Service began in August 1990, when I reported for an accelerated Polish-lan- guage course for my assignment to Warsaw. It was not particularly hot that day, but I still remember perspiring profusely from nerves. Could I keep up with the rest of the class? Should I explain to the teacher that wearing a hearing aid does not “cure” deafness? (As actor Art Carney of “Honeymoon- ers” fame, who was hearing-impaired, once commented, “All hearing aids do is make deafness louder.”) While such devices amplify the voice of the person who is speaking to you, they also am- plify the sounds of the truck going by, the printer spitting out pages, and the people in the hallway talking and lis- tening to music. Moreover, when someone uses a hearing aid it takes time for the brain to acclimate to the new sounds and, more importantly, interpret them. Amplification is always paired with dis- tortion — try turning your TV volume up all the way to see what I mean. It makes everything loud but not clear, even when one wears the most power- ful hearing aid available, as I do. After a week of struggling and ask- ing the Polish teacher to repeat these new sounds over and over again, I ac- cepted the fact that I was being unfair to the other students. I went to the di- rector of the program and requested one-on-one instruction so I could ob- tain at least a basic understanding of the language. He appeared very under- standing and assured me that he would work something out. When I arrived at FSI the following Monday, I was shown to a windowless office/storage room, handed a book ti- tled something like Teach Yourself Pol- ish , and left alone to practice pronounc- ing these very foreign sounds. I some- how survived those five weeks and re- ceived a 0/0 in Polish— the first official entry in my official performance folder. My main concern was whether this treatment was an omen of my future in the Foreign Service. Reasonable Accommodations At that time, the State Department had just one employee tasked with pro- viding “reasonable accommodations” for disabled employees. What made this office special was the man who ran it, whose sensitivity was only matched by his proactive approach. He would sometimes call to tell me that he had found a new device that might help me and wanted me to try it. He truly knew Welcoming the Disabled to the Foreign Service B Y M ICHAEL B RICKER S PEAKING O UT A disability places you at a disadvantage within a system that is not equipped (or inclined) to level the playing field, such as the Foreign Service.