Linda Iacelli, senior employment specialist with the Center on Employment at NTID, finds that most human resources departments are willing to interview and hire deaf professionals. The resistance, she says, comes from the actual managers farther down the line. But she can usually address most of their concerns. There s some adjustment in communication that s necessary when you bring in deaf technical people, but we can point out helpful strategies. Iacelli s department runs seminars to acquaint managers at potential employer companies with the issues they may face in hiring the deaf.
Training packages are available for use by a company s own trainers.
NTID will also loan TTY and signaling equipment for the duration of any co-op arranged through the school. Although Kodak has hired NTID graduates in the past, the association has become more formal now through Iacelli s connection with Allen Vaala, Kodak s director of university relations and college recruiting. To launch the program, Vaala and Bruce Jones, Kodak s manager of computer operations, attended a half-day workshop presented by Iacelli s department. It helped them understand what it might be like to be deaf themselves, Iacelli relates. Rochester has a large deaf community, and the deaf population tends to be computer literate because that minimizes their disadvantage, he says.