Civil servants: Now is the time to self-identify for disability/serious health condition

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. If you are like 19 percent of all other Americans, you may struggle with a physical or mental impairment that limits your life activities. There is no shame surrounding this fact and anyone can join this group at any time.

NASA values the important contributions made by team members with disabilities and wants to ensure every employee is fully successful in the workplace. Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana put together a special video to emphasize NASA's commitment to individuals with disabilities (see below). 


Kennedy Space Center on Respecting Inclusion and Supporting Employees with Disabilities (RISE). Image Credit: NASA
 

NASA is working to meet a federal goal instituted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that individuals with disabilities represent 12 percent of the civil service and, of that number, 2 percent should be those with targeted or severe disabilities. Office of Personnel Management standard form 256, "Self-Identification of Disability," can help explain the difference between targeted and non-targeted disabilities. View the form online here.

Whether you have an obvious or non-obvious disability, you should consider taking a few minutes to self-identify in Employee Express. NASA uses aggregate self-identification data in Employee Express to determine resource requirements for reasonable accommodations, provide assistive technologies that benefit the entire workforce and measure our own progress in reaching federal goals. Rest assured—self-identifying will not hurt you, because disability status is protected by the Privacy Act of 1974. Follow instructions on page 2 of this infographic to update your self-identification in Employee Express.

If you have additional questions regarding data-collection requirements, contact the Disability Program manager in the JSC Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity at 281-483-0607 or jsc-office-of-equal-opportunity-and-diversity@mail.nasa.gov.


This National Disability Employment Awareness Month poster features a few Johnson team members: Penney Stanch (third from left); Dr. Bob Shelton (fourth from left); and Steve Bauder with his service dog (sixth from left). Image Credit: NASA