Prior to her sentencing, Danielle Henderson, 34, told the court she “didn’t raise my animals to be that way.” Credit: Shutterstock / Roman Motizov

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit in San Antonio federal court against a nonprofit that provides job placement for people with disabilities. The feds allege the organization discriminated against the visually impaired.

National Telecommuting Institute Inc. violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by refusing to help blind and low-vision applicants get work as telephone-based customer service personnel, according to the EEOC’s allegations. The agency filed its suit Wednesday.

Officials with Westwood, Mass.-based National Telecommuting were unavailable for comment on the suit. Each year, the nonprofit places 500 to 600 U.S. residents with disabilities as home-based call center agents working for business and government agencies, according to its website.

In its suit, the EEOC maintains that after learning visually impaired applicants used accessibility technologies such as programs that convert computer text to speech, National Telecommuting officials told those applicants no positions were available that could accommodate their software. The filing also accuses the nonprofit of failing to offer reasonable accommodations to participate in its pre-employment application process.

“Placement and referral agencies that claim to work toward the goal of increasing employment opportunities for persons with disabilities should be diligent in engaging in the required interactive process to identify accommodations,” Robert Canino, regional Attorney for the EEOC’s Dallas District Office, said in an emailed statement. “Screening that operates to exclude a particular subgroup of applicants who require accommodation and leaving them in employment limbo does not represent an earnest effort to place them.”

The EEOC didn’t state in its petition why the suit was filed in San Antonio. However, the filing does note that National Telecommuting recruits people from across the nation, including the Alamo City.

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This article appears in Sep 20 – Oct 3, 2023.

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