"Please help me to get a job," says Francesca Delgado.

Delgado is using the networking skills she learned in an employment skills class sponsored by Albuquerque's Community Outreach Program for the Deaf and the New Mexico State Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. Delgado's request, however, has added poignancy because she signs the words.

There are 11 other deaf participants in the nine-week class, ranging in age from 20 to 76. Entitled "Re Thinking Employment," it is the first of its kind for deaf people in the country.

Not a traditional resume-building job -search workshop, it teaches cognitive skills, says Mila Mansaram, the teacher.

Mansaram, who has extensive experience providing specialized training to various populations with multiple life and employment barriers, came to Albuquerque from Canada especially to help COPD with the course.

"Sometimes, we can't get jobs because of the problems in our lives," Mansaram says, explaining that cognitive skills include problem solving, negotiation skills, learning to act rather than react, and understanding how to communicate with different authoritative styles. "It's not the deafness that stops them from getting jobs, it's faulty thinking," she says.

The students agree. "The course helped me change my attitude. I had problems with depression before taking it," says John Deluca, a former New Yorker who, in his polished shirt shot with gold cuffs, looks like he belongs on Wall Street. "It established new hopes and expectations for the future. It increased my vocabulary, taught me how to understand a variety of personalities and taught me new ways to express myself," Deluca signs.

Deluca's optimism is echoed by all the students who, as a result of the Re Thinking Employment project, for the first time feel they might just overcome the odds -- which are steep.

The unemployment rate for the 180,000 deaf people in New Mexico is 64 percent, compared with 70 percent nationally, according to Lin Marksbury, COPD's director. "Placing the deaf in smaller environments is easier than in major cities, due to the more personal connections in the business community," Marksbury says.

In New Mexico, as elsewhere throughout the country, public and private employers with more than 15 employees are required to make "reasonable accommodation" for qualified deaf and disabled employees, as stipulated by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

The term "reasonable accommodation" is purposefully vague because all kinds of disabilities have different needs, Marksbury says. "It means nothing and everything."

For example, it's probably not reasonable for a small business to have a full-time interpreter, but it might be reasonable for UNM or the city of Albuquerque."

The act does, however, make it clear that "reasonable accommodation" does not include undue hardship to the employer. For example, an employer is not required to eliminate primary responsibilities of a job in order to facilitate hiring a deaf person. "You don't have to lower production standards to provide personal items such as hearing aides," says Judy LeJeune, field operations director of the Rehabilitation Services Unit at the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR), a branch of the state of New Mexico Department of Education that, among other services, helps employers determine what their responsibilities are with regard to the reasonable accommodation clause of the Act.

For many businesses, the term boils down to the responsibility to provide technology to assist a deaf or hard-of-hearing employee to work. Such technology might include: a TTY -- a teletype machine that enables the deaf to type communications into a phone; an amplified phone; or an FM System, a headset that allows the hard-of-hearing to communicate better in group settings such as staff meetings.

The national average cost to an employer for equipment expenses to facilitate hiring a deaf employee is only $500, LeJeune says. And 73 percent of employers report that their employees with disabilities do not require accommodations at all. Businesses should not assume that "reasonable accommodation" refers solely to equipment or is expensive. "Sometimes, our approach to reasonable accommodation can instead be 'no' or 'low' tech."

"When we talk about reasonable accommodations, we're talking about making facilities accessible," LeJeune continues. Restructuring a job, modifying work schedules and/or equipment, installing devices, providing interpreters and appropriate modification for the job application or examination process -- the latter being an oft overlooked need -- are examples of no- or low-tech reasonable accommodation measures.

There are a variety of resources available to assist employers with hiring the deaf and/or disabled. The Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center, for instance, provides free information, training and technical assistance for employers trying to understand or meet the Act's requirements.

And the Job Accommodation Network offers free consultations about job accommodation, the Act and the employability of people with disabilities.

On-the-job training might also be available to employers. However, such training is not considered to be a reasonable accommodation. "We use it as a placement tool. Employers may have reservations about a person's ability. We provide on-the-job training, which allows [employer and employee] to assess the person's ability to do the job," LeJeune says.

On-the-job training might also reduce an employer's perception of risk of injury with regard to a deaf employee -- although the rate of injury on the job is no higher for the deaf than for any other group in the working population, according to LeJeune.