IT IS NOT so long ago that individuals with handicapping conditions were tucked into the backstreams of our society and relegated to roles which only occasionally fit their basic capabilities. In the so-called good old days, paraplegics traditionally sold pencils on street corners; the blind could always beg; defective children had their family closets; and the emotionally disordered of any severity found their way eventually to some type of custodial existence. For those with lesser disability, greater determination, and less visible evidence of difference, job opportunities hung on the status of the labor market and gave birth to the well-known cliche of employment circles: "Last to be hired; first to be fired."
Since the turn of the century, however, there has been a slow growth of concern in this country to achieve the goal of offering a genuine opportunity for each member to make the most