WORKPLACE DIVERSITY : Finding Creative Ways to Help Disabled on the Job : Federal statutes say that a person who is qualified for a job cannot be rejected solely on the basis of having a mental or physical handicap.

The job at Loews Corp. called for someone who could handle customer billing questions over the phone and use a computer to call up account information.

But the female applicant, despite experience and skills making her an ideal candidate, had severely limited eyesight. She couldn’t read ordinary-sized letters.

The solution: a $200 piece of computer software that expanded the numbers and letters on the screen to a full half-inch in size. She got the job.

Just One Break, a nonprofit agency in New York that works with the disabled, devised the creative solution to help Loews make the “reasonable accommodation” required under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

For RJR Nabisco, the agency found an accommodation in the form of a remote control door- opener so an employee in a wheelchair could have use of the bathroom.

The new law “is not a threatening villain,” says Mikki Lam, executive director of Just One Break. Instead, it can provide businesses with a pool of qualified workers who had been traditionally overlooked, while offering persons with mental or physical disabilities some remedies against employment discrimination.

For the first time, federal civil rights statutes say that a person who is qualified for a job cannot be rejected solely on the basis of having a mental or physical handicap. And a worker cannot be fired when he, or she, develops a physical or mental illness.

An employer has to look at the “skills of a worker and not their disabling condition,” says Betty Wilson, director of the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office for the Disabled.

The law doesn’t define how much a company must spend as a “reasonable accommodation” to help a qualified disabled worker perform on the job, but virtually every business should be able to afford $500, Lam says. The money could be spent for such things as placing a desk on blocks so a wheelchair can fit under it, widening a stall in a bathroom or buying an amplifier for a telephone to help a hearing-impaired person.

The accommodation cannot create an undue financial hardship on a business, says Reginald Welch, communications director for the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces the law.

“A big company like GM or IBM may be held to a more expensive standard than the corner grocery store,” Welch says. “You have to look at it on a case-by-case basis.”

More than 7,000 people have filed complaints since last July, when the employment section of the act became effective and the federal government had won its first case.

That case involved an executive at a Chicago investigations firm who was fired after he developed brain cancer. The EEOC filed suit on his behalf, arguing that he could still perform his job effectively, despite the illness. The EEOC prevailed in court, and the executive was awarded more than $500,000 in back pay and damages.

In addition to employment, the law also applies to public access for those with disabilities. Movie theaters, restaurants and other public buildings must have entrances accessible to disabled people.

The law applies to firms with 25 or more workers, a threshold that will drop to 15 employees in July, 1994.

The heart of the law demands that people with disabilities be recognized as members “of American society (who) should be given the opportunities other Americans take for granted,” says Linda D. Kilb, managing director of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, based in Berkeley.

Lam, who ran a job fair that recently placed 55 out of 100 disabled people, says the new law should provide better work situations than those that existed when she began her career as an executive recruiter more than 20 years ago.

Crippled by polio as a child, Lam uses a wheelchair. At the first three employment firms she worked, she could never use the bathroom in the office. Her wheelchair wouldn’t fit into the stall.

When she needed to use a bathroom, she had to leave the building and go to a nearby hotel or restaurant. “I was young and determined to succeed,” she says. “I don’t know if I could put up with that today.”

Employers can get information on the Americans With Disabilities Act by calling the EEOC at (800) 669-3362. To report possible violations of the law, call (800) 669-4000.