KANSAS CITY, MO.: Joe Steffy's double diagnosis of Down syndrome and autism made him unemployable in some minds. His father, Ray Steffy, disagreed. The Steffy family created Poppin Joe's, a kettle corn popping company based at their Louisburg, Kan., home.

Joe Steffy is the proprietor, head popper and chief merchandiser.

''My intent was to create something for Joe so that he could be a part of the community,'' Ray Steffy said of his nonverbal 21-year-old son. ''It worked. He's part of the community. People call him Poppin Joe when they see his tent at a Wal-Mart or Hy-Vee or a festival.''

Ryan Farley, 25, also has developmental disabilities. He works at an AMC Theatre in Leawood, Kan., where he has been on the payroll for five years. ''I like taking the tickets and wiping the shelves and cleaning the floors,'' Farley said of the only job experience he has known.

Farley, who walks to the theater from a nearby apartment, started working at AMC through a job experience program. When he aged out of the school program, he kept working, thanks to AMC's long-standing commitment to hiring workers with disabilities. ''We identify roles in the operation that they're comfortable with,'' said Dan Glennon, Leawood theater general manager. ''We look for the fine line between challenging them and alienating them. We want it to be successful for everyone.''

Steffy and Farley are two of about 14.3 million U.S. adults who have some level of mental, or
cognitive, disability that limits their ability to work, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. They also are part of a larger group — about 51.2 million people — who have some level of disability: physical, mental or emotional.

Steffy and Farley also are among the fortunate 28.7 million — about 56 percent of the 51.2 million — who held a paying job at some point last year, according to the government statistics.

Many other would-be workers with disabilities, particularly those with mental disabilities, are on waiting lists for job-finding assistance or are stuck in frustrating searches for work they can do. The unemployment rate of people with work-limiting disabilities similar to Steffy's and Farley's is 70 to 80 percent of that population.

Employment barriers for people with disabilities are many. They can be physical, mental or emotional.

Barriers exist because of their inability to perform tasks or because a workplace environment isn't suited to them or because transportation isn't available.

Other barriers are financial, the result of government and business budgets that make it hard to access support services that would allow the work to be done.

Many barriers are attitudinal, born of discomfort or faulty assumptions about what people with disabilities can or can't do.

''It's a challenge,'' said Willetta Proctor, a human resource professional for Johnson County, Kan., who volunteers on the workforce readiness committee of the Human Resource Management Association.

In Connecticut, the state's support for disabled employment has shifted to financing caseworkers who prospect for community placements and, if needed, shepherd workers with disabilities as they learn and perform ''free-market'' jobs.

Often these placements require what the industry calls ''job carving'' — a redefinition of a job's duties to allow it to be performed by the worker.

Federal law allows people employed in sheltered workshops to be paid a subminimum wage based on their comparative hourly output. But if employed in a community placement, wage and hour laws require payment of the current minimum wage.

Connecticut and a few other states were motivated to move toward community placements partly by reading the global economic tea leaves. Some assembly and piecework that has been the traditional fare of sheltered workshops can be done in foreign countries for even less than the U.S. subminimum wage.

School districts and vocational and rehabilitation services provide varying degrees of employment assessment and referrals for people with disabilities. But often, because of jurisdictional boundaries and funding, support for placements is limited to only a few months.