African Journal of Business Management Vol. 7(4), pp. 227-243, 28 January, 2013 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJBM DOI: 10.5897/AJBM11.1472 ISSN 1993-8233 ©2013 Academic Journals Review Attitudes of people with disabilities towards teleworking as an employment opportunity: It’s modelling in terms of the Turkish case H. Filiz ALKAN MEŞHUR* and Çiğdem ÇİFTÇİ ULUSOY Department of City and Regional Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Selcuk University, 42031, Campus/Konya, Turkey. Accepted 6 February, 2012 The rapid advancement of information and communications technologies (ICTs) has opened up many opportunities for people with disabilities. Telework is an activity to use ICTs to free staff from traditional office locations and enable them to work elsewhere. This includes working from home and telecentres or other locations. Also, teleworking offers significant benefits to people with disabilities. This new way of working allows to access information and services from any location and reduces or eliminates time spent on commuting. In this sense, telework can be seen as an important opportunity for persons with disabilities particularly those with limited mobility, and of course, this opportunity may be critical in many aspects. This paper examines the effects of individual and household related characteristics on disabled persons’ attitudes towards teleworking. The sample comprised 155 disabled employees from Ankara, Turkey. The results suggest that individual and household related characteristics influence the attitudes of disabled employees towards teleworking. Additionally, if organizations used teleworking as a flexible work option, the employment opportunities and the quality of life of disabled people would increase into working life. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model that would increase the employment opportunities of disabled employees. Key words: Disabled people, disability, employment, telework, information and communication technologies (ICTs). INTRODUCTION The development of new information and communication technologies has brought new possibilities for tele- working. Telework allows employees to work from alternative places such as homes, telecenters, hotels and airports, or even during travel journeys. Employees are able to interact with colleagues and customers using non face-to-face contact (e.g. using web-conferencing, audio- conferencing, instant messaging, emails etc) that may *Corresponding author. E-mail: hfilizalkan@yahoo.com. Tel: + 90 332 223 22 04. Fax: +90 332 241 72 59. result in less business and commuting travel. In addition, work can be accomplished before or after regular office hours, for example, during evenings or weekends (Mirti, 1998; Lim et al., 2003). There are many terms used in definitions of telework, such as telecommuting, flexi- places, and electronic cottages (Baloh and Trkman, 2003). They are becoming an increasingly common alternative and flexible work arrangement, which involves working remotely from an employer for a large proportion of employees‟ time (Teo and Lim, 1998). According to Mokhtarian et al. (2004) telework is an umbrella term for the use of “information and communications technology to perform work „at a