It is important to remember that specularity is a reflection of a lightsource. Therefore, if a light is bright enough to create an optical effect, a specular highlight from that light should also create an optical effect. Maya allows for this via the use of Shader Glow.

By default, when shader glow is enabled on a shader, all parts of a surface will appear to glow. But what we want is for just the specular, or brightest areas, to glow. This can be accomplished by editing the Shader Glow node accessible in Hypershade. Increasing the Threshold value will bias the glow towards brightness.

Since there can only be one Shader Glow node in a scene, this means that all shaders with glow enabled must have the exact same type of glow. This is unfortunate, and may force you into situations where you will need to render in layers.

note: always turn off Auto-Exposure on the Shader Glow node. This can cause glow to flicker in an animation. Lighting/Shading -> Make Light Links.