I believe we all have a right to work. Work is how we support ourselves—our interests and our general lifestyle—and can be a way for us to contribute to society. When the ADA was passed in 1990, it laid out four goals for the disability community: full participation, equal opportunity, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency. Twenty-eight years later, in 2018, Senator Tom Harkin, one of the chief architects of the ADA, said in a speech, “We have made significant progress on these [first three] goals, but when it comes to economic self-sufficiency, we still have a good deal of work to do.”1
I define economic self-sufficiency as whether we can make enough money to cover our basic needs in life—in other words, our ability to afford food on the table and a roof over our heads. Many of us achieve economic self-sufficiency through the money we make at our jobs. Unfortunately, in 2022, thirty-two years after the ADA, the employment rate of people with disabilities in the United States was still only 21.3 percent, compared to 65.4 percent of people without disabilities, while the unemployment rate for disabled people was twice that of our non-disabled peers.2 Disabled people are also “last hired, first fired” in many workplaces.3 All of these are clear indications to researchers and activists that we still have a long way to go to remove disability bias in hiring.
In 2023, the employment rate of disabled people rose only slightly, to 22.4 percent, and alarmingly, this is considered a record high:4 it factors in the new numbers of already employed people who acquired long-haul COVID over the preceding few years; an increasing demand for jobs in the labor market, where roles for disabled people have been concentrated in retail, food prep, and cleaning;5 and employees’ new access to remote work, a reasonable accommodation that disabled people were advocating for long before the pandemic.6
In short, we face a huge disability employment gap. Are disabled people not hired because we can’t do the work? Or is the problem that companies won’t hire disabled people in the first place due to ableist assumptions?
Disability bias in hiring practices has been well recorded. According to a study conducted by the Society of Human Resource Managers (SHRM), 35 percent of HR managers believed that the work couldn’t be done by employees who have a physical or intellectual disability, while 42 percent believed that the work couldn’t be done by employees with a learning or attention disability. Additionally, 23 percent cited discomfort and unfamiliarity around people with disabilities. Despite these assumptions that led to a reluctance to hire disabled people, the survey found that 97 percent of managers who were aware that one or more of their employees had a disability said those individuals performed the same as or better than their peers without disabilities. In other words, the lack of disability hires is not due to actual performance but rather hiring managers’ inaccurate assumptions.
Not only are these assumptions by HR managers detrimental to disabled people seeking to be hired, but the company also loses out when potentially valuable employees are passed over and never given the chance to show what we’re capable of. This leads some disabled candidates to “hide” our disabilities for fear that knowledge of our disability status will impact our ability to be hired.
How do we dispel and counter this myth? “What happens when you hire a person with disabilities is you see how we do our jobs,” says Kathleen Martinez, who was the assistant secretary of labor for the Office of Disability Employment Policy with the Obama administration. “And then the mystery is over, and we’re not special anymore. We’ve become a part of the fabric of the work culture.”7 It’s that simple.
So when people ask me, “Tiffany, what needs to happen to close the disability employment gap?,” I tell them the solution is right in front of them: hire disabled people, period. That’s the only way we’ll be able to meaningfully see those unemployment numbers change and you’ll get to see what we’re capable of. All employees, disabled and non-disabled alike, are expected to do good work and prove that we are capable. The only difference is that disabled people aren’t even given a chance to interview or are dismissed at the interview stage due to hiring managers’ ableist assumptions. A 2021 study investigating hiring discrimination against wheelchair users found that wheelchair users were 48 percent less likely to be invited to job interviews than non-disabled applicants.8 That’s why I often say that policy plus attitudes will create change.
At Diversability, we have always made a point of hiring directly from our disability community because we want to show that disability employment works. We bring on team members in a contract capacity for a three-month paid trial period first to see if the role is a good fit. Our team is remote, our work is project-based and asynchronous, and we know this isn’t for everyone. Some don’t make it past the trial period, and that’s okay, while others have stayed with us for years and gone on to receive scholarships, awards, and their dream jobs.
Sometimes I get a follow-up remark: “But I don’t want my employees to feel like they’re a token hire.” My answer to that is, well, even if we are, we still have to do well and be subjected to performance reviews like everyone else. I’ve been in jobs where I’ve excelled. But that doesn’t mean disabled people should be expected to succeed or be good at everything, which is another unfair burden that society expects us to carry. I was also fired from a sales job at a real estate startup. Just like everyone else, there will be roles that we’re good at and ones that we’re not, specific to each of our skills and interests, and it’s important that hiring managers and companies recognize that.
Sometimes the problem isn’t just with employers who think that disabled people aren’t capable. Disabled people, too, can internalize ableism and believe we can’t do the job. According to a survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 78.9 percent of disabled people who were unemployed reported that we faced barriers due to our own disability—meaning we thought our disability rather than the lack of accommodations was the reason we could not do the job—a number significantly higher than those for other cited barriers, such as lack of training, poor transportation, and the need for special accommodations in the workplace.9 In this case, I would dig deeper than these numbers, which are based on people’s perceptions, and argue that ableism (setting the expectations low for disabled people) and a lack of accessibility and accommodations, rather than a person’s own disability, are the real barriers to employment.
Here’s the truth in numbers: there is a business case for disability inclusion. Research has found that disabled employees not only perform well in our jobs but even help organizations make more money. In 2018, a report from Accenture found that if more people with disabilities joined the labor force, the US GDP could increase by $25 billion.10 A more recent Accenture report in 2023 showed that companies leading in disability inclusion generated 1.6 times more revenue, 2.6 times more net income, and 2 times more economic profit, with the likelihood of outperforming their industry peers by 25 percent in productivity.11
Hiring disabled people is not just about compliance; there are real benefits. “People with disabilities are a tremendous source of talent and innovation, as well as market share,” says Jill Houghton, president and CEO of Disability:IN.12 According to a 2016 study, 75 percent of disabled employees said we had an idea that we believed would provide value to our companies.13 Additionally, some of us have unique capabilities due to our disabilities that make us good fits for specific job scopes. For example, managers at Auticon, an IT consulting company, report that autistic consultants are “especially adept at recognizing patterns, which makes them better than others at seeing correlations and interdependencies in large amounts of data.”14
Additionally, disabled employees have been shown to be more motivated, productive, and loyal, precisely because it is often difficult for us to find employment in the first place. Research shows that many disabled employees demonstrate a desire to perform well, along with low absenteeism, high retention, and low turnover rates.15 In an interesting case study, a Walgreens distribution center that had 30 percent disabled employees was found to have 20 percent more efficiency, half the turnover rate, and one-third fewer accidents than similar facilities with non-disabled workers.16
“For too long, people with disabilities, individuals who are perfectly qualified and overwhelmingly will work, faced enormous barriers to being offered a job,” says disability rights attorney and former state senator Ted Kennedy Jr. “[There is] compelling evidence that disability inclusion actually accelerates business performance, brand loyalty, and shareholder returns.”17
Hiring disabled employees can also contribute to a more collaborative and empathetic work culture. When interacting with disabled peers, other coworkers learn to develop cooperative and supportive behaviors, leading to greater team cohesion. In a survey, 88 percent of HR professionals agreed that hiring disabled employees caused a significant improvement in the work culture.18 The benefits go beyond the company to affect consumers, too. When customers interact with disabled employees in customer service roles, the company is often viewed as being more socially responsible, which enhances their reputation and increases brand loyalty from customers.19