Disability Friendly

12Employers’ Slow Progress to Disability‐Friendly Inclusion

Through a cooperative arrangement, two respected national disability organizations with whom I've had substantial involvement in their beginnings and throughout their growth, as its first paid CEO and as a cofounder, respectively, Disability:IN (formerly US Business Leadership Network) and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), have collaborated to create, survey, and report the current state of disability employment in the United States each year.

This annual survey and report is a valuable effort but not perfect, as it seems so many participating employers receive remarkably high scores while disability employment rates remain stagnantly low. There is a disconnect and the true picture of the low economic gains through employment of people with disabilities is not told. Their joint Disability Equality Index (DEI) data is valuable, however, and I choose to use it to embrace the incremental and positive changes occurring in the employer community with regard to their efforts on Disability Inclusion.

More than 24 months after COVID‐19 brought workplaces and society to a near halt, we find ourselves entering a new normal unlike anything we've seen before. The job market is bizarrely tight with millions of job openings yet millions more people unemployed, with talent migrating across geographies and industrial sectors, and more workers reassessing their jobs, careers, lives, and lifestyles.

In a ...