March 28, 2024 | OPINION | By Kole Petersen
This is the first of a three-part series discussing the problems associated with and caused by the Disability Equality Index. Part One discusses the plights that have historically affected the disabled community when it comes to the job market and introduces the concept of the Index.
All over the internet this year, people have been lamenting about the state of the United States’ job market. Stories of qualified, college-educated individuals applying to hundreds of jobs while receiving barely any interviews in exchange are surprisingly commonplace; one video showcases a senior designer with 10 years of experience only getting four interviews and no offers from 100 applications. The widespread prevalence of situations like these has caused many from younger generations to feel like searching for a job is pointless.
While the inability of the average American to get a job is certainly a problem worth discussing, one aspect of the job market that is seldom mentioned in these TikTok videos and online discussions is the perennial inability of disabled people to land jobs.
Before we talk about the current employment opportunities (or lack thereof) for the disabled American, it is essential to highlight the history of disability in the context of employment in the United States. Throughout American history, people with disabilities have faced immense difficulties in acquiring marketable work skills and landing jobs. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, many disabled people could only find work at “freak shows” and circuses that exploited their disabilities to entertain the public. This state of disabled employment represents the wider treatment of disabled people at the time; they were presented as exhibitions rather than human beings.
While progress in encouraging the employment of disabled people began in 1918 with the passing of the Smith-Sears Veterans Rehabilitation Act, employers remained hesitant to hire employees with disabilities. In 1935, The League for the Physically Handicapped was formed by young New Yorkers advocating for the employment of disabled people during the Great Depression. They staged a nine-day-long sit-in at the Home Relief Bureau and an additional sit-in at the Work Progress Administration headquarters, efforts which eventually led to the creation of 1,500 jobs in New York City.
After over sixty years of combined efforts from the disabled community, George H.W. Bush finally signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law, whose employment provisions prohibit discrimination in the workplace against those with disabilities. While this did mark a huge victory for disabled Americans across the country, the barrier to entry into the workplace has scarcely budged over the following 34 years, and the recognition of neurodevelopmentally disabled individuals as work-eligible has barely seen any progress.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities was 7.2% as of 2023, over two times higher than the rate of 3.5% for those without a disability. Additionally, even if disabled people do find employment, they are much less likely to work full-time compared to their able-bodied counterparts; 29% of those with a disability work part-time compared to about 16% of workers without a disability.
For those with neurodevelopmental disabilities, the employment statistics are even more bleak. Studies in recent years have shown that up to 85% of autistic adults with a college education are unemployed, depending on the criteria used in data collection, this number may balloon to over 90%. Further, according to the National Snapshot of Adults with Intellectual Disabilities in the Labor Force, only 44% of adults with intellectual disabilities aged 21-64 are in the labor force, a rate twice as low as working-age adults without disabilities.
This problem of unemployment begets many other systemic problems for disabled people, the most important of which is the inability to gain a sense of independence.
The 2023 Annual Report on People with Disabilities found that the median earnings of full-time workers with disabilities was $6,319 lower than full-time workers without disabilities in 2021; additionally, the poverty rate between these two groups differed by over 13%. While shocking, these numbers do not consider the disabled people who work part-time or are unemployed. Thus the income disparity between disabled and able-bodied people differs much more severely than the data suggests. It goes unreported. Within a capitalistic system in which money makes the world go ‘round, disabled people are less capable of reaching milestones that would allow them to sustain themselves and live independently.
The capabilities of disabled Americans to find employment is historically unpromising and incredibly disempowering. In a world that seemingly seeks to push down those with disabilities at every stage of life, a tool that commits to rank companies based on their inclusion policies and willingness to hire and accept disabled employees would be interesting to analyze. This model could be very beneficial to the disabled community.
Luckily for us, we have such a tool with which we can use to investigate.
Established in 1994 through the President’s Committee on Employment with People with Disabilities, Disability:IN, is the self-proclaimed “leading nonprofit resource for business disability inclusion worldwide.” With a network of over 500 corporations and 25 affiliates, this association seeks to help form an inclusive global economy in which disabled people can fully and meaningfully participate. Hoping to see a day in which their organization is no longer needed, the organization’s website’s “about” section contains a plethora of catchy buzzwords and an inspiring founding story that paints a picture that Disability:IN truly is IN when it comes to inclusion in the workplace.
While Disability:IN has started numerous programs aimed at improving the accessibility of the workplace for disabled people, what I want to investigate, and the primary focus of this three-part series, is the Disability Equality Index.
Beginning in 2015, the Disability Equality Index is the leading independent, third-party resource for the benchmarking of corporate disability inclusion policies and programs. Claiming to be trusted by over 70% of the Fortune 100, participation in the United States edition of the Index grew from 80 companies at its inception to 485 for the 2023 report. According to the official website of the Index, the Disability Equality Index is an “objective, reflective, forward-thinking, and confidential disability rating tool” crafted to advance inclusion practices.
If only this statement were true.
Companies that participate in the Index receive a score ranging from zero to 100, with scores of multiples of ten being the only possible scores. Companies that receive a score of 80 or higher earn the distinction of being labeled one of the “Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion.” Out of the 485 companies listed in the 2023 report, 294 of them received the highest possible score of 100, and 83.5% scored at least an 80.
Considering what we just learned about the disabled person’s experience in the job market and workplace, the high percentage of companies receiving distinction for their inclusion efforts seems highly suspicious. When first looking at this statistic, I concluded that the reason so many companies received such a high score was that only companies that valued inclusion policies would volunteer to receive a rating.
However, when I investigated how companies obtained the scores that they did, I was left with very little to work with. On the web page containing a clear list of the top-scoring companies, no comments nor justifications as to what these companies did well in terms of inclusion appeared. No data on how many disabled employees they have, no mentioning of programs they ran, not even a quick highlight of which parts of the yet-unknown rating process they scored highly on. All that was presented was the name of the company and a hyperlink to their website.
Flabbergasted, I was eager to find the methodology used by the Disability Equality Index to rate the participating companies. Maybe they conducted interviews with disabled employees who worked at the companies to hear their thoughts. Maybe they compared the national hiring rate of disabled employees to the hiring rates of the specified companies. Maybe they gathered criteria of the aspects of a workplace desired and needed by disabled people and objectively rated companies using those criteria. Hopefully, they used a combination of these methods alongside many others.
However, the only criteria utilized by the Disability Equality Index to give scores was a questionnaire consisting of just six unique categories, of which only five are weighed into the scoring calculation. What’s more, these questionnaires are filled out solely by the businesses themselves. Not an outside observer, no accessibility expert, not even the disabled employees. Just one official submitter from the company.
Come back to read Part Two for a dissection of this questionnaire and its maddening results, including its susceptibility to manipulation, incomplete criteria, ambiguous questions, and the inability to differentiate genuine efforts to advance disability inclusion from responses tailored to achieve a high score.
Thank you for spreading awareness on this topic!!