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Access Living is a Chicago-based nonprofit that challenges stereotypes about people with disabilities and fights to protect their civil rights. Founded in 1980, the organization advocates for fair housing, equal employment opportunities, access to transportation and the removal of other barriers that keep people from living independently and contributing to their communities. President and CEO Karen Tamley joined Access Living in March 2020 after serving three Chicago mayors as Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities. CROR Outcomes asked Tamley to reflect on how the pandemic has changed the employment landscape for people with disabilities.
Q: How has the pandemic affected the lives of people with disabilities who want to work?
A: The pandemic blew open the idea of how people work in general. On the positive side, many people with disabilities who had long fought to be able to work from home as an accommodation and typically found their requests denied, were able to do that. This was a moment in time that showed the world it was possible because we were forced to do it.
That set the stage for new important opportunities for people with disabilities to become employed. I also saw a lot of people with disabilities who were able to move up and get new positions because of the option for remote work. Many new job postings during the pandemic were for hybrid or remote work. I have a couple of colleagues who were able to advance because their job opportunities were expanded by the option of remote work.
Q: Is there a downside to any of this?
A: I also don’t want the pendulum to go too far to the other end where employers who are now offering either in-person or hybrid work environments are seeing remote work as the only place we put disabled people. In this new hybrid environment, accommodations for people must take place in both environments, remote and in-person. Your house may be fully accessible but your workplace may not be. You should be able to be equally effective in doing your job in both environments. You should have equity across the board.
While there are benefits, there are also challenges with remote work. For one of my staff who is deaf, the challenge of eye strain and fatigue in the remote world was causing a problem. There are digital challenges for people with low vision like being able to access the chat on a Zoom call. Some digital platforms are more accessible than others. There are still challenges to making virtual work more accessible. We made a lot of strides during the pandemic, and it got better and better as time went on, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. On the whole, though, there’s more good than bad that came out of this.
Q: Do you really think some companies would pull back from making physical accommodations to their workplaces because the transition to remote work went so well?
A: I have heard anecdotally that some companies have pulled back or don’t prioritize access or accommodations as much. If an accommodation is expensive, some people have been pushed to work remotely. We’re concerned some employers may say, “It’s much easier and cheaper to accommodate you by letting you work remotely.”
Remote work can be an accommodation but the focus should be on what the individual needs to perform their essential functions. People might want to be a hybrid worker like everyone else. There are benefits to being in the office. They shouldn’t’t have to forgo that because an employer doesn’t want to provide physical accommodations in the workplace.
Q: What did the pandemic reveal to you about the ongoing challenges faced by people with disabilities?
A: Outside the employment environment, it has really highlighted the digital divide -- how many consumers there are who don’t have access to devices or the digital literacy skills to use them. That’s one of the big issues we’re working on now.
Q: Statistics show that people with disabilities made significant employment gains during the pandemic, but there’s still a big gap between employment levels for people with and without disabilities. Why do you think that is?
A: For the most part, people with disabilities want to work but there are a lot of reasons they don’t. One is disability benefits. People are really trapped. There’s a great disincentive to work to keep your SSI or Medicaid benefits. You can’t earn over a certain amount or have more than a certain amount of assets. Or maybe they have significant disabilities, and it may not be worth it to them to get a job and pay for the insurance they need to cover other things like personal care assistance. The benefits trap is widely recognized in our community.
Q: Are there other reasons?
A: Some people with disabilities haven’t had great educational opportunities or they had segregated education so they may not have the qualifications for a lot of jobs. There are deeper root causes around low expectations and proficiency gaps in reading and math or simply lack of opportunity. A lot of these issues lead to high poverty rates that contribute to high rates of unemployment.
We still have bias in hiring. There are employers who wouldn’t seek out employees with disabilities. They may have concerns about whether they can do the job. I know of many highly educated disabled people who keep going back to school for another degree because they can’t get a job. It’s a multi-layered question.
Q: Do you think people with disabilities are getting more recognition as a marginalized segment of the population that should be included in corporate diversity and inclusion plans just like racial and ethnic groups?
A: Yes, I do. There has been much more attention paid to equity in recent years, and we’re seeing disabled people being part of that. There’s also a recognition that disability is an intersecting identity. So many people we serve are disabled people of color or women or LGBT. Disability is intersectional. It’s the one community we can all join at any time. It’s a fast-growing segment of the population because of a confluence of factors including aging, conflict and war, climate-related disasters and gun violence.
I was looking back at a presentation I did a while ago when there were 54 million people with disabilities. Now it’s 61 million. It’s amazing how disability has escalated. People have a heightened sense of equity across the board and more people are identifying as disabled. Maybe they thought, “I just have diabetes, or Crohn’s or epilepsy. I’m not disabled.” But you don’t have to use a wheelchair to be part of the disability community. There are just more and more people claiming their identities and understanding what ableism looks like in their own lives.