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Disability inclusion in the workplace is about creating equal opportunities for those with disabilities to succeed. This success includes fair learning opportunities, fair compensation, and fair career advancement. Inclusion is about embracing everyone's differences because these differences come with unique strengths.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. live with a disability. In addition to visible disabilities, many of these adults have disabilities that are invisible. For instance, it is easy to tell if a person has a disability if he or she is using a wheelchair or wearing a hearing aid. However, not all disabilities can be recognized by the human eye.
Therefore, it is likely that many people that are a part of the workforce that makes up Corporate America have some sort of disability that is invisible. As a result, a failure to embrace disability inclusion in the workplace could mean that a company is not doing all it can to support its workforce, which means employees could be unhappy and more likely to leave.
Additionally, disability inclusion is even more important when it comes to the hiring process. Many people with disabilities may have special talents or qualifications that may not be available in the market. Therefore, companies need to do more to ease the recruiting process and do more to seek out people with disabilities in order to make sure that they are not missing out on needed talent that is available in the market.
Overall, the companies that give strong importance to disability inclusion are those that are most likely to have the best employee retention or have the best talent in the market. In addition to people with disabilities benefiting from disability inclusion efforts, the companies that have to make the investment to make this inclusion a reality have a lot to gain as well.