Pathways to disability inclusion in the world of work
Pathways to disability inclusion in the world of work
Achieving equal access to decent work requires coordinated action by governments, employers, workers’ organizations and organizations of persons with disabilities. Inclusive laws and policies, accessible services and workplaces, and appropriate support can help remove barriers and expand employment opportunities for persons with disabilities.
Four areas of actions
Inclusive employers and workplaces
Enabling laws, policies and public systems
Routes into work and employment support
Addressing exclusion and segregation
Inclusive employers and workplaces
Employers in both the private and public sectors have a central role in creating workplaces in which persons with disabilities can participate on an equal basis. This includes preventing discrimination, providing reasonable accommodation, making recruitment and career development accessible, and ensuring that workplace facilities, information and technologies can be used by everyone.
Business networks and peer learning
Business networks can help employers learn from one another and turn commitments on disability inclusion into practical action. They provide a space to exchange experience on issues such as accessible recruitment, workplace adjustment, retention, career progression and disability-inclusive business practices.
The ILO Global Business and Disability Network is an employer-led initiative that brings together multinational enterprises, national business and disability networks and other organizations. Its members share practices, develop guidance and promote disability inclusion in business, including in relation to environmental, social and governance considerations and business and human rights. Company members commit to the ten principles of the Network Charter.
- Find out more: ILO Global Business and Disability Network
- Practical tool: ILO GBDN self-assessment tool, a free multilingual tool that helps enterprises identify gaps and set priorities for action.
National business and disability networks
At country level, national business and disability networks bring companies and partner organizations together to advance the employment of persons with disabilities. They facilitate peer learning, provide technical guidance and can represent the voice of business in dialogue with governments, workers’ organizations, vocational training institutions and organizations of persons with disabilities.
These networks may be hosted by employers’ organizations, disability organizations with business expertise or other national platforms. Their effectiveness depends on strong links with both the business community and persons with disabilities.
The public sector as an inclusive employer
Article 27 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities calls on States Parties to employ persons with disabilities in the public sector. Public authorities should apply the same principles of non-discrimination, accessibility and reasonable accommodation expected of other employers. A more representative public workforce can also contribute to more accessible and inclusive public services, including education, health and employment services.
- Guidance: Trade Union Guide on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Public Services, developed by Public Services International and the ILO.
Enabling laws, policies and public systems
Workplace inclusion cannot be achieved by employers alone. Laws, employment policies, skills systems, employment services, public procurement and social protection all shape whether persons with disabilities can prepare for, enter, remain in and progress in decent work.
Legislation and employment policies
Legislation should protect persons with disabilities from discrimination at every stage of employment and recognize the denial of reasonable accommodation as a form of discrimination. Disability inclusion should also be integrated into mainstream labour and employment laws and policies. Legal restrictions based on assumptions about the work persons with disabilities can perform should be reviewed and removed.
Many countries use employment quotas to promote the recruitment of persons with disabilities in the public sector, the private sector or both. Quotas may be accompanied by reporting requirements, incentives, levies or penalties. Their design and enforcement—and the support available to employers and jobseekers—determine whether they lead to meaningful employment rather than formal compliance alone.
- ILO resource: Promoting Employment Opportunities for People with Disabilities: Quota Schemes
- ILO resource: Inclusion of people with disabilities in national employment policies
Inclusive skills development and apprenticeships
Persons with disabilities need equal access to skills that respond to labour-market demand. Mainstream technical and vocational education and training, apprenticeships and workplace learning should therefore be accessible and inclusive from their design through to delivery and assessment.
Programmes intended only for persons with disabilities can reinforce segregation or provide training that is poorly connected to employment opportunities. Inclusive mainstream systems, combined with individualized support where required, can strengthen both skills development and transitions into work. Workplace learning can also help employers address misconceptions about disability by creating direct experience of working with persons with disabilities.
- ILO resource: Making TVET and skills systems inclusive of persons with disabilities
- ILO resource: Making apprenticeships and workplace learning inclusive of persons with disabilities
Inclusive employment services and programmes
Public and private employment services connect jobseekers with employment opportunities through information, counselling, training, job matching and placement. To serve persons with disabilities effectively, they must be accessible, provide support tailored to individual requirements and help employers make recruitment and workplaces more inclusive.
Disability inclusion should also be integrated into mainstream active labour market programmes, youth employment initiatives, programmes supporting women’s economic empowerment and employment-intensive public works. Partnerships with organizations of persons with disabilities can help programmes reach potential participants, understand barriers and provide appropriate support.
- ILO resource: Disability Inclusion in Employment-Intensive Investment Programmes: Stocktaking and way forward
Disability-inclusive public procurement
Governments can use their purchasing power to promote both accessibility and employment. Tender specifications can require goods, services and infrastructure to meet accessibility standards. Procurement processes can also recognize suppliers that employ persons with disabilities, businesses owned by entrepreneurs with disabilities, or bidders that commit to disability-inclusive employment in delivering a contract.
These measures should be designed with safeguards so that they expand decent work opportunities in the open labour market and do not channel public contracts towards segregated forms of employment.
Disability-inclusive social protection
Social protection is essential to income security and to meeting disability-related support and living costs. At the same time, the design of disability benefits can affect a person’s ability to take up paid work. Systems based on a rigid classification of people as either ‘able’ or ‘unable’ to work may discourage or prevent labour-market participation.
Disability benefits should recognize that many additional costs continue whether or not a person is employed. Where appropriate, benefits should be compatible with income from work and accompanied by accessible employment and support services. Social protection should enable choice, autonomy and participation—not create a choice between essential support and employment.
- Overview: Social protection for people with disabilities
- Joint statement: Towards inclusive social protection systems supporting the full and effective participation of persons with disabilities, by the ILO and the International Disability Alliance.
Routes into work and employment support
People enter, return to and participate in work in different ways. The objective is not to direct persons with disabilities towards a separate pathway, but to ensure that all routes into decent work are accessible and that individual support is available when needed.
Self-employment and entrepreneurship
Self-employment can offer independence and flexibility and may suit some persons with disabilities. Mainstream entrepreneurship programmes, business development services, finance and grant schemes should therefore be accessible and inclusive.
Self-employment should not, however, be presented as the default—or only—option for persons with disabilities, particularly as a response to discrimination or inaccessible workplaces. As for anyone else, entrepreneurship should be a genuine choice based on a person’s interests, skills and circumstances and should provide a viable route to decent work.
- Programme: Start and Improve Your Business, the ILO’s entrepreneurship training programme.
Supported employment
Supported employment helps people obtain and retain jobs in the open labour market through individualized assistance. It is often used by persons with intellectual disabilities and may include a job coach who supports both the worker and the employer, helps adapt tasks or the working environment and gradually reduces support as appropriate.
For persons with psychosocial disabilities, Individual Placement and Support is one evidence-based approach that integrates employment support with mental health services and emphasizes rapid placement in competitive employment according to the individual’s preferences.
- External resource: World Association for Supported Employment
Return-to-work programmes
When a worker acquires a disability or health condition, early and coordinated return-to-work support can help them remain in employment or resume work. Depending on the person’s situation, this may involve returning to the same job with adjustments, moving to another role with the same employer, finding work with another employer or pursuing self-employment.
Effective programmes place the worker at the centre of the process and coordinate workplace accommodation, rehabilitation, health care, social security and employment support. Return to work should be safe, sustainable and based on the person’s capacities and preferences.
- Guidance: Return to Work and Reintegration Guidelines, from the International Social Security Association.
Addressing exclusion and segregation
Some persons with disabilities are concentrated in forms of work that offer limited rights, protection or opportunities for progression. Policies should address the barriers that produce this exclusion while improving conditions and protection for people in their current work.
Disability and the informal economy
Workers in the informal economy often face insecure incomes, unsafe or poor working conditions, weak representation and limited access to labour rights and social protection. Persons with disabilities—particularly women with disabilities—may face additional barriers and may also remain in informal work because formal employment and social protection systems are inaccessible or poorly coordinated.
Strategies for the transition from the informal to the formal economy should explicitly include persons with disabilities. At the same time, immediate action is needed to improve working conditions, access to social protection and representation for informal workers with disabilities. Trade unions, organizations of informal workers and organizations of persons with disabilities all have a role to play.
- Case-based resource: Pathways to inclusion: Lessons and strategies for disability-inclusive rural transformation
From segregated settings to the open labour market
Sheltered or segregated employment takes different forms across countries. In some settings, workers have employment contracts and wages; in others, they receive allowances rather than wages and may not be recognized as workers. Although such schemes are sometimes intended to provide a transition into the open labour market, evidence shows that this transition often does not take place.
Article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes the right of persons with disabilities to work on an equal basis with others in a labour market and work environment that are open, inclusive and accessible. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has called for a transition away from segregated employment. The ILO promotes decent work for persons with disabilities in the open labour market and discourages measures that allow employers to meet disability employment quotas simply by purchasing goods or services from sheltered workshops.
Transitions should be carefully planned with persons with disabilities and their representative organizations. They should protect income and social protection entitlements, provide individualized employment support, and ensure that people move towards freely chosen, adequately paid work with full labour rights.
- Rights framework: General comment No. 8 (2022) on the right of persons with disabilities to work and employment
A coordinated approach
No single measure can remove the barriers persons with disabilities face in the world of work. Progress depends on coherent action across employment, education and training, social protection, procurement and workplace policies. Persons with disabilities and their representative organizations should be meaningfully involved in the design, implementation and evaluation of that action.
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