Feature Issue on Employment and IDD

As we welcome another National Disability Employment Awareness month, we can’t shake the feeling of being on the cusp of a breakthrough.

Federal lawmakers have introduced legislation that would end the use of certificates that allow employers to pay workers with disabilities below the minimum wage. Ending or further restricting subminimum wages through regulatory action could also be on the table, according to a recent article in the Washington Post.

It will take more than ending low wages in sheltered workshops to create higher paying, fulfilling jobs in the community that people with disabilities dream about, however, and this issue highlights some of the most promising ideas, strategies, and programs around competitive, integrated employment. We must reimagine how employment supports are designed and delivered, with an emphasis on flexible and holistic delivery models that foster full inclusion in all aspects of community life. They must embrace new technologies that can strengthen the independence of people with disabilities and help alleviate workforce shortages. And, yes, we all must address the discrimination that keeps people with disabilities, particularly those from marginalized racial communities, stuck with vastly higher unemployment rates than their peers without disabilities.

Photos throughout this issue feature real people with disabilities working at their jobs. Some of them represent specific programs or people involved in the accompanying articles, while others feature people with disabilities who have been part of employment initiatives with the Institute on Community Integration, Impact’s publisher, or its partners.

Together, these images and stories invoke some of the same truths Studs Terkel found in publishing a 1974 collection of more than 100 American workers’ stories about their jobs.

“Work is about a search for daily meaning, as well as daily bread,” he said. “For recognition as well as cash.”