Policy

Policy Agenda and Legislative Priorities

RespectAbility policy staff have been working diligently throughout the past month to research the current concerns of people with disabilities. We have had many in-depth conversations with policymakers from federal and state agencies, other disability rights organizations, state agency advisory committees, grassroots activists, and people with disabilities and their families. We have been attending coalition meetings and state agency advisory committee meetings, and we solicited the opinions of our own Policy Advisory Committee. We have been noting the most pressing concerns to develop our new long-range policy agenda and our specific legislative objectives for 2024. We look forward to releasing them within the next few weeks! [continue reading…]

As State Policy Manager for RespectAbility, state legislators often share with me that they or their spouse, child, parent, sibling, or close friend has a disability and they would like to be more active and involved with disability issues, but don’t know where to start.

Currently, there are not very many state legislatures that have disability caucuses. Legislative caucuses are groups of legislators that come together across party lines to pursue shared goals in areas such as homelessness, veterans issues, the environment, and issues impacting senior citizens. Caucuses give members from all political parties the opportunity to work together to sponsor educational briefings for other members on their topic and encourage legislation. Some states that have these caucuses are Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Ohio.

RespectAbility’s state policy team has launched an initiative to encourage the creation of a Legislative Disability Caucus in the state legislatures that currently don’t have them. Beyond giving legislators the opportunity to work together collaboratively to promote disability legislation and educate their fellow legislators, having a disability caucus in every state would give our community a more efficient way of targeting legislators who have expressed an interest in our issues and tapping into their network. [continue reading…]

Monthly Employment Update for People with Disabilities

According to the latest National Trends In Disability Employment (nTIDE) report:

• The labor force participation rate for people with disabilities grew to 40.4% in October 2023 from 38.7% in October 2022. This continues an upward trend we have observed throughout this year. Workers without disabilities increased their labor force participation rate from 77.1% in October 2022 to 78.0% in October 2023.
• The employment-to-population ratio for people with disabilities rose from 35.5% in October 2022 to 37.2% in October 2023. For people without disabilities, the employment-to-population ratio increased slightly from 74.6% to 75.2%.

Unemployment Rate

According to the US Department of Labor (DOL) disability employment statistics, the unemployment rate of people without a disability held steady at 3.5%, which is within the range of 3-5% deemed healthy by most economists. However, the unemployment rate amongst those with a disability is more than two times higher at 7.8%.

On September 7, 2023, the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights published a proposed update to the HHS regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits agencies receiving federal funds from discriminating on the basis of disability. Since the passage of the Rehabilitation Act in 1973, the more far-reaching Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990. The proposed rule aligns HHS’ Section 504 regulations with newer ADA regulations in accordance with Congress’ directives to interpret the two consistently. [continue reading…]

It has long been a source of consternation to members of the disability community that political candidates and elected officials rarely speak publicly about issues specific to disabled voters. In fact, few politicians even address how broader issues that they do speak about impact people with disabilities. After most presidential debates, there is a predictable barrage of social media posts from disabled voters who are disappointed that the candidates never mentioned the word “disability,” let alone addressed some of the issues that impact our daily lives the most.

It turns out that the disappointment shared by disabled social media users is more widespread than many might have imagined. According to a recent poll by the think tank Data For Progress, “a majority of disabled voters don’t believe politicians care about the disabled community.”

61% of likely voters with disabilities who were polled disagreed with the statement, “Public officials and politicians care about what people with disabilities think.” Interestingly, 50% of the non-disabled voters who were polled agreed with them. This held true across party lines; 58% of all Democrats polled and 52% of all Republicans disagreed with the statement that politicians care about disabled voters. [continue reading…]

With California wrapping up its legislative session on September 14 and North Carolina adjourning on October 13, state legislatures are going into recess just in time for autumn. Even the full-time representatives are largely done with their major efforts for 2023.

So, what now? Is everyone on vacation leaf-peeping and sipping their pumpkin spice lattes?

Not exactly. This is the key time when California state legislators and their staff members will be reviewing bills that the governor has signed or vetoed and planning their strategy for next year. Legislators with vetoed bills may want to reintroduce them next year, choose another technique for accomplishing their goal, or abandon the bills altogether. Others will be sorting through ideas, constituent suggestions, input from lobbyists, and building out their “bill package” for next session. [continue reading…]

RespectAbility’s federal policy work is often done in coalition with other organizations, ensuring input from a wide cross-section of the disability community. Check out our latest advocacy highlights from working in partnership with the Consortium for Constituents with Disabilities (CCD), which is the largest coalition of national disability organizations that focus on policy, and the National Coalition on Accessible Voting (NCAV), which is a coalition of organizations dedicated to protecting, promoting, and expanding voting accessibility. [continue reading…]

Over the past month, two of RespectAbility’s major workforce initiatives, the Building Better Futures initiative (BBFI) and our Enabling Economic Independence to Work program (EIW), made great strides forward.

The BBFI program, which is made possible by the support of the James Irvine Foundation, is creating employment pipelines in the information technology and job coaching spaces for disabled people with multiple marginalized identities who don’t currently have college degrees. The program aims to establish partnerships between the disability community, educational institutions, industry, and government agencies in Southern California. Furthermore, the partners that RespectAbility has brought together are exploring the possibility of collaborating on larger statewide initiatives. We are excited about the program models that will emerge from these partnerships and hope they will be replicated throughout the country to bring about a meaningful and lasting change in disability employment nationwide. [continue reading…]

“Nothing about us without us.”

This iconic disability phrase takes on new significance in terms of health research, as the NIH recently designated people with disabilities as a population with health disparities.

Although this may sound like a disappointing development, this designation enables healthcare researchers to address the difficulties many people with disabilities face in receiving timely and comprehensive healthcare. It allows medical researchers to include disabled people as a subgroup within larger research studies. This allows researchers to understand the unintended effects a medication, procedure, treatment, or policy may have on people with disabilities specifically. It will also hopefully create a space for people to self-advocate for inclusion in trials and treatments from which they are currently excluded. [continue reading…]