Policy

Policy Apprentices are ambassadors for the policy work of RespectAbility and will support the broad work of RespectAbility’s Policy Department. Assigned projects will help to advance our nation-wide policy agenda, educate candidates for public office about disability issues, and support existing state-based coalition building strategies. Apprentices will work substantively to contribute to RespectAbility’s work by developing resources, researching new materials, and publishing reports.

A few weeks ago, we welcomed 13 new Apprentices, including 3 Policy Apprentices to our National Leadership Program. You can read their bios, along with a bio for our continuing Policy Apprentice, below. They represent the future of the disability rights movement! [continue reading…]

Last week, as he delivered his State of the Union Address, President Biden called upon Congress to “get seniors and people with disabilities the home care services they need and support the workers who are doing God’s work.” RespectAbility joins with the rest of the disability community in gratitude for this call to leadership, and further thanks the President for recognizing the value of the choice for those of us who rely on care to stay in our homes, and reminding us that these programs are already fully paid for. You can learn more about this issue in this informative article in Disability Scoop. We also are grateful to President Biden for calling out the critical need for stronger mental health support, especially for young people.

At the same time, we encourage the President and Congressional leadership to ensure that other important initiatives include people with disabilities. The President celebrated the creation of 12 million new jobs in his first two years in office, and pointed out that unemployment is at a 50 year record low, including record employment levels for Black and Hispanic workers. While people with disabilities also have benefited from this job creation, our employment rate remains less than half that of the general population. [continue reading…]

Over the course of the last decade, self-employment and entrepreneurship have become increasingly recognized as an employment strategy for people with disabilities. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, people with disabilities are self-employed at a rate nearly twice that of their non-disabled peers. As of the 2019 American Community Survey, more than 700,000 workers with disabilities were self-employed.

Posited reasons for these facts range from a lack of discrimination when you work for yourself to the ability to accommodate flexible work schedules. Regardless of the reason, entrepreneurship is a key element to successful vocational rehabilitation (VR). RespectAbility has launched a three-part project to help VR and others equip entrepreneurial jobseekers with disabilities for success: [continue reading…]

In the closing days of the last congress, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 was passed. The legislation incorporated many different priorities, but one major one for the disability community is the ABLE Age Adjustment Act, which adjusts the eligible age of disability onset to open an ABLE (A Better Life Experience) account from 26 to 46 starting on January 1, 2026. This represents a major victory on legislation that was moving through the Senate but had stalled in committee in the House, and it will enable more people with acquired disabilities to achieve and maintain financial independence.

If you already know about ABLE accounts and just haven’t gotten around to opening one, stop reading right now and visit the website of the ABLE national resource center, which will have a link directly to your state. If you do not already know, ABLE accounts are savings accounts designed specifically for people with disabilities and their families to aid them in financial independence. Enacted in December 2014, the ABLE Act provides tax-advantaged savings accounts for people with disabilities and their families. Through ABLE, a person with a disability can save up to a significant sum of money per year without compromising their benefits for qualified disability expenses such as educational costs, housing expenditures, and payment for transportation. This applies to any type of disability. [continue reading…]

Hawaii Lt. Governor Sylvia Luke speaking at the 2022 CSG National Conference

In December 2022, hundreds of state legislators from different states gathered at the Council of State Governments (CSG) National Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii. They shared legislative priorities, including workforce shortages, the aging workforce, interstate compacts, and Western state emergency response.

At each discussion, I had the opportunity to educate these leaders on the disability dimensions of their most pressing issues, while advocating for solutions incorporating the needs and talents of people with disabilities. The five days of meetings were an opportunity to educate, learn from, and build relationships with the policymakers that I will engage with all over the country this year. [continue reading…]

Lois Curtis had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and developmental disabilities as a young woman, and by her late 20s she had spent more than half her life in state institutions. Isolated and angry, she chain-smoked to pass the time and prayed to God at night, asking to be rescued from the Georgia Regional Hospital in Atlanta.

Ms. Curtis’s prayer for freedom made its way to the Supreme Court. In Olmstead v. L.C. (1999) – Ms. Curtis was the “L.C.”— the Court decided “unjustified isolation” of a person with a disability is a form of discrimination under Title II of the ADA. The justices delivered a landmark ruling that gave people with disabilities the right to receive care and support services in their own homes and communities, not just in state institutions. This offered a legal framework for people with disabilities to secure the right to live, work, and study in their own communities, galvanizing the disability community by legally empowering the independent living movement. [continue reading…]

Having a disability in government has typically meant concealing, masking, or otherwise hiding any difference of mind or body on the campaign trail and in office. Franklin Delano Roosevelt remained paralyzed from the waist down after a bout of polio. Roosevelt used a wheelchair and leg braces for mobility, which he tried to conceal in public.

While government roles have been filled by people with disabilities before and after Roosevelt, people running for public office have rarely felt comfortable revealing their disability status. Thankfully, there are signs that this is starting to change. Only days prior to the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, John Fetterman had a stroke. Fetterman proceeded to win the Senate seat despite the public nature of his disability. He embraced the use of accommodations and used closed-captioning technology, which translates audio into text on a screen in real time. Additionally, the Chairman of RespectAbility’s Board of Directors and Los Angeles City Council District 4-elect, Ollie Cantos VII, described himself as “blind since birth” on his campaign website. [continue reading…]

The Americans with Disabilities Act protects voting rights for people with disabilities, but 32 years after its passage, voters with disabilities still experienced barriers to participating in the polls. In this election cycle, some particularly significant issues included a lack of poll worker training on using ADA-compliant voting equipment and poll workers not properly addressing challenges that prevent people with disabilities from voting. [continue reading…]

On November 28, the Congressional Research Service published a paper entitled “Federal Hiring of Persons with Disabilities.” The findings of the paper are neither surprising nor controversial, and state, in part:

“Despite efforts to increase recruitment and hiring of persons with disabilities, retention of employees with disabilities is significantly lower than that of employees without disabilities. According to OPM, employees with disabilities leave the federal government at about three times the rate of those without disabilities. OPM outlines a number of strategies to improve retention of employees with disabilities, such as providing workplace flexibilities and reasonable accommodations.”

In short, the Federal Government can successfully hire people with disabilities, but is lagging in retention, especially because of challenges in the process of flexible work and reasonable accommodation. [continue reading…]