Hello, here’s my two cents (maybe one cent) about remote working and the future of work.

Hello, here’s my two cents (maybe one cent) about remote working and the future of work. COVID-19 is a mass disability event. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.2 million more people were identified as having a disability in 2021 than 2020.

There were 496,000 more people with a disability within that population participating in the labor force. So, going forward, it’s mission-critical that companies fully consider the needs of disabled workers, including the need for some disabled workers to work remotely.

For the record, qualified workers with disabilities have asked employers for years to work remotely. But employers couldn’t do it and wouldn’t do it until non-disabled workers needed to work from home due to the pandemic.

Because of the pandemic, businesses finally learned that workplace flexibility is a good thing. But it’s more than regrettable that disabled people lost work opportunities for decades because employers were reluctant to envision change. But I digress.

Now that we’ve fully demonstrated as a global society that remote work is achievable, we can’t backslide and demand all workers return to the office. Likewise, we can’t raise access barriers for disabled workers who want or need to work from home. *

*To be clear, not all disabled people want or need to work from home. More importantly, working from home doesn’t mean employers can ignore or forget about their obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Remote work is not a replacement for workplace accessibility. Nor is it a mechanism to avoid accessible transportation and full community integration of people with disabilities. We’re not seeking disability segregation.

The salient point here is this: The workforce and workplace have changed permanently. Therefore, employers need to build a workplace culture of access and inclusion that integrates disabled and non-disabled remote employees to remain competitive and relevant.

Thank you!
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Authors’ note: The disability community is rapidly evolving to use identity-first language instead of person-first language because it views disability as a core component of identity, much like race and gender. Some community members, such as people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, prefer person-first language. In this post, the terms are used interchangeably.