Without Limits: Tackling Accessibility in the World of Work

October marks National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), and this episode of Get Hired with Andrew Seaman begins a special series celebrating the contributions of workers with disabilities. LinkedIn News Editor Andrew Seaman chats with disability rights activist and author Emily Ladau about how much more needs to be done to make the world of work inclusive and accessible. Their discussion dives into the real challenges that people with disabilities face in the job search and workplace — whether it’s inaccessible job applications or the need for accommodations that many employers fail to provide.

Emily, whose is the author of Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally , emphasizes the importance of normalizing conversations about disability and accessibility. With over 70 million Americans living with disabilities, this is not a niche issue. The episode covers everything from the need for companies to embrace accessibility as a strength to practical advice for job seekers navigating disability disclosure during interviews. Whether you’re a manager, a job seeker, or simply someone looking to make the workplace more inclusive, this episode offers valuable insights and actions you can take to be a better ally.

A transcript of the conversation is below. You can listen to the episode above or wherever you like to listen by clicking here .

TRANSCRIPT: Without Limits: Tackling Accessibility in the World of Work

Andrew Seaman: October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month or NDEAM for short. So Get Hired will be celebrating the stories, talents, and contributions of workers with disabilities from across the country. Over the next several episodes, you'll hear from disability rights activists, entrepreneurs, and even a Paralympic gold medalist. I'm so excited to share these conversations with you starting right after the break. From LinkedIn News, this is Get Hired, a podcast for the ups and downs and the ever-changing landscape of our professional lives. I'm Andrew Seaman, LinkedIn's Editor-At-Large for Jobs & Career Development, bringing you conversations with experts who like me, want to see you succeed at work, at home, and everywhere in between.                                

We all know the world of work can be harsh, but when you have a disability, it can be even harsher. Imagine getting a job interview only to encounter an employer who is unwilling to make simple adjustments to let you do the work. Or imagine having mobility issues and being told that you have to return to the office just like everyone else despite the workplace not being accessible. These are still realities for so many people. Despite those challenges, many people with disabilities forge ahead to do incredible work. National Disability Employment Awareness Month celebrates them and their achievements, but it's also a time for everyone else to help make sure the world of work is more accessible to everyone regardless of disability status. We'll be covering a lot of topics in this series, from looking for work with a disability, to dealing with challenges at work when you have a disability, to how managers and others can be allies.

However, I do want to issue a small disclaimer. Despite all the time we're going to spend this month talking about looking for work and working with a disability, we can't cover everything. The disability community is large and diverse, so we'll be sure to include additional resources in the show notes. Plus we plan to continue covering these issues beyond this month. Make sure you follow the show so you don't miss out. Now to officially kick off our series for National Disability Employment Awareness Month, I sat down with activist and author, Emily Ladau. As you'll hear, Emily's career in disability activism began in childhood. In fact, you probably heard of the place she worked, it's called Sesame Street. Thank you so much for joining us.

Emily Ladau:  Oh my gosh, thank you for having me.

Andrew Seaman: Yes. And so obviously I think we want to start with your career, which starts amazingly on Sesame Street of all places. Am I right?

Emily Ladau: You are right. Yes. I use that as my fun fact at parties.

Andrew Seaman: It is the best fun fact.

Emily Ladau: But in all sincerity, it really did set me up for my career trajectory, and it's not something that I take for granted because I know that a lot of people don't ever have access to that kind of national platform as a launch pad. But for me, it was an opportunity to understand at a really young age that the stories of the disability community are important and that my voice as someone with a disability could have an impact on somebody else's perspective. So yes, it was cool to hang out with Grover and Big Bird and Oscar, but also it had a really powerful impact on me understanding the power of telling your story.

Andrew Seaman: And obviously after Sesame Street, you could go in many different directions, but you've continued on your path of advocating for people with disabilities and educating people about people with disabilities. So how did that come about?

Emily Ladau: Look, I joke all the time that I'm a "professional disabled person." I mean, it's just disability 24/7, but the reality is I don't take my disability off and put it on a shelf at night. It's always a part of who I am, and it's something that I am really passionate about educating people about. Because I think that the only way we're going to make the world more accessible to the disability community is if we also take the time as disabled people to make those experiences more accessible to the world. And right now, I don't think that people realize disability is not a niche issue.

Andrew Seaman: And when you say it's not a niche issue, I think I know what you're saying, but can you go a little further?

Emily Ladau: Absolutely. So look, one in four Americans has some kind of disability, and that's a low estimate. So the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually just came out with an updated estimate, and it went from 61 million Americans with disabilities to now over 70 million Americans with disabilities. And globally, not just talking about the US now, there's more than a billion people with disabilities. So when I say it's not a niche issue, what I mean is that statistically speaking, and I'm not a math nerd here, but I think it's safe to say, you or somebody you know has a disability.

Andrew Seaman: And also just because you don't have a disability right now does not mean you won't have one tomorrow or a month from now or a few years from now.

Emily Ladau: Yes. And that's not a threat. I think it's really important to understand that it's just a natural part of the human experience. And I always say we're a pretty cool community to join.

Andrew Seaman: And super welcoming.

Emily Ladau: We try.

Andrew Seaman: Yeah.

Emily Ladau: I am part of the welcoming committee, so I want people to understand that once you join this community, we're here to embrace you. But the problem is we don't have great PR right now, and people think that it's really scary to become disabled. And yes, it's frightening to have a transition in your mind and your body. I was born with my physical disability. It's all I've ever known. So I don't know what that transition period is like, but what I can tell you is that you have the opportunity to make the world more accessible for you right now, so that if you wake up tomorrow and something changes, you'll be in a better position.

Andrew Seaman: So obviously we want to talk about National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which occurs every October, but for those who don't know, can you tell us what is NDEAM exactly?

Emily Ladau: First of all, we love acronyms in the disability community. So NDEAM is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and it has quite a robust history. It dates back to National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week, and it's really a chance to recognize the skills, the talents, the contributions of people with disabilities, and the fact that we've already been contributing those to the workforce. I don't want to play into any misconceptions that it's about pity, that it's about the fact that you should give us a job because you feel bad for us. We're out here, we're doing the work. NDEAM is a time to recognize that, celebrate that, and check in on yourself and make sure that your workplace is more inclusive.

Andrew Seaman: And also it's a good time to remember that we're coming out of the pandemic right now. And depending on the type of disability a person has, the return to office can be incredibly difficult for people who maybe actually benefited quite a lot from some of the ecosystem changes from the pandemic. So I think especially now as a lot of companies are saying, "Let's all go back to the office," there's probably a lot of people with disabilities that's like, "Oh, hold up."

Emily Ladau: Totally. Totally. One thing that I remind people about a lot is this idea of the curb cut theory, which is basically to say that if you have a curb, not everybody can get up and down it. If you have a curb cut, suddenly it works for everybody. Whether you are a wheelchair user, a caregiver pushing a stroller, a kid on a skateboard, everybody can use a curb cut. So I like to translate that to this idea of creating virtual curb cuts. And in many ways that with a silver lining of the pandemic, we created these virtual curb cuts because nobody had the option to go to the office safely. So we said, "Well, now we're going to do it virtually." But all of a sudden we're reverting to these pre-pandemic ideals of what a workspace should be, and we're removing those virtual curb cuts, but to what end and at what cost?

And there's such a misconception that creating accessibility is a major added cost burden or just a burden in general. It's like this extra thing on your to-do list, but I've never heard anybody say, wow, this curb cut really made my life inconvenient. Unless of course it's not a well-designed curb cut, but that's another rabbit hole that we can go down. The point is accessibility is often not expensive, and if we just take the time to be mindful and thoughtful about it, we're improving our bottom line. I wish that I could just say it's the right thing to do, but look, this is LinkedIn. We need a business case. The business case is you're going to get a return on investment because as a reminder, with more than a billion disabled people, do you really want to lose out on more than a billion potential customers?

Andrew Seaman: Exactly. And also when you bring in people with diverse backgrounds, your products are just better because they have the experience of saying, you know what? That's not great for certain people.

Emily Ladau: And there's a great plug for hiring from the disability community because we have to be natural problem solvers. And when I am out and about in the world, I am constantly calculating in my mind, how is this going to work? How is this going to work? Am I going to fit here? Am I going to be able to get in here? So I am very much a planner and I'm someone who is constantly anticipating what is about to come up. And that parlays very well into a workplace where you need to constantly anticipate what fire am I putting out today.

Andrew Seaman: Especially in New York City where one day the sidewalk may be fine, the next day it may be completely gone.

Emily Ladau: Don't get me started on New York City. But I will just say in all seriousness, one really great example that stems from New York City is the inaccessibility of the public transportation system. And inaccessible transportation is an issue no matter where you live. If you don't have a way to get to and from work, you are shut out of that opportunity. So we have to be mindful of the fact that employment is not the only thing we're talking about here. This conversation is so much bigger than that, and my hope is that we get to a point where the concept of reasonable accommodations shifts to we've already made the environment accessible to you. I cannot tell you how much it means to me when somebody takes that small extra step of initiative to say, I already double-checked on the accessibility for you. It makes all the difference in the world.

Andrew Seaman: Yeah. Yeah. And also I think job searching is hard enough, but then to add, I'm going to have to disclose that I have disability. I'm going to have to explain to them that I need some accommodations, add later interview stages. I assume there's a lot of just stress and worry that goes inherently into just starting that process, right?

Emily Ladau: Yeah. And I want to put this into context too because I made sure to do my homework beforehand and double-checked some numbers. So in August of 2024, the labor force participation rate for people without disabilities was at 78.2%. For people with disabilities, it was 40%. We can't ignore the gap in that percentage, and I think we need to look at the root causes of it, which are often that the job searching process is incredibly inaccessible. And that can be for a lot of reasons. First of all, you might be looking at a job description, and one of my favorite things is when I see that a job that has nothing to do with physical movement tells me that I need to be able to lift 25 pounds. Why do I need to be able to lift 25 pounds? Give me a good reason, and then maybe I'll apply for a different job.

Then there's the question of whether the actual application process itself is accessible. Many people who have vision disabilities use screen readers to read the text on the screen to them out loud. If you cannot navigate the job application properly because it wasn't designed to be accessible, you can't apply for the job in the first place. And then I'm always looking for a company's external marketing and messaging. So it actually does matter to me if you authentically include someone with a disability in an advertisement. And I'm not looking for a person with a disability being pushed in a hospital-style medical wheelchair. I'm really looking for that authenticity.

And you know what I do very often, is I will go to a website for a company or an organization and I'll find their page with their mission and their vision and their values, and then I'll hit command F and I'll type in the word disability. And I can't tell you how many times I see nothing of the sort mentioned. They'll mention a multitude of other types of diversity but not disability. And it's not that I'm in competition. I'm not trying to supersede any other types of diversity. I'm actually saying, do you recognize that disability overlaps with all other types of diversity?

It's one of the only communities that anybody can join at any time, as we mentioned earlier. And also it's an identity that overlaps every other identity. But truly, I am looking on LinkedIn, not just a shameless plug, genuinely care about seeing who else is working at your organization before I'm willing to throw my name into that ring. And if I see that everyone is one type of human being with the caveat that you can't judge a book by its cover and that there are many things that you don't know about a person by looking at them. But I can go a little bit on vibes here, and I think that's fair. We all do. We all go a little bit on vibes.

Andrew Seaman: We'll be right back with Emily Ladau.

Andrew Seaman: And we're back with disability rights activist and author, Emily Ladau. And then also for managers, what do you think they should know or what sort of muscle should they flex, do you think, within their organization to push the envelope for people? Because in my mind, it can be as simple as like, hey, what are we doing about accessibility?

Emily Ladau: It's a great question, and I think part of the reason people don't even broach the subject of disability or accessibility is fear. We unfortunately live in a very unforgiving culture. One mistake can end up in the wrong place, and then suddenly we are in trouble with the greater social media universe because we've done or said something that could be harmful. And I don't believe anyone should be perpetuating harm. I also believe that we need to give ourselves a little bit of grace to learn about things that are unfamiliar with us. And that's especially true of disability because we weren't socialized to think about disability in any real way. It's not really in history curriculums, it's not in our textbooks. It's still hit or miss as to how it's represented in the media.

So when it comes to even talking about disability, I understand why somebody in a position of leadership might be a little bit nervous to take that leap. But at the same time, I think that there's a way to do it where you say, "Look, I'm not the expert and I know that. But what I also know is that I value creating an actual meaningful sense of belonging." And if people are looking for a really tangible, actionable takeaway, one thing that you can implement literally at your next meeting is to say, can we pause for a moment and do an access check-in? This is not my concept. This is something that is very much ingrained in disability culture and disability community where when you are gathering a group of people, you stop for a moment and you say, we're checking in on accessibility, is there something that we can do in this moment to make it more accessible for you?

Should we turn on automatic captions on Zoom? Do you need to turn your video off today? Should we take a five-minute stretch break at the half-hour mark? Offering these accessibility check-ins is a really great step to foster a more inclusive culture because you as a manager are signaling it's okay that you need to show up in a way that works for your mind and your body, and I care that you feel like you are welcome here. And that in turn can help perpetuate those conversations about, here's an accommodation that I feel like I need to be more successful in the workplace.

Andrew Seaman: Yeah. And I think just asking that question, like you said, even if no one takes advantage of it, no doubt down the line, if you're a manager of managers or something like that, they're going to start doing that because it's mimicry and we know how the world of business works.

Emily Ladau: Of course, you want to be a positive role model, and that's a really great way to do it. And the other thing to keep in mind is it is very possible that somebody may ask for something that is not viable in that moment, but you don't need to be afraid of that. You can say, "Thank you for bringing that to me, and I would like to work with you together to figure out how we can create a more accessible environment for you."

Andrew Seaman: And actually, I think one of the things that hurts inclusivity efforts across the board is people are fearful of what language to use. And you recently put up a post about people who have special needs and things like that. So I think a lot of times people, they end up being afraid and it baffles me because regardless of what group you're talking about, it's like there are resources out there that you can just Google and find the actual verbiage. And it doesn't mean that everyone's going to use those, but as long as your intent is there to be like, I'm trying, no one's going to throw you to the mob of social media.

Emily Ladau: I am thrilled that you brought up language because I love to talk about it because I actually think that the fact that we've continually used the term disability throughout this conversation already has probably lost us a few people just by way of the fact that people are like, I thought I wasn't supposed to say that. That's not a good word. I was taught that it's bad. And yeah, you probably were taught that it was bad. We have been trained to stigmatize the word disability and to think of it as a negative, tragic, pitiful thing, I really ask that people flip that script in their mind. There's nothing wrong with saying the word disability. We don't need to be afraid of it. It's just another identity in the way that someone may say that they are an Asian person or a queer person, right? A black person. I am a disabled person.

It's something that I embrace as part of me, but that doesn't mean that everybody does. I can't dictate that rule for everybody, and I don't plan to. But I do ask that you not try to dance around disability by using those euphemisms, like you mentioned, special needs, differently abled. I am actually very curious what my special needs are in your mind. Because to me, my special needs are, please fan me, feed me grapes, treat me like a queen. I want the royal treatment. That's my special need. Everything else is a human need.

Andrew Seaman: I guess then we talked about managers, we talked about just workplace accommodations. Obviously there are more rank and file employees than managers. So for people who maybe they don't have a coworker with a visible disability or direct experience at work with someone with disability, what would you suggest they do, especially leading out of this month and taking with them?

Emily Ladau: Everybody wants that checklist, that point A to point Z, where if I have done everything on the checklist then-

Andrew Seaman: They're a good ally.

Emily Ladau: Yes, exactly. You get the gold ally star, and believe me, I wish that I could just give you that checklist. And there are checklists that can certainly point you in that direction. But at the same time, I want people to understand that as cliche as it sounds, this really is a journey and not a destination. You can't finish a checklist, call yourself a good ally and be done with it. And when people come to me and they say, "Well, how do I be a good ally?" Communicate, listen, pay attention to what's going on around you. It's not always about having all the answers. We may make a mistake. We may feel very uncertain. We may not be sure how to have a conversation. If you just lean into communicating with your coworkers and being honest and saying, I'm not necessarily sure how to navigate this, but I want to support you. How can I do that?

The biggest mistake that you can make is making assumptions about people. If you avoid making assumptions and you instead say, "I don't have all the answers, but I want to talk about it with you," that makes a huge difference. I love when people come to me and they say, look, I'm not really sure how to handle something, but I want to know. I want to do better, and I want to be better. Flip side of this, the burden should not always be on the marginalized person to do all of the educating. So I do think it's really important to take a little bit of time and fire up the Google machine and do your homework.

But at the same time, if you've met one disabled person, you've met one disabled person. So what Google tells you is the right thing to do may not necessarily be what somebody else prefers. And by now, I feel like people must be okay, well, I don't know what to do because you've just told me 12 different things. So to make everyone feel better, I'll narrow it back down to communication. That is the most important thing. Start the conversation.

Andrew Seaman: I think that is so helpful because like you said, I think there's a lot of people who are just frightened. They either don't know what to do or they default into the White Knight thing. So if you at least just have the conversation and you come from a place of empathy and support, you're likely going to get to a better outcome than just jumping into action or just ignoring it.

Emily Ladau: And this happens to me all the time where people think they know better than me, people who are non-disabled, people who are senior to me, either in age or workplace status, where they believe that because of their particular experience, what they know is more valuable, and therefore they have the correct solution. But if you just come to me and have a conversation with me, I guarantee you we will find a much better approach. Not because I think I'm the expert, but because we were working collaboratively.

Andrew Seaman: Yeah.

Emily Ladau: There is a saying that's very common in the disability community, "Which is nothing about us without us." And that is to say, if you are having a conversation that impacts the disability community, the disability community needs to be at the center of that conversation. There are many advocates who have taken that further and said, not just nothing about disabled people without disabled people, but nothing without disabled people. Period.

Andrew Seaman: I think that's a great note to end on. Thank you.

Emily Ladau: Thank you for having me.

Andrew Seaman: That was Emily Ladau, disability rights activist and author of Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to be an Ally. If you're leaving the conversation with a new learning to apply to your job search or career, I'd like to invite you to write about it in a review on Apple Podcast. Our team really enjoys reading what you learn from our shows, plus it helps other people discover our community. Speaking of community, remember that we're always here backing you up and cheering you on. Connect with me, Andrew Seaman, and the Get Hired community on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.

In fact, subscribe to my weekly newsletter that's called, you guessed it, Get Hired, to get even more information delivered to you every week. You can find those links in the show notes. And of course, don't forget to click that follow or subscribe button to get our podcasts delivered to you every Wednesday because we'll be continuing these conversations on the next episode right here, wherever you like to listen. Get Hired is a production of LinkedIn News. The show is produced by Grace Rubin and Emily Reeves. Assaf Gidran engineered our show. Tim Boland mixed our show. Dave Pond is head of news production. Enrique Montalvo is our executive producer. Courtney Coupe is the head of original programming for LinkedIn. Dan Roth is the editor-in-chief of LinkedIn. And I'm Andrew Seaman. Until next time, stay well and best of luck.