Felicia Nurmser, Managing Director of Employer Services, discussed how the National Organization on Disability works with employers, schools and workers to keep the disabled on the job and part of a growing workforce. We discussed who can be considered ‘disabled,’ a wide list of seen and hidden issues that affect how a person accomplishes their personal, social and professional goals, including diseases such as cancer or diabetes, mental health conditions or the effects of aging, hearing or vision loss or arthritis. She noted that anybody can become disabled by stroke, accident or illness, at any age, and that identifying oneself as ‘disabled’ and asking for accommodations is up to the individual and touched on the protections in place for these workers. She spoke about the large disabled population, people who not only represent great buying power and wish to see representation in businesses, but those who want to work but are not getting hired. We touched on income disparity, disabled people dependent on services but limited by how much income they can make, others trapped in low paying positions or making less than minimum wage through workshops exempt from paying the minimum. She discussed NOD’s work with young people entering college and preparing them for the workforce and their work with businesses, showing them that hiring the disabled gives them a vast talent pool or untapped talent, workers who are more reliable than the ‘able bodied’ and cost far less to accommodate than they think.
