31 Years Post-ADA: Celebrating the Past and Planning for the Future

By Diane Winiarski, M.Ed.

Director
Allsup Employment Services

In the three decades since the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) became law, our country has come a long way towards being more inclusive for individuals with disabilities. As the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, we must take steps to continue those efforts by eliminating stigmas and stereotypes and promoting equality through reasonable accommodations to increase workforce participation for all individuals.

Misconceptions regarding individuals with disabilities still circulate in some workplaces, creating obstacles for employment. The most common among them is that those with disabilities don’t want to go back to work. This couldn’t be further from the truth! More than half of the individuals with disabilities with whom we speak indicate they’d like to return to work as soon as they are able.

Reasonable accommodations help individuals with disabilities to perform job functions that would otherwise be challenging or impossible. One great example of this is remote work, a category that has exploded over the past year. In a recent remote work success story, Melanie from Texas survived a double kidney and lung transplant and found full-time work as a remote editor.

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