The Future of Work: How Remote Work Benefits Employees with Disabilities

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary for companies worldwide to dramatically alter what showing up to work looked like. Many will remember the initially awkward transition to working from home and hosting team meetings on Zoom, but slowly, much of the workforce adapted. Despite both workers and companies benefitting from the new model of work, some attitudes have started to change.

While some organizations are shifting back to in-office work, remote work has proven to be a game-changer for many employees – especially individuals with disabilities. The rise in remote work opportunities during the pandemic made employment attainable for many people with disabilities because barriers that had previously prevented many from working were no longer obstacles for disabled jobseekers.

At the end of the first quarter of 2024, the employment rate for people with disabilities ages 16-64 stood at 37%, up from 31% just before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a huge increase in a relatively short time, considering that the employment rate for the same group was at 30% in the first quarter of 2009.

Despite this progress, requiring employees to return to the office jeopardizes these record employment levels. People with disabilities experience a significant number of barriers that make working in person more challenging or unattainable altogether. Many of these barriers also make working in person more difficult for those not disabled – something many workers realized once they stopped working in the office five days a week. Commuting to work, inaccessible workplaces, and distractions are a few of the many barriers.

Commuting to Work

If you work outside of where you live, your day is bookended by commuting—whether you drive, take public transportation, or travel down the street by sidewalk. The commute to and from work can be frustrating no matter who you are, but it can present challenges to people with disabilities. Getting in and out of a vehicle can take much longer for those with mobility disabilities, public transportation can be difficult to navigate or inconsistent, and sidewalks may not always be accessible.

To address accessibility barriers in mass transit, many metropolitan areas offer paratransit services. This alternate mode of transportation, often serviced by minibuses, provides door-to-door shared rides to individuals with disabilities.

Experiences with paratransit by users is not always consistent, though. Many of these services have wide-ranging pick-up and drop-off windows, sometimes of up to an hour. In some cases, a ride may fail to even show up at all. This can make working in person difficult for individuals with disabilities, especially when they are required to work during a fixed amount of time. The ability to work at home removes this barrier altogether.

Inaccessible Workplaces

The workplace itself can be as much of an obstacle as the commute. Most offices and workplaces were not designed with disabled people in mind. While the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 improved the overall accessibility of public spaces, many workplaces did not improve their own accessibility standards past ADA mandates. To ensure all employees can fully access their workplace, employers need to consider the different ways people with disabilities navigate and interact with their environments. Simply meeting ADA standards does not ensure every employee can fully participate in the office environment.

Individuals with disabilities often already have a home environment organized to meet their needs, allowing them to use assistive technologies that improve their performance, use mobility equipment without having to consider potential physical barriers, or regulate sensory input with dimmable lighting. Providing the option for people with disabilities to work from home ensures they can always have a workspace that works for them.

Distractions

It is very likely that every person who goes to work in an office will experience distractions while on the job. Distractions might occur for everyone, but people with cognitive, developmental, or sensory disabilities may experience the negative effects of distractions or interruptions more intensely than those without disabilities. For example, a chaotic work environment filled with noise and clutter may prove harmful for the productivity of someone with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Interruptions can have a big impact on our ability to immerse ourselves in our work. After an interruption, the time it takes to recover and re-engage in a task can vary. Research from the University of California, Irvine found that workers experiencing interruptions at the office take around 8 minutes to recover and refocus on simpler tasks. For more complex tasks, the recovery time is 15 minutes.

Working from home can remove the potential for distractions and interruptions, allowing individuals to better focus on their work. There is also the benefit for individuals to experience a state of “flow” or “hyperfocus,” where someone achieves complete absorption in a task. This experience is commonly reported by people with ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Honoring Choice

Some employees truly benefit from the ability to work in person with their coworkers. This choice can be honored while also protecting the option for people to work from home or remotely, whether they are disabled or not. As organizations decide how to position their workplace strategy for the future, continuing to provide the opportunity for employees to work remotely while ensuring an accessible work environment is essential. If companies do not, we will potentially see an exodus of workers whose talents were previously untapped and undervalued.