Tune in for a conversation about research into long COVID with Dr. Vidya Sundar, Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy at the University of New Hampshire, and Debra Brucker, Associate Professor, Institute on Disability, at the University of New Hampshire.

This episode features a conversation with Sharon Rennert, Senior Attorney Advisor for EEOC about long COVID and disability employment policy.

This episode features a conversation with Yana Rodgers, Professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University and Jennifer Cohen, Assistant Professor of Global and Intercultural Studies at Miami University about accommodations in the era of long COVID.

Tune in for a conversation about advocating for COVID long haulers, with Andrew Wylam, President and co-founder of Pandemic Patients.

It is safe to say that the shift to remote work during the pandemic has transformed the outlook of disability employment not just for the near future but for years to come. Above all, the emphasis on telework for the general workforce has deconstructed the notions that led many employers to hesitate to provide workers with opportunities to work remotely, Mason Ameri, associate professor at the Rutgers University Business School, said.

In this episode, Mason discusses the future of work, particularly relating to telework and what it means for people with disabilities. He reflects on the importance of the workforce returning to the mindset of the early 2000s, when employers embraced the mindset of "so long as you're productive, who cares where you work from or for how long," which changed when the economic recession began and employers began demanding in-person work and people with disabilities were working remotely at higher rates compared to nondisabled people. When the pandemic hit and the workforce went remote in 2020, however, the trend was flipped and a major inequity in occupational distribution was uncovered, Mason cites.

At the same time, this could lead to challenges for people with disabilities. Mason fears that remote work will become the default way employers will accommodate people with disabilities, leading them to be somewhat excluded from the workplace. If employees with disabilities are not visible in the workplace, then they may miss out on developing relationships that often initiate opportunities for promotions. He shares his other concerns with the future of work, whether the strategic and sometimes misleading approaches to initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion or the lack of investment in students with disabilities in the STEM fields and beyond.

Disability inclusion in apprenticeships has long been lacking, but in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicholas Wyman, executive director of the Institute for Workforce Skills and Innovation, sees an opportunity to change that.

Apprenticeships are grounded in the same experiential learning that many with disabilities benefit from, but have historically excluded disabled people, particularly those with significant disabilities. It is essential to disrupt and reverse this trend, and coming off a pandemic that altered the entire workforce, employers have an opportunity to reevaluate hiring practices in apprenticeship programs and beyond.

Wyman discusses the importance of investment, at local, state, national and even international levels of government, in apprenticeships, especially as it relates to people with disabilities. He discusses structural and attitudinal barriers that have historically prevented people with disabilities from participating in apprenticeships and argues that additional investment is necessary and shares his experience with learning of the impact that apprenticeships can have for individuals with disabilities and the disability community collectively. He highlights that apprenticeships can not only help alleviate the disability employment gap, but they can also help individuals with disabilities find meaning in their lives from a more universal perspective. In doing so, he describes the constant emphasis on employee background and how it hinders the opportunities people with disabilities have for employment more than it ensures applicants have the skills they need for jobs, even within apprenticeship programs.

These are reasons and opportunities for the government to improve its investment in apprenticeships, he says. However, improvement will require changes and a recognition of the role apprenticeships could play across society and the approach other nations, including Switzerland and Germany, take. Such changes would make a difference in addressing the disability employment gap, but they won't happen if the US continues its "program approach," where individual programs are arranged in different directions. Wyman discusses how there needs to be more of a systematic, unified approach to ensure apprenticeships and the impacts that would have on the disability community are widespread and long lasting.

The numbers demonstrate the extraordinary impact the COVID-19-induced shift to expanded telework had on the employment opportunities for people with disabilities, but even those don't tell the complete story regarding what remote work means for disability employment.

It is a situation reflective of the gains prospective employees with disabilities experienced because of the pandemic and the parallel economic recession, Ari Ne'eman, doctoral candidate in health policy at Harvard University, says in this episode. The overnight shift to remote work for much of the general workforce because of the pandemic has made it more difficult for employers to argue that physical presence in the workplace is an essential component in job duties, Ne'eman points out, and this is the essence of how disability employment has benefited from remote work. That deconstruction of the perceived importance of physical presence in the workplace needs to be normalized, Ne'eman says.

However, the need for workplaces to be more flexible is a microcosm of the larger economic and social changes disabled people need implemented in greater society, Ne'eman says. One of the things he points to is the need for reform of the Supplemental Security Insurance program, which categorizes people, particularly when it comes to employment, into two rigid categories: nondisabled and disabled. He says that changes are necessary in order for people with disabilities to have opportunities to contribute to the economy. One recommendation he highlights is a more universal partial disability option, which is currently only available to disabled veterans and allows disabled people to receive benefits scaled in proportion to their level of impairment.

Whether it is the disability benefits system, the employment of people with disabilities, or both, reform is needed, Ne'eman says. But it's not simple. The diversity of disability makes policy decisions complicated, he says, but research about disability and the lived experiences of people with disabilities provide a valuable foundation and even "fairly straightforward" policy guidance to help begin those conversations.

Lydia X.Z. Brown has seen initiative after initiative and has grown frustrated with the lack of investment in human potential and the emphasis on a social services system that continues to trap many people with disabilities in poverty.

Brown, director of public policy at the National Disability Institute, joins the show to discuss the disability benefits system and how to address the socioeconomic issues that most prominently impact disabled people. They discuss how there are reasons that the unemployment rate for disabled people is double than it is for nondisabled people and why there is a significantly higher disability poverty rate compared to the rate for people without disabilities, whether it is policies that make it difficult for disabled people to get ahead as nondisabled people do or policies that actively trap disabled people in poverty.

At the same time, more specific measures at individual workplaces are also creating barriers for people with disabilities. In an era where corporations publicly embrace diversity and inclusion, many are also utilizing artificial intelligence in general operations and specifically during the hiring processes. While it is often used for productivity purposes, it can also be discriminatory in how it sorts through applications. Brown fears that the use of artificial intelligence will blur the lines of discrimination even more, since it is difficult to prove that artificial intelligence provokes disability discrimination and employers will never admit it. They believe that artificial intelligence must become a larger discussion of not only corporate and employer responsibility but also regulatory responsibility.

However, policies are only a part of the equation, Brown says. Disabled people face discrimination and bias in individual relationships each day, and it influences nearly everything they set out to do. And in order to even consider policy change, there must be attitude change. They point to the Disability Justice movement, which recognizes that law and policy cannot provide a full transformation of social structures that enable and enforce discriminatory and harmful laws and policies.

Zach Morris, Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University School of Social Work, calls for a re-evaluation of the systems in place to support people with disabilities. We must recognize that people with disabilities not only earn less than people without disabilities. They also face extra expenditures to cover disability-related out-of-pocket cost.

Lisa Mills, Owner, Moving to a Different Drum, Disability Policy and Services Consulting, discusses opportunities to increase employment outcomes by braiding and blending resources across funding sources such as vocational rehabilitation, Medicaid, and Ticket to Work.