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Home Blog The Importance of Technology for Employees Who Are Disabled
In 2024, 67.7% of people aged 15 to 64 years in the EU with a severe disability were outside the labour force (neither employed nor unemployed), compared with 21.8% for people without a disability. (Eurostat)
January 26, 2026
Additionally, in the United States last year, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities was more than double that of people without disabilities. (US Department of Labor)
These numbers are not a reflection of ability or ambition. Unfortunately, they point to a deeper, systemic issue around access, and the need for action is clear.
Many disabled people are able and willing to work, yet face daily barriers that make employment harder to secure and harder to sustain. In this blog, we explore the access gap at work, how technology helps and why more needs to be done, with particular focus on the blind and low-vision community.
The majority of work today depends on information being shared visually. Dashboards, presentations, PDFs, diagrams, collaboration tools, and design assets are now part of everyday roles across almost every industry.
For disabled employees, and particularly for people who are blind or have low vision, these environments can create constant friction.
These challenges slow employees down, which in turn impacts confidence, independence, and the ability to participate fully at work. Over time, they contribute to disengagement, reduced progression, and higher attrition.
The result is a workplace that unintentionally excludes capable people.
While technology plays a central role in creating these barriers it also exists to remove them.
When designed and applied well, technology can:
Importantly, access-focused technology is not about giving special treatment. It is about removing unnecessary obstacles so that every employee can do their job effectively.
Across workplaces today, a growing range of technologies are helping to improve access for disabled employees. When used well, these tools can remove barriers that would otherwise make everyday tasks slower, more difficult, or impossible.
For blind and low vision employees, screen readers and keyboard-based navigation tools make it possible to interact with software, emails, and web-based systems without relying on visual cues. Voice input tools can also enable employees with limited mobility, reducing the need for precise mouse or keyboard use and allowing people to work more efficiently in digital environments.
For employees who are deaf or hard of hearing, real-time captioning and transcription tools play an important role. Meetings, training sessions, and video content become far more accessible when spoken information is converted into text, allowing people to follow discussions, contribute confidently, and avoid missing key details.
More recently, AI-powered technologies have started to address areas that were previously difficult to make accessible. These tools can help interpret images, diagrams, and documents that lack proper structure, providing descriptions of visual content or explaining complex layouts in ways that were not possible before. This is particularly important in workplaces where visual information is shared frequently and informally.
Individually, each of these technologies can improve access in specific situations. Together, they show how technology can enable more independent and inclusive ways of working for disabled employees.
Despite these advances, many organizations still struggle to turn technology into real access.
Too often, accessibility is treated as a compliance task or a one-off adjustment. Tools are added reactively, only after problems arise and responsibility is placed on individual employees to request support, explain their needs, or find workarounds.
This approach doesn’t scale. It creates inconsistency, increases dependency, and leaves talented people feeling excluded or overlooked. And, in some cases, it discourages disabled employees from disclosing needs at all.
As a result of this, businesses unintentionally exclude capable people, miss out on talent, and see higher turnover among employees who face access challenges.
Closing the employment gap for disabled people will require more than good intentions. It requires a shift in how access is understood at work, and the time to act is now.
Access should be proactive, built into everyday tools and workflows, and treated as part of how work gets done. When this happens, disabled employees are better able to contribute fully, progress in their careers, and remain in the workforce long-term.
For businesses, better access supports retention, widens the talent pool, and strengthens workplace culture. And, it leads to more engaged, productive teams.
We believe there is more that can be done to improve access at work for blind and low vision professionals, and we’re working on something to help. We’ll be announcing this soon, so if you’d like to stay informed, register your interest here.
