🔒Diversity & inclusion efforts should include helping with employment for people with disabilities

I read the Worcester Business Journal article on Aug. 3 about diversity and inclusion efforts among businesses in Central Massachusetts keenly, alert for any mention of the largest demographic in need of support for inclusivity: people with disabilities. 

Alas, people with disabilities were, once again, not included.

It is both ironic and tragic.

In the United States, people with disabilities comprise roughly 26% of the population.

Yes, that is correct, more than a quarter of the nation’s population, and that number is a conservative estimate, at best.

Employment statistics for people with disabilities is even more dismal.

In 2019, 19.3% of persons with disabilities were employed.

Speaking personally, stats for people like me – VIPS, or visually impaired persons – are even more gut wrenching.

Only 44 % of people who are blind or visually impaired have jobs.

Again, speaking personally, I want to work; I want to contribute; I don’t want to fade or simply settle.

I am valiantly engaged in an endeavor to address and mitigate the anomaly.

In April, I acquired a national certification, as a disability-owned business enterprise, or DOBE.

But simply having this certification does not mean the services I offer, which themselves deal with the very topics of the Worcester Business Journal article, will be embraced and utilized and I will be flooded with business.

Quite the contrary.

I continually find myself ensnared and combating social stigma and systematic oppression.

I find myself at a disadvantage, constantly having to prove myself, yet never being afforded the opportunity to do so.

The foregoing paragraph is not a complaint, a screed, or an indictment.

It is an entreaty.

I have the goods, I have titles, I have skills and I have expertise.

I have experience, all of which I am itching to deploy.

I am eager to share and collaborate.

Will anyone step up and give me a chance?

Liz Myska is the founder and an attorney for Visions Consulting L3C in Worcester.