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Liz Johnson, co-founder of The Ability People, sheds light on the disability employment gap.

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According to a recent government report, the disability employment gap stands at 28.9%, suggesting disabled people still face barriers to employment despite legislation necessitating employers to make reasonable adjustments. To get to the bottom of this, I spoke to Paralympian Gold Medallist Liz Johnson to shed some light on the disability employment gap.

Born with cerebral palsy, Johnson has had a fruitful career as a professional swimmer, winning gold at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. After retiring from professional swimming, Johnson went into broadcasting, presenting for Channel 4’s coverage of the 2016 and 2020 Paralympic Games. In 2018, Johnson was on the BBC’s 100 Women List after co-founding The Ability People, the UK’s first disability-led inclusion consultancy firm. In the years since, The Ability People has gone on to provide services for companies including HSBC, Chelsea F.C. and IMG.

A 2023 report by the Department for Work & Pensions revealed the employment rate among disabled people stood at 53.6% compared to 82.5% for non-disabled people. This disparity in employment rates is known as the disability employment gap, and it has been a persistent feature of the UK’s labour market despite the 2010 Equality Act making disability discrimination unlawful.

This raises the question: why are organisations still failing to employ disabled people?

According to Johnson, the main barrier to employment is organisations’ lack of exposure to disability. “[Organisations] put the effort in, but they put it in the wrong areas.” For instance, one of The Ability People’s clients had spent numerous resources updating their office to make it more accessible, yet still failed to hire disabled employees. As it turned out, it wasn’t the client’s office which was the problem, but the client’s recruitment process; “[It] hadn’t been updated or amended to be inclusive of the different needs at selection level or even attraction level.” As a result, disabled candidates were unintentionally filtered out of the recruitment process.

As Johnson explains, the key to solving the disability employment gap lies in disability-specific inclusion training that exposes organisations to the diverse needs of disabled people in various contexts. Doing so will allow them to develop robust processes that accommodate and attract disabled talent rather than filter it out. However, she also emphasises that such training is a form of “development and investment” rather than “fixing a problem.”

Ultimately, while society still has a long way to go, Johnson makes clear the onus is on organisations to educate themselves. “It’s not your fault that you don’t know, but ignorance isn’t an excuse. It’s a reason, but it’s not an excuse […] If you don’t know, go and consult the right people […] Otherwise, that becomes a burden for the person who’s being excluded.”