Despite decades of international commitments, the right to work remains largely unfulfilled for persons with disabilities. Globally, only 27% of persons with disabilities are employed, compared to 56% of persons without disabilities. This gap persists across every region and income level. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) enshrines the right to work "on an equal basis with others" in an open, inclusive, and accessible labor market.
International Labour Organization standards, such as the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (Disabled Persons) Convention No. 159, similarly recognize persons with disabilities as workers and insist on real equity in access to training and employment. In other words, the human rights model of disability demands structural change in existing labor markets, not charity or the creation of parallel systems.
Three structural barriers to realizing a right to work for all persons with disabilities stand out: segregated employment, the failure to provide reasonable accommodation, and the rise of biased hiring technologies. Only a comprehensive, rights-based strategy can overcome these barriers and close the gap.
The employment gap no country has closed
In the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), employment gaps between persons with and without disabilities range from around 10% to more than 40%. In the United States, the proportion of persons with disabilities who are employed reached a record high in 2024—and still stood at just 22.7%. Data for developing countries is scarcer, but evidence from 15 low- and middle-income countries shows that persons with disabilities consistently have lower employment rates. Moreover, discrimination rather than individual circumstances mainly drives these gaps. In countries like India and across much of sub-Saharan Africa, the rate of informal unemployment among persons with disabilities reaches as high as 90%.
These averages hide deeper inequalities. Globally, women with disabilities have lower employment rates than both men with disabilities and women without disabilities, and they are more likely to work in informal or unpaid family jobs. The United Nations’ 2024 Disability and Development Report links these labor market gaps to higher poverty, reduced access to health care, and lower levels of social participation for persons with disabilities.
Segregated employment instead of inclusion
Many people with disabilities find employment in sheltered workshops that are specially designed and often presented as “protected” or “training” environments. In 2022, the CRPD clarified for the first time that such segregated employment settings are incompatible with the right to work. They isolate persons with disabilities from the open labor market, channel them toward low-skilled roles, frequently pay below the minimum wage, and offer very limited pathways into regular employment.
Yet segregated employment persists worldwide. In Europe, hundreds of thousands of persons with disabilities remain in sheltered workshops with very low transition rates to the open labor market. In Latin America, protected employment schemes and special workshops are often the only options available. In parts of Asia and Africa, persons with disabilities are simply excluded from both formal and informal labor markets.
Reasonable accommodation: the right most often denied
The CRPD and International Labour Organization standards require employers to provide reasonable accommodation—including accessible recruitment formats, flexible scheduling, assistive technologies, or changes in task allocation—unless doing so would impose a disproportionate burden.
However, research consistently shows that many employers either do not know their obligations, just barely meet them, or resist them due to perceived cost. Workers with disabilities often hesitate to request accommodations out of fear of stigma or retaliation. A report by the National Disability Authority of Ireland found that the main barriers to a smooth and reasonable accommodation process include a lack of employer policies, protracted delays in response, low awareness of available supports, and negative attitudes toward accommodations. The denial of reasonable accommodation is itself a form of discrimination.
A new threat: algorithmic bias in hiring
The growing use of artificial intelligence in recruitment threatens to compound this global exclusion. AI hiring systems now screen CVs, conduct video interviews, and assess personality traits. But these systems are trained on data that reflects existing patterns of exclusion and are not designed to accommodate persons with disabilities.
The US Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have warned that AI tools may penalize atypical speech patterns, facial expressions, or gaps in employment history and thus screen out qualified persons with disabilities. Without enforceable international standards for algorithmic transparency and accessibility, the risk of automated discrimination will only grow as AI recruitment tools spread globally.
What must change
Closing the gap between rights on paper and lived experience requires more than isolated programs. It calls for enforcing antidiscrimination and labor laws, phasing out segregated employment, and redirecting public funding into inclusive workplace transformation. It also means normalizing reasonable accommodation by clarifying employer duties, making complaint mechanisms accessible, and providing public funding or incentives where needed.
At the same time, states must adopt binding standards on transparency, accessibility, and human oversight for AI and digital tools used in hiring so that these systems do not replicate disability-based discrimination. Finally, it requires investing in inclusive education, vocational training, and individualized employment support worldwide. The active participation of organizations of persons with disabilities must guide all these efforts, as required by the CRPD.
The right to work for persons with disabilities is not a social policy aspiration; it is a binding human rights obligation recognized by virtually every country in the world. States must enforce antidiscrimination laws and proactively push employers to recruit, retain, and promote persons with disabilities in the open labor market.
Until governments dismantle segregated systems, make reasonable accommodation a daily reality, and ensure that new technologies serve inclusion instead of exclusion, the promise of "work on an equal basis with others" will remain more powerful in treaties than in people's lives.