Despite significant progress, people with disabilities remain much less likely to be employed than their non-disabled peers. One key factor behind this inequality is unconscious bias — automatic judgments shaped by stereotypes and cultural conditioning, made without our conscious awareness.
Research shows that over one-third of people perceive disabled individuals as less productive — a level of bias higher than what’s seen based on gender or race.
Studies show that people in management positions often hold the strongest explicit bias in favor of nondisabled individuals. Even more concerning is the disconnect between their conscious and unconscious attitudes: while many believe they are fair and inclusive, their implicit bias scores are among the highest.
As a quadriplegic, I’ve experienced this bias firsthand. At a former job, I once volunteered for a project and was told by my manager that she’d “prefer someone who wasn’t in [my] condition.” On another occasion, she discouraged me from attending a company retreat, saying the location might be difficult for “people like you to get around.” This same person often proclaimed her deep commitment to diversity and inclusion.
This is ableism — prejudice against disabled people, often rationalized or masked by unconscious attitudes. Those holding these biases may not even recognize them, yet their impact is deeply felt.
Type of Bias
The most common types of bias towards the disabled related to employment are:
Typically these biases result in the disabled being excluded from projects or opportunities. Managers avoid assigning high-profile or demanding tasks to disabled employees, assuming they can’t keep up — often without ever asking.
Hiring Bias
Recruiters also exhibit significant biases about the disabled. Hiring discrimination against candidates with disabilities is equally or more severe as the unequal treatment of candidates with salient racial or ethnic characteristics. One study found that wheelchair users are 48% less likely to be invited to job interviews than non-disabled applicants.
Some of the discrimination can be attributed to concerns about productivity. However, even in situations where a disabled candidate has significantly better qualifications – education and skills – the gap between the proportion of the disabled invited to job interviews compared to the proportion of non-disabled – doesn’t reduce much. That suggests the discrimination arises from prejudice, not from concerns about productivity.
Surprisingly, discrimination becomes more prominent as company size increases. Larger companies are more likely to exclude disabled candidates from the hiring process than smaller ones. One reason can be that larger companies have access to larger pools of talent and less of a need to hire people they consider likely to be less productive. Of course that means that so much of the statements about commitments to diversity are just so much virtue signalling.
Reducing Bias
Increasing representation. Research has shown that bias towards the disabled is least among those with a lower health status. In other words, those that are disabled themselves or in poor health are the least likely to have a bias. That’s not surprising – studies on race or gender have shown that people are less biased towards groups they belong to or identify with. Hiring more people with disabilities can start a virtuous cycle of reducing bias.
Increasing Awareness. Training can be a valuable resource in forming and changing the personal attitudes of nondisabled persons towards those with disabilities. Recruiters and managers in particular should be encouraged to gain self-awareness. One way to do that is to take the implicit Association Test. Since its inception in 1998, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) has been widely utilized to assess unconscious biases across various domains. Over 26 million people have taken the test and it has strong research underpinnings.
Most people don’t realize they have unconscious attitudes — the test helps bring them to light, especially subtle negative assumptions about disabled individuals. Understanding your own bias is the first step to changing behavior. The test can prompt reflection and growth, personally and professionally. Managers and recruiters can use the test to check if hidden biases may be influencing hiring, promotions, team dynamics, or communication. The test can prompt reflection and growth, personally and professionally. Seeing that you might hold unconscious beliefs you don’t agree with can deepen empathy for the challenges disabled people face every day.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves”
The line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar means that our problems and circumstances are dictated by our own actions and choices. While over 40% of IAT participants show high levels of bias against disabled individuals, we have the power to change that.
Before my accident, I held some of these same biases myself. Life changed — and so did my perspective. But you don’t need to become disabled to challenge your thinking. You just need to be willing to grow.
If you take the IAT, you might not like what you discover. But understanding your bias is the first step to meaningful change. It’s not about blame — it’s about progress. And that progress starts with you.
