AI Is Changing the Future of Work. Disabled Workers Already Know What That Feels Like.

A large robotic hand lifts a small human figure in a suit by the back of his jacket and drops him toward a wire wastebasket filled with crumpled paper. The background is a flat bright blue.

Everywhere I look, people seem afraid of becoming irrelevant thanks to AI.

Disabled people know that feeling better than anyone. We've lived in that tension our entire lives. Alice Wong called us the oracles. She was right. We learned to read the world differently because the world was never built with us in mind.

AI can close the gap or blow it wide open. I see signs of both already.

On one hand, technology has always been the thing that lets me move through a world that was not designed for my body or my needs. Uber, Instacart, Amazon, remote work, every one of these tools expanded my independence. AI has joined that list. It sharpens my thinking, helps me get unstuck, and pushes me to see ideas from angles I might have missed. It never replaces my judgment, but it challenges me in a way that feels useful.

While the tools have improved, the system around them has not. Disabled unemployment is at 8.7%, still nearly twice the national average according to the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's partially due to AI-driven hiring systems screening out candidates before a human ever sees a résumé. Systems built on training data that rarely includes disabled people. They are shaped by teams who often do not understand disability, workplace bias, or accessibility in practice. When the ground shifts, we tend to be the first ones hit.

I want people to understand that AI is neither miracle nor menace. It is a force multiplier amplifying whatever framework you build around it. If the framework is inequity, then inequity scales. If the framework is access, then access grows.

The real danger is creating the future of work without the people who need these tools the most.

What are you noticing in the workplace as AI becomes part of your workflow?

Remote Work Is a Lifeline for Disabled Workers. Why Are Leaders Still Ignoring That?

A person types on a laptop at an outdoor table. Only their hands and forearms are visible. A takeaway coffee cup sits nearby, and sunlight casts strong shadows across the green tabletop.

I’ve always said remote work kept my career sustainable long before COVID made it acceptable. That part gets lost. Remote work didn’t appear in 2020. It only became socially acceptable when everyone needed it.

That says something about disability.

When disabled people ask for something, it becomes a special exception.
When the majority needs the same thing, it becomes innovative and essential.

Now here we are in 2025, watching companies announce return-to-office requirements in the guise of “team spirit” and culture. The Wall Street Journal points to concerns about learning, innovation, and collaboration slipping in hybrid environments. A recent article from YourTango noted a worker quitting in the middle of a meeting when HR told them that rising commuting costs were simply the price of being a team player.

Let me tell you what team spirit looks like from my reality.

It is pouring rain. My wheelchair has powered components that cannot get soaked. Canine Companions® Lovey is with me and I am responsible for her safety. The “just grab an umbrella” solution that non-disabled people rely on is not an option. Something as routine as weather can dismantle an entire workday before it starts.

Or I’m relying on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). One broken elevator is enough to shut down my commute completely. That happened often when I lived in DC. None of this is about drama, it’s the reality of disability few recognize.

Remote work gives me the ability to spend my energy on the job you hired me to do. Without it, I burn through that energy just getting to the building. At home, I can manage chronic pain, sensory triggers, migraines, ADHD, and all the other invisible mechanics of disability without performing them in front of coworkers who don’t know how to respond.

People tell me disability makes them uncomfortable when it is visible. The same people often insist that remote work does not count as real work. That contradiction is impossible to ignore.

If you want genuine team spirit, here is where it starts:

1. Believe disabled employees when we tell you what we need.
2. Treat accommodations as responsibilities rather than obstacles.
3. Write policies that include disabled voices from the beginning.

Disabled employees are putting in extraordinary effort every single day. We are often working three times as hard for half the credit within systems that were not built to include us. And we still deliver.

So the question I keep coming back to is simple:
Why are we still having this conversation in 2025?

What Happens When Accessibility Is Built In Instead of Bolted On?

Marissa Bode performs during a take of Katherine Craft’s film “The Hog Queen,” filmed this summer in Van Nuys.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Imagine asking a hiring manager in the middle of a job interview, “What’s your line-item budget for accessibility?”
And then just… watching their face.

Most people wouldn’t know what to do with that question. They’ve never had to think about it.

That’s what struck me reading about The Hog Queen in the Los Angeles Times this morning, a short film backed by the Inevitable Foundation, where access wasn’t an afterthought. They made it part of the plan, and wrote into the budget as part of the expectation.

And I thought: what if that was true in every workplace?

I’ve worked in spaces where access was built in, and I’ve worked in ones where it wasn’t. You can feel the difference in your body. When I don’t have to fight for access, when I’m not mentally running through who to email or what barrier to fix, I end the day with energy left to actually do my job. I can lead, I can build, and I can advocate for others instead of just surviving the space I’m in.

That’s what accessibility done right does. It multiplies energy, and turns it into impact.

Yet we keep treating it like a favor to negotiate after the offer’s signed.

Here’s the truth. Most accommodations cost less than $100. What’s expensive is losing good people because a workplace couldn’t be bothered. You don’t save money by skipping access. You just spend more replacing the people you burned out.

If you’re in leadership, start here:

✅ Ask your employees what they need.
✅ Trust them.
✅ Budget for it.
✅ And make it standard.

If you really want to know what your organization values, look at your budget.
If accessibility isn’t on the ledger, it’s not in your culture.
Accessibility should be as normal as a lunch break.
As obvious as a door that opens when you push it.
Show me your budget, and I’ll show you your values.

What Real Leaders Understand About Power And Trust

A black-and-white photo of a man in a suit pointing directly toward the camera, mid-sentence, conveying authority or confrontation.

When I hear a CEO say “get on board or quit,” my brain freezes.

I sit there for a minute, stunned that this even needs to be said.

What that really means is: Don’t question us. Don’t need anything. Don’t exist differently.

We’ve reached a point in workplace culture where control is being sold as leadership.

That’s not strength. It certainly isn't leadership.

As Sarah E. Needleman K. and Julia Hornstein recently wrote in Business Insider, the new mantra from companies like Palantir Technologies, GitHub, AT&T, Shopify and Coinbase is clear:

Embrace the company’s politics, its AI, its in-office mandate—or leave.

That’s control disguised as “efficiency.”

Let’s pause on that for a second, because this has nothing to do with work style and everything to do with power.

A real leader asks, how do I bring more people in?
A fearful one asks, how do I push people out?

Disabled employees—including me—are told to “prove” we can do the jobs we’ve already been hired to do.

We get accommodations approved one year, then re-fought the next because a new manager wants to “tighten culture.”

Meanwhile, as Kandiss Edwards at Black Enterprise Magazine noted, even showing up has a price tag now, about $55 a day for workers asked to return to the office.

That control? Someone’s paying for it.

Here’s the thing.

If you don’t trust your employees, look in the mirror and ask why.

Trust isn’t a perk.
It’s infrastructure.
It’s how access works.
Access isn’t extra. It’s how we exist.

If you’re leading with surveillance instead of support, you’re not leading.

The upfront cost? Turnover. Morale. But nothing gets tarnished faster than reputation and legacy. Something that takes decades to build and mere minutes to destroy.

At some point, people remember how you made them feel.
They remember if you led through fear or through trust.

So before you demand loyalty, ask yourself this:

What kind of culture are you loyal to?
And what does that loyalty cost the people you lead?

Inclusion Isn't A Debate: Why SHRM Got It Wrong

Slide titled ‘The Business Case You Can’t Ignore’ showing three statistics on disability inclusion: 25% of the population are people with disabilities, 30% workforce growth among disabled workers since the pandemic, and 100% future risk that aging or life circumstances will affect everyone’s abilities.

Inclusion isn't optional. Shocking I know.

We make up 25% of the population. We’re the largest minority in the world, and yet, every time a company “forgets” to plan for us, it’s not an oversight. It’s a decision. It’s saying: we don’t care to include a quarter of humanity.

And if you live long enough, disability will find you.

I joke sometimes that it’s like a mafia threat. “it’s coming for you.” But it’s true. We are all just temporarily pre-disabled. So when organizations treat inclusion like an experiment instead of a responsibility, what they’re really doing is gambling against their own future selves and interests.

That’s what makes the latest headlines so maddening.

Shaun Heasley, writing for Disability Scoop cites a report from SHRM noting workforce participation for people with disabilities is up 30% since the pandemic. Wendi Safstrom, president of the SHRM Foundation, calling it “a testament to what’s possible when organizations commit to inclusion and flexibility.”

She’s right. Remote work gave us the ability to get things done without burning half our energy fighting the world just to show up.

And somehow, in the same breath, SHRM handed the microphone to Robby Starbuck, a man who calls DEI “poison” and takes credit for dismantling inclusion programs at major corporations including Ford Motor Company, Harley-Davidson Motor Company, and Walmart. [H/t caroline colvin per HR Dive.]

Platforming that isn’t “viewpoint diversity.” Inclusion is not a debate topic any more than hiring women or people of color is a debate topic.

Every time an organization gives oxygen to anti-DEI voices, it tells us that our humanity is optional. And shame on any HR association that claims leadership while legitimizing that message.

Meanwhile, POLITICO reports that a federal judge had to order the White House to restore sign-language interpreters at press briefings, writing that “closed captioning and transcripts are insufficient alternatives.”

Because inclusion is optional, right?

Here’s the truth: every accommodation I’ve ever received has saved my career. I’ve spent my whole life negotiating with a body that doesn’t always cooperate. You think I can’t negotiate a work deadline? Please. I’ve been running logistics with chronic pain as a project manager my entire life.

To every HR leader who still calls inclusion a “buzzword,” you’re outing yourself as short-sighted. Inclusion isn’t charity. It’s how you tell your people they matter. It’s how you make the space you occupy, and ultimately leave on this planet better than you found it.

If your company’s culture falls apart the instant nobody's looking, or your accessibility policies look good on paper but collapse in practice, if your leaders talk about inclusion but can’t describe it without pausing to find the right words, we see you. You aren’t fooling us.

Do the right thing. Being a good human has only upsides.

When the Playground Becomes the Boardroom: How Bullying Grows Up

I read this story about a third grader in New Jersey. Teacher filmed her without consent. Passed the video around to make fun of her learning disability. A grown adult did that.

I felt sick.

We love to say bullying builds character. It doesn’t. It builds fear. It builds silence. It builds the habit of making yourself smaller so other people don’t have to feel uncomfortable.

The same lie we hand kids shows up at work. We call it "Culture.” “Fit.” “Professionalism.”

If nobody calls it out early, the people who mock you grow up thinking it’s leadership.

I asked a professor once for an accommodation. He asked how my “disease” was doing. Out loud. In front of thirty classmates. Cerebral palsy isn’t a disease. I still remember every second of that silence.

Now I’m an adult and people still film me with my Canine Companions® Lovey. They don’t ask. They snap a photo or record, smile, and walk away.

Once it’s online, I lose control. That’s the part nobody thinks about.

The story hit me because it’s all connected.

We’re told to be calm when our rights are debated. Smile through it. Stay professional. Because if we get angry, we’re “too emotional.” If we stay quiet, we’re “not assertive enough.”

We don’t need more awareness months. We need decency.

Teach kids empathy now, and maybe one day the workplace won’t look so much like the classroom.

NDEAM Is Over, but the Access Horror Show Runs Year-Round

An open spellbook glows with swirling blue magic that forms accessibility symbols, including a wheelchair icon and braille dots. The book rests on a wooden table surrounded by candles, pumpkins, and old scrolls, blending Halloween imagery with a sense of inclusive design and possibility.

They put a spell on you. Now that the calendar has flipped, do you care?

NDEAM is over, but the access horror show runs year-round.

The barriers are still right where we left them.

Feels about right, doesn’t it?

I spent the last day of NDEAM, which also happened to be Halloween, recording an episode of DisabilityEmpowermentNow with Keith Russell Murfee-DeConcini.

Keith asked thoughtful, generous questions, and we went there into the messy, human stuff. I call myself a Disability Advocate, Speaker, and Professional Persuader because most days are a negotiation between what is and what should be.

As I'm fond of saying: I’m not fighting because I enjoy the fight. I’m fighting so I can stop fighting.

As an advocate, my goal is to put myself out of business.

Since it was Halloween, we talked about masks and the stories we’re asked to wear. Every time we advocate for accessibility, I think about who decided what “normal” was in the first place. If normal is a choice, we can make a better one. One that doesn’t rank disabilities by visibility. One that assumes talent shows up in every kind of body and brain.

Now that NDEAM has wrapped, here’s the quiet part said out loud. It’s not enough to hire disabled people. We need to be in every room, at every level, shaping how access actually works. Accountability matters. Policies need enforcement and equity to move beyond optics.

Access is a 24/7 responsibility.

Episode release date coming soon. Follow Disability Empowerment Now and Keith to catch it when it drops.

The Jobs AI Can’t Replace and the Workers It’s Already Erasing

3D rendered digital human head outlined with neon contour lines that resemble a fingerprint's unique swirls, against a deep blue background.

AI isn’t replacing workers. Policy is.

And when cuts come, disabled employees are too often first in line. Not because we can’t do the work. But because we asked for accommodations, or a flexible schedule. Or the audacity to be seen as fully human in a system that was never built for us.

Amazon laid off 14,000 corporate staff, most weren’t on the warehouse floor. As Fortune reports, they were middle managers, analysts, people whose work once held institutional memory. And while AI was the scapegoat, the real driver was a quiet shift in values: replace people with productivity.

Let me say it plainly: Every time efficiency comes at the cost of someone’s humanity, you lose.

Because here’s what AI will never replace:

• A colleague who notices and acts
• A mentor who listens without needing to understand everything
• The gut sense that something feels off—and the courage to say so
• A disabled employee who sees the policy gap before it creates harm

Try feeding that into OpenAI.

Accessible workplaces don’t happen by default. They’re built, sustained, and protected often by non-disabled colleagues whose advocacy carries more weight, simply because of the math. When the 80% speak up, momentum shifts. But the burden shouldn’t fall solely on disabled people. We’ve been saying the same things for years. Now we need others to help carry it forward.

I’ve watched colleagues pushed out for asking too many questions, for requesting an accommodation, or for simply challenging the status quo. And I’ve watched those same institutions spin it. “Moving in a different direction,” “transitioning,” “resigned to pursue other opportunities.” But those of us inside? We know how to read between the lines.

Gartner projects that 1 in 5 organizations will eliminate half their management layers using AI by 2026. That is a loss of human infrastructure, especially for marginalized communities who rely on advocates inside the system to challenge the status quo.

DEI isn’t a brand strategy. It’s a values system. And when it disappears, it erases people. And voices. And momentum.

“You can certainly change your branding, but you can’t change your values without it having a resounding effect,” former Georgia state representative and candidate for governor Stacey Abrams told The Washington Post.

So as AI reshapes our workplaces, let’s ask better questions.

What stories about work and value do we need to unlearn? Are we innovating for everyone, or just for the most efficient few?

Innovation that forgets its people isn’t progress. It’s loss.

AI may generate text. It will never generate trust.

Let’s keep the human at the center of the future we’re building.

Not All Disabled Leaders Are Allies, And That’s the Conversation We Need to Have

A man in a wheelchair sits in a doorway high on a dark glass skyscraper, kicking away a golden ladder as pieces fall toward a crowd of people reaching upward beneath stormy skies.

As October wraps up, I keep circling back to something we rarely say out loud: not all disabled people are allies.

John Oliver once joked on HBO Last Week Tonight about former Rep. Madison Cawthorn that “being an asshole is truly accessible to everyone.” He wasn’t wrong. We like to assume disabled leaders automatically champion the disability community, that lived experience guarantees empathy.

But it doesn’t.

Governor Greg Abbott, a wheelchair user, has consistently pushed policies that harm disabled Texans. Senator John Fetterman, once celebrated for normalizing assistive technology and comfortable clothing on the Senate floor, now carries the label “Trump’s favorite Democrat.” Representation does not always translate to advocacy. Sometimes it just makes the betrayal sting more.

And I have seen that same pattern play out closer to home. Early in my federal career, when I first needed a telework accommodation, I turned to a senior colleague who was a respected disability advocate. I expected empathy. Instead, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Keep your head down. Don’t fight this.”

That moment never left me. It might have been practical advice, but it was not allyship.

It taught me that proximity to power is not the same as solidarity, and that some of the hardest lessons come from people who should have known better.

We love to talk about inclusion in the workplace. The posters. The hashtags. The polished commitments to mental health and belonging. But the moment someone actually uses those systems, asks for flexibility, PTO, or an accommodation, the tone shifts. Suddenly inclusion has an asterisk. Suddenly the same people preaching wellness start whispering about fairness and team morale.

Genuine allyship is not about the company newsletter or the press release in October or the panel during Disability Pride Month. It is about the quiet, consistent work of believing people when they tell you what they need, without making them prove it. It is about creating systems where asking for help does not feel like a liability.

There is a hierarchy in disability culture we do not talk about enough. The visible versus the invisible. The acceptable versus the difficult. The wheelchair user makes a great photo op. The employee with PTSD, chronic pain, or neurodivergence gets side-eyed for needing too much. Passing privilege is real, and too many use it to climb the ladder only to kick it down behind them.

Having a disability does not make someone an ally. It does not even make them kind. Sometimes it just makes them powerful enough to prove they are not.

If allyship means anything, it is how we act when no one is watching, especially toward each other.

Awareness Doesn’t Pay The Rent

A warmly lit café stage with a vintage microphone under a spotlight, brick wall backdrop, empty chairs, and a steaming mug in the foreground.

Every October, the feeds light up.
Wheelchairs in perfect lighting,
hashtags dressed for a party.

“Awareness.”

That word rolls too easy off the tongue.
But awareness doesn’t pay the rent.
It doesn’t rewrite policy.
It doesn’t get you promoted, either.

I’ve worked in communications long enough to know.
Awareness is the appetizer,
not the meal.
It’s the press release,
not the practice.
The promise without the paycheck.

You want courage?
Alright, here’s one.
Try staying in a workplace that calls your exhaustion “grit.”
Try using your leave,
and watching your reputation shift while you heal.
Try asking for equity,
and hearing silence so heavy
you could hang your coat on it.

We get hired for the photo,
not the promotion.
We’re celebrated when we show up,
forgotten when we speak up.
That’s not inclusion.
That’s PR with better lighting and a diversity hashtag on top.

For every disabled person you see,
there are three you don’t.
Chronic pain.
Neurodivergence.
PTSD.
Autoimmune conditions.
Invisible doesn’t mean imaginary.
It just means the world stopped looking.

One in four Americans lives with a disability.
That’s not a metaphor.
That’s the CDC talking.
Only four percent disclose.
That’s fear talking.
And fear—
fear’s got a corner office and a pension plan.

Here’s the truth.
I don’t want awareness anymore.
I want accountability.
I want leaders who ask what barriers to remove
before we hit them.
I want promotions that don’t come
with an asterisk
and a whisper.
I want policy written by the people who live it,
not by the ones who still think
“disability”
is a bad word.

Inclusion isn’t a month.
It’s not October’s costume.
It’s the budget.
It’s the boardroom.
It’s the elevator you send back down.

So when the hashtags fade
and the banners come down,
don’t just call me resilient.
Ask yourself why I had to be.

Because awareness is easy.
Action
Action is everything.