Overview
Many things can get in the way of people with disability securing employment and having successful careers. These are commonly known as ‘barriers’ and can often make the impact of disability worse.
A person’s disability is unlikely to be the main or only barrier to employment. Often, multiple barriers or factors combine to prevent people from gaining or maintaining work. For example, research about work in Australia shows that almost one in three people who don’t have a job, or don’t get enough work, face three or more challenges at the same time. These can include:
- Not finishing high school
- Experiencing mental illness
- Having to care for children
- Having little work experience
- Getting low pay or few financial rewards for working
- Having health problems that make work difficult. 2
Some barriers are directly related to disability or health conditions, low literacy and numeracy skills, or a lack of family or community support, while others are created by society and are more structural in nature.
Common barriers to employment for people with disability can be grouped into two broad categories:
- Non-vocational barriers – Non-vocational barriers are things in someone’s life that make it harder to find or keep work, such as health issues, poor mental health, homelessness, family violence, caring responsibilities, limited access to transport or financial stress.
- Vocational barriers – Vocational barriers are about a person’s skills and work history – for example, low levels of education or training, limited work experience, or being out of a job for a long time.3
Structural barriers are created by society through systems and rules, which can make inclusion harder for specific groups of people, including people with disability. Structural barriers are also known as systemic barriers. Examples of structural barriers include things like negative attitudes about disability, limited public transport options or inaccessible recruitment processes.