On Friday, October 16, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) will hold a public online webinar for National Disability Employment Awareness Month. It begins at 2 p.m. Eastern (1 p.m. Central). The event marks ODEP’s 25th anniversary and celebrates a record-high number of working-age Americans with disabilities who have jobs. That progress matters. So does asking who is still being left out.
A milestone is not the finish line
The Americans with Disabilities Act, changing technology, and public policy have helped open doors. Yet a large employment gap remains for people who are blind or have serious vision difficulty.
In 2024 U.S. Census data for adults ages 18–64, about 8.5% of people reporting blindness or serious difficulty seeing who were in the labor force were unemployed, compared with 4.2% of people reporting no disability. About 57.8% of the vision-difficulty group was in the labor force, compared with 83.0% of those reporting no disability. We calculated these rates from the Census table’s counts. The Census category includes serious vision difficulty, not only people who identify as blind. And the unemployment rate does not count people who have stopped looking for work.
What Penny Forward hopes comes next
We believe blindness organizations need to work together more closely and focus on why this gap persists. Where do opportunities break down—in education or training, hiring, workplace technology, transportation, benefits rules, or somewhere else? We should listen to blind jobseekers and workers, investigate the causes, and test solutions together instead of assuming we already know every answer.
We also need high expectations of ourselves. As blind people, we deserve the chance to see ourselves as capable of meaningful work. If we do not believe that is possible, how can we expect employers to believe it? That is not a reason to blame anyone who has been shut out of a job. Confidence alone cannot remove discrimination or an inaccessible hiring process. Employers, service providers, policymakers, and our own organizations all have responsibilities here.
Join the conversation on October 16
ODEP says the webinar, NDEAM 2026: Celebrating Value and Talent — A Milestone Conversation, will look back at its 25 years and discuss disability employment. We do not expect this event to answer the specific questions above about blind employment. Still, it is a chance to recognize progress and carry the conversation further.
Register for the October 16 ODEP webinar. If you attend, bring your own questions about what meaningful employment progress would look like for blind and low vision people.
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