President Biden’s executive order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities (E.O. 13985) makes it clear that the federal government should pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who “have been historically underserved, marginalized and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”

At the heart of disability antidiscrimination laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) of 1990, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (“CRPD”), and the laws of other countries, lies the requirement that social institutions affirmatively remove attitudinal and structural barriers confronting people with disabilities as they exercise their rights to particulate fully in society. In disability employment antidiscrimination law and policy, perhaps the most important driver of the inclusion command is the “accommodation principle,” which requires that employers make reasonable adjustments to tasks and places of work to enable full and equal participation by qualified individuals with disabilities.

This article examines gig work—typified by technologically-based, on-demand, independent contractor arrangements—for people with disabilities.

We investigate access for people with disabilities to Airbnb rentals using a randomized field experiment of 3,847 lodging requests. We find that hosts were less likely to preapprove requests from travelers with blindness, cerebral palsy, dwarfism, or spinal cord injury than to approve travelers without disabilities.

The report finds that, in the 29 years since the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law, ensuring all individuals with disabilities the opportunity to achieve “economic self-sufficiency,” this population still faces numerous financial hurdles and roadblocks to financial inclusion. Based on data mined from the 2017 FDIC National Survey on Unbanked and Underbanked Households, this insightful report highlights the financial choices and banking habits of adults with disabilities.

Americans with disabilities face significant barriers to financial wellness. They are less likely than those without disabilities to be employed, and more likely to have low incomes, have difficulty making ends meet, have past due medical bills, lack access to emergency funds, use non-bank borrowing methods and have a lower level of financial knowledge. These findings—described in detail in Financial Capability of Adults with Disabilities, a 2017 report by National Disability Institute (NDI) based on the FINRA Investor Education Foundation’s National Financial Capability Study—identify challenges to financial well-being for people with disabilities that go above and beyond the challenges faced by others with similar incomes.