How to make a difference.
October is many things: Breast Cancer Awareness Month, World Menopause Month, and even “spooky season,” if you’re one of those people who celebrates Halloween all month. But did you know it’s also National Disability Employment Awareness Month? NDEAM is meant to better educate Americans about the employment issues people with disabilities face — like the fact that the unemployment rate among disabled workers over 16 is almost double that of their nondisabled counterparts — and also to highlight their contributions to the workforce.
If this is the first you’re learning about any of this, don’t worry. Tiffany Yu — a disability justice advocate, educator, and the author of The Anti-Ableist Manifesto, out Oct. 8, — says, “So much of my mantra around educating people around disability inclusion is ‘meeting people where they are.’”
Yu became disabled when she was 9 years old, after being in a car accident that also took her father’s life. She worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and Bloomberg before eventually founding Diversability, a social enterprise that elevates disability pride, and she’s given TED Talks on how companies can help employees with disabilities thrive. We talked to Tiffany all about why disability inclusion in the workforce matters, the current attacks on DEI, and what people can learn from her book.
Katie Couric Media: Who do you hope will pick up this book?
Tiffany Yu: My hope is that this book will reach people who are willing to learn. One of my favorite reviews that I’ve gotten so far was from someone who said that the book left her feeling energized about creating as much of a disability-inclusive society as possible. So I’m hoping it’ll have this trickle-down effect. Back in the early days of doing my work, I would say, I am working on disability inclusion, and a lot of people would just hear that and decide to opt out.
That could be because of their privilege, or due to the enormity of what it’ll take to dismantle this system of oppression that is ableism. But I’ve structured the book in such a format that no matter where you are on your journey, you will learn something, and there will be at least one thing you can do immediately to make change — even if that’s updating some language on your website, or doubling your hiring goals if you have influence at your company.
Can you talk about some small, achievable ways people can make a difference?
In December 2020, I started a TikTok series called the Anti-Ableism Series. One part of the series is about the phrase, “paralyzed by fear.” Paralysis is a type of disability, which I have a form of. So is there another way that we can say something like paralyzed by fear, but differently, such as “driven to inaction?” There are so many other alternatives that don’t view being paralyzed in a negative way.
One of my friends, who’s a marketing and life coach, saw that video and realized she’d used that phrase on her website, so she immediately updated it. Now she’s not perpetuating language that paralysis is a bad thing. That, to me, felt like a small but important change.
Your book comes out in October, which is also National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Why was it important to release the book then?
I feel very grateful that over the last couple of years, with my experience working at places like Goldman and Bloomberg, there’s been a large focus from corporate partners to prioritize disability inclusion. I really believe this is a talent pipeline, and that’s why I keep doing this work. People ask me how I have so much energy, and it’s because I really want other people to see disabled people the way that I do. We are magical. We are a generative force. We are out there doing [amazing] things.
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and if I could make any change, I would really like to see the disability employment gap close. Right now, the unemployment rate for disabled Americans is about twice that of our nondisabled peers, and the unemployment rate for disabled Americans also hasn’t changed much since 1991, a year after the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed. 2023 was an all-time high for the disability employment rate — 36.1 percent for women and 38.2 percent for men — which is only incrementally better.
Work is where people find purpose. It’s where we feel like we’re contributing to society. It’s where we can support our livelihoods, and it’s something that I feel has been robbed from so much of the disability community due to embedded assumptions about what people think we can or can’t do. So I’m excited and nervous that this book is coming out in October. Hopefully, people will use it as a catalyst for conversation.
I’m glad you brought up employment because we’ve been seeing a lot of big companies who made large DEI commitments in 2020 scale those back. And politically, there’s been an attack on DEI in general. Has that affected your work at all?
The short answer is no, but the longer answer is that in social justice spaces, you’ll hear people say that our liberation is all tied together. If we see people with other marginalized or minoritized identities not being prioritized or given visibility, I think it does have a trickle-down impact on other communities.
For a long time, disability inclusion was like a sibling or distant cousin that people forgot about, and I feel really grateful [that people are paying attention now]. This is where solidarity comes in — we’re showing our power and influence when we come together as a community.
I don’t know if the rollback in DEI is going to be temporary or not. [Even if it is permanent], we as disabled people are the most creative, innovative, adaptive people out there. If we see a slowdown in our work in one area, we will figure it out — because we’ve always had to. Part of how I got started in this work was that I got fired from a job, and I said, You know what? I’m going to try to figure out if I can be a disability advocate because I care a lot about this. It’s really meaningful work.
Nine-year-old Tiffany, which is the age I was when I acquired my disability, would’ve never imagined I would be a disability advocate, writing a book on this topic, and talking about this topic all day long. Even 21-year-old Tiffany, who was staring at spreadsheets at Goldman Sachs, couldn’t have imagined that this is what I’d be doing someday. So right now, I feel grateful that there’s visibility and opportunity for the disability community. My hope is that this book helps to shine a light on all of us, so that more of us get that opportunity. While I have the microphone or the baton, I’m going to try to make as much noise as possible until it’s time for me to pass it on.
