The Covid-19 pandemic has seen millions of Australians move to working from home arrangements. But for people with disabilities, this shift toward flexible work has been a long time coming, with on-site employment often serving as a major barrier.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, 53 per cent of working-age people living with disability were employed, compared with 83 per cent of those without. Almost half ((47 per cent)) of unemployed people aged 15-64 with disability say they have experienced discrimination from an employer.
Jackie Leach Scully is the Director of the Disability Innovation Institute at the University of New South Wales:
"The take home message is that it was always possible, all the time that employers where saying it was not. It is a form of ableism in the sense that it's concentrating on that proportion of society who fit within a particular norm."
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The federal government's coronavirus tracing app COVIDSafe is available for download from your phone's app store.
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