The original version of this article ran in 2010, when the country was still climbing out of the Great Recession and almost everything written about disability employment opened with the same line about double-digit unemployment. The conversation has moved a great deal since then, and so has the data. It seemed worth revisiting the topic with current numbers, current law, and a 60-and-over reader specifically in mind.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' annual report on the labor force characteristics of people with a disability, the unemployment rate for workers with a disability rose to 8.3 percent in 2025, roughly double the 3.8 percent rate for workers without one. The same report notes that about half of all people with a disability are 65 or older. In other words, this is very much a topic for our age cohort, not someone else's.
The ADA, in plain language
The Americans with Disabilities Act is now well into its fourth decade, and most of what people think they know about it is half-right. It is worth noting that the law does not guarantee a job, and it does not require an employer to choose a candidate with a disability over one without. What Title I of the ADA does, in the words of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, is prohibit covered employers (private employers with 15 or more employees, plus state and local governments) from discriminating against a qualified individual with a disability in hiring, firing, advancement, pay, training, or any other term of employment.
The word that does the work in that sentence is “qualified.” A candidate is qualified if they can perform the essential functions of the job, with or without reasonable accommodation. A wheelchair user applying to write code does not become unqualified because the standard desk is the wrong height; an applicant whose vision impairment would prevent them from inspecting parts on an assembly line generally does. The distinction has not changed since the Act was passed in 1990, and the EEOC's enforcement guidance is still the clearest explanation in print.
What an employer can and cannot ask
This is the part of the conversation where the rules are most often misremembered. Before a job offer is made, an employer may not ask whether you have a disability, what its nature is, or how severe it is. They may ask whether you can perform the essential functions of the job, with or without reasonable accommodation. After a conditional offer, medical inquiries and exams are permitted only if they are required of every entering employee in that job category.
So the old “to tell or not to tell” question still has the same answer it had fifteen years ago. You are not required to disclose a non-obvious disability during an interview. Some applicants prefer to disclose anyway, particularly if they will need an accommodation during the hiring process itself, such as an accessible interview location or extended time on a written test. That is a personal calculation, not a legal duty.
Reasonable accommodation, requested clearly
The Job Accommodation Network — JAN, a free service of the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy — has been answering accommodation questions by phone since 1983. Their Employees' Practical Guide to Requesting and Negotiating Reasonable Accommodation, available at askjan.org, is the document I would put into a job seeker's hands first. It walks through what counts as an accommodation request (you do not have to use the words “ADA” or even “reasonable accommodation”), how the “interactive process” between employee and employer is supposed to work, and what to do when it stalls.
Common accommodations are less dramatic than people imagine. The JAN A-to-Z list includes items as ordinary as a sit-stand desk, a written checklist instead of a verbal one, modified lighting, large-print or screen-reading software, a quieter cubicle, schedule adjustments around medical appointments, and the option to work from home on flare-up days. Most cost the employer little or nothing.
Remote work, which has actually changed things
One of the few genuinely new developments since this article first appeared is the normalization of remote work. AARP, citing federal data, reports an 11.6 percent increase between 2018 and 2022 in telework employment among people with disabilities aged 51 to 64. For a job seeker over 60 who has, say, a mobility limitation that makes a daily commute exhausting, that is not a small shift. Whole categories of work that used to require a building — customer service, scheduling, claims review, technical writing, bookkeeping — can now be done from a quiet room at home.
The legal picture is more nuanced. The EEOC has long taken the position that allowing an employee with a disability to work from home may be a reasonable accommodation. Recent federal litigation, however, has reaffirmed that if in-person presence is genuinely an essential function of a particular job, an employer is not obligated to grant indefinite remote work. The practical lesson is to apply for jobs whose duties match the way you can actually work, rather than counting on a remote-work accommodation in a role that has historically required someone on site.
Resources worth knowing about
For readers in or near the 60+ bracket, a handful of programs are particularly relevant:
- SCSEP (Senior Community Service Employment Program) — a Department of Labor program for unemployed workers 55 and older with limited income. AARP Foundation administers it in many states, and it offers paid training placements at community organizations as a bridge back into the workforce.
- The AARP Job Board and Employer Pledge Program — a list of more than 1,000 employers who have publicly committed to hiring workers over 50, with searchable filters for remote and part-time roles.
- Ticket to Work — a Social Security Administration program for adults receiving SSDI or SSI who want to test the waters of working again without immediately losing benefits. Useful for anyone whose disability has kept them out of the labor force for a stretch.
- Disability Solutions and the various state vocational rehabilitation agencies — for one-on-one help with résumés, interviewing, and matching to disability-friendly employers.
If you believe you've been discriminated against
The deadline for filing a charge of employment discrimination with the EEOC is generally 180 days from the alleged incident, extended to 300 days in states (most of them) that have their own fair-employment agency. Those clocks are short and they are real; if something has happened that you believe was unlawful, calling the EEOC's intake line earlier rather than later is the cautious move. Filing a charge does not commit you to a lawsuit. It preserves your right to consider one.
A modest closing thought
The thing I have come to believe, after a long career of helping people find what they need at a reference desk, is that good information beats good intentions almost every time. The 1990s-vintage advice that disabled job seekers should “just stay positive” was warm but not particularly useful. Knowing what an employer can ask, what JAN can do for you for free, which programs exist for older workers, and what the BLS data actually says about your odds — that is the kind of preparation that turns an interview into a job. It is also the kind of preparation that, in a tight market, you can do entirely from your own kitchen table.
