Happy NDEA Month

(Local View from 4'2, Lake County Press, October 3, 2025)

Happy National Disability Employment Awareness Month!

October 2025 is the eightieth anniversary of NDEAM and its theme is Celebrating Value and Talent. NDEAM increases awareness and celebrates the achievements of disabled workers of the past and present and their impact on their workplaces and the economy. NDEAM has been organized since 2001 when the US Office of Labor created the Office of Disability Employment Policy.

Each year I am reminded of my work history- the mountains, valleys, and plateaus of being a disabled employee. At age 16 I was a student employee at the local after school and summer child care thanks to support from the county and support services to help me enter the employment world. This helped me gain the independent experience of working with students and navigating the adult work world which led to me opening my own music lesson studio in my early college years at the local music store. All of these early experiences helped shape my nineteen year career as a music educator between three different school systems and five different schools. Now all of these lived experiences help develop and sustain the non-profit work that I volunteer for in Northern STEM Robotics, a regional group increasing STEAM opportunities for youth, and Above & Beyond With U, a regional group increasing accessibility and inclusion in Minnesota and beyond.

My work history is filled with many pivots. While the beginning is full of education, youth, and music, the last four years have been full of transforming those skills into stronger soft skills of consulting, raising awareness, creating transformative change and sharing lived experiences. For me, there were many barriers I had to overcome, go around, and learn to live with…for now. I faced many periods of discrimination during my college years and early career moves. Thankfully, I had a lot of support from my  family, friends, and colleagues.

In our current regional workforce I have seen many pivots in recent years. It has been great seeing more people with disabilities in our workforce, their work achievements in our local paper and news networks as well as greeting former students within community settings. As we continue to see a lack of workers in our workforce for a whole host of reasons such as the baby boomers retiring, technology consuming many markets, and just less humans to do the work, we must make some pivots. 

Work from home and other work accommodations have increased our work force of disabled people. People with immunocompromising conditions, lack of reliable or accessible transportation or physical barriers in the office buildings are a few of the reasons for these accommodations. With the American disabled population being identified as a quarter of our population and growing everyday, eventually this will be our largest population for our workforce. We have also seen a large increase in the older adult population returning to work after retirement. This group of workers also benefit from accommodations like working from a seated position, shorter hours or more flexible hours, and seasonal employment for the snow birds.

So what can we do this October, this NDEAM? If you are an employee, celebrate those around you and yourself- who ever identifies as disabled. Celebrate the diversity of your co-workers- all of the strengths and opportunities. For employers, celebrate your workers with disabilities in appropriate ways and if you think you don’t have anyone who is disabled, our statistics tell us differently. Reviewing your hiring policies and practices is another great thing to do during NDEAM. How can you recruit these talented people who are often creative, out of the box problem solvers, and loyal workers when they are in welcoming and supportive environments? 

Some other ways for us to celebrate this month and raise awareness is to share NDEAM on our social media, to create displays, train employees and supervisors, create or share published articles about this topic and/or issue a press release. Also the third Wednesday of October is the national day of Disability Mentoring Day where youth with disabilities are encouraged to come to workplaces or career fairs for hands-on work experiences. To find out more information, please check out www.dol.gov/ndeam