This coming weekend marks another anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a landmark civil rights law that sought to curb discrimination against disabled people in employment and public services. The ADA remains one of the most comprehensive anti-discrimination laws in the world, and the US was among the first countries to adopt a comprehensive antidiscrimination framework to address the systematic inequities that affected disabled people. The ADA was also notable for reflecting direct involvement of disabled activists in addition to other stakeholders. In the years since, however, the shortcomings of the ADA have become more apparent.

The ADA prohibits employment discrimination against qualified disabled individuals and requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations unless doing so would impose an undue hardship. This provision was intended to shift workplace culture by making it clear that accessibility is a right, not a privilege. The US was a trailblazer with the ADA, and many other countries have since followed suit with their own nondiscrimination provisions. At the regional level, the European Union (EU) adopted the Employment Equality Directive, which requires member states to ban workplace discrimination on the basis of disability and to mandate reasonable accommodations. 

The ADA itself has significant gaps, however. The law exists in the absence of a broader US network of social supports, and the patchwork of US social welfare laws often makes paid employment incompatible with continuing to receive necessary benefits. Disabled workers are incentivized to stay out of the labor force to retain access to vital supports — including in some cases access to health care — that come with strict income and asset limits. Enforcement is also deeply limited, relying almost entirely on individual workers to file complaints or pursue lawsuits. This process is costly, time consuming, and inaccessible to many, placing the greatest burden on those already marginalized and undermining the ADA’s promise of equality for disabled people. 

The limited success of the ADA in promoting employment opportunities for people with disabilities is reflected in marked disparities in labor force participation between those with and without disabilities (Figure 1). These disparities are especially pronounced among those who experience difficulty with personal care tasks like showering and bathing, and those who experience difficulty with independent living tasks like running errands. 

Figure 1

Other countries have had more success in integrating disabled people into paid employment — though it is important to note that there is far from full parity even in these countries (Figure 2). Moreover, though this article focuses on select European examples, other countries around the world have also implemented robust nondiscrimination protections alongside other incentives and supports to increase disabled employment. Countries that outperform the United States on this measure tend to combine targeted mechanisms aimed at disabled workers specifically with broader social safety nets that guarantee access to essential services like healthcare to everyone, regardless of employment status. The EU has also taken additional steps; in 2019, the EU approved the European Accessibility Act (EAA), which directs member countries to guarantee additional accessibility for a range of products and services that are essential for full participation in society, including in the labor market. Member countries were expected to be fully compliant with the EAA by the end of June 2025.

Figure 2

Germany, France, and Slovenia (all members of the EU) have gone beyond the EU directives, incorporating explicit national anti-discrimination laws alongside their quota systems. Germany adopted the General Equal Treatment Act (Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz) in 2006, prohibiting discrimination on a range of protected grounds, including disability, in employment and other areas of public life. This law complements earlier disability-specific protections in Germany’s Social Code, which already required reasonable accommodations in workplaces and protected against unfair dismissal of disabled employees. France, similarly, adopted Law No. 2005-102 on Equal Rights and Opportunities, Participation, and Citizenship of Disabled Persons in 2005. The law expanded nondiscrimination obligations for employers and strengthened the legal right to reasonable accommodations while also establishing accessibility requirements for public buildings and transportation. Slovenia, which had the smallest disability employment gap in the EU in 2024, combined its obligations under the EU directive with its Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment of Disabled Persons Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination and mandates vocational rehabilitation programs to support inclusion. These countries’ laws align with the EU directive but also reflect national movements toward recognizing the rights of disabled people as fundamental human rights.

In addition to their nondiscrimination provisions, Germany, France, Slovenia, and others also use quota systems to increase employment among disabled people. Firms over a certain size must confirm that a certain percentage of their employees have a qualifying disability. Those that fail to meet quotas pay into a public fund that supports training, accommodations, and services for disabled people. It should be noted that these systems typically rely on more restrictive medical model definitions of disability, which envisions disability as an individual defect or impairment to be treated or fixed. This contrasts with the social model, which understands disability as a product of societal barriers and exclusion that denies people full participation and equality. 

Designating who is disabled under these quota systems typically falls to health professionals, who also assess the scope and “severity” of the disability. In Germany, this has taken the form of physicians assigning a percentage score to the disability, with scores above a certain threshold qualifying as “severely” disabled and counting extra toward fulfilling quota obligations. Similar schemes exist in France and Slovenia, where individuals assessed as having more limiting disabilities can fulfill additional “units” in the number of disabled workers the firm must hire. Such practices have been criticized by disability justice advocates for imposing a false hierarchy and for neglecting the complex interplay between the disabled person and their environment. Nevertheless, these structural rules also create real incentives to hire and include disabled workers with diverse needs, beyond leaving them to fight discrimination one lawsuit at a time.

Scholars have noted that quota systems, beyond being examples of affirmative action meant to remedy systemic inequality, also reflect societal solidarity toward disabled workers and have historical roots in reparations to veterans following World War II. Quotas also challenge the assumption that disability is incompatible with paid employment. Combined with additional forms of work support — such as funding for accommodations and additional work placement and training programs — they offer a marked contrast to the US system, where limited benefits for disabled people are typically conditioned on finding that person is unable to participate in employment at all. Slovenia, in particular, stands out for how effectively it integrates its quota system and nondiscrimination laws with a comprehensive network of well-funded vocational rehabilitation programs and support services.

Excluding disabled people from the workforce is not only an injustice to those workers but also a loss for the entire economy. Evidence from Germany shows that firms employing more disabled workers demonstrate greater creativity, and that the presence of disabled colleagues is linked to improved cognitive flexibility among other employees. This challenges the misconception that quotas merely distribute the so-called “burden” of employing disabled people, instead highlighting their role in dismantling harmful stigma and fostering innovation.

The United States was once seen as a global leader in disability rights, but the promise of the ADA has never been fully realized. That promise is under further threat today under the Trump regime, which has weakened civil rights enforcement, dismantled accessibility guidance, and waged an aggressive campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. President Trump has even gone so far as to scapegoat disabled people for air traffic control failures while simultaneously slashing funding for the very agencies responsible for providing those services. More recently, the US Department of Labor moved to eliminate disability hiring goals for federal contractors, a change that undermines compliance with Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act, another landmark disability rights law enacted nearly two decades before the ADA. 

It is time for the US to move forward, not backward. The US should build on the foundation of the ADA by adopting structural policies that go beyond individual lawsuits and learning from other wealthy countries that have had greater success in integrating people with disabilities into the workforce. While further empirical study would help identify which specific policy measures yield the best results, the evidence is clear that the US is coming up short in tackling the systemic disadvantages that disabled workers face. The US cannot allow fearmongering about diversity, equity, and inclusion to increase stigma and further set back progress for disabled people. Instead, the US should honor the legacy of the ADA by strengthening current protections and building new systems that truly include and support disabled workers, based on a foundation of solidarity and acceptance.