Before City Hall or the Public Advocate talks about “Diverse Entrepreneurial Inclusion,” let’s start with the receipts: disabled people are not only a core part of New York’s workforce and small-business ecosystem — we literally invented much of the modern workplace technology the city depends on.
Disabled Americans control over $490 billion in disposable income, making the disability economy one of the most powerful consumer and entrepreneurial markets in the country. Globally, disabled communities influence an estimated $8 trillion. By 2034, younger people will be outnumbered by older individuals who have a higher rate of disabilities. We don’t just go to doctors. As a GenXer, I assure you we fought for our right to party and that will not stop because of a few challenges that we can create new products and services to continue partying like it was 1999 well into our golden years. Ignoring disability in workforce development strategy is not a small oversight — it is economic malpractice.
A Public Advocate Report on “Diverse Inclusion” That Doesn’t Include Disability?
The Public Advocate’s Diverse Entrepreneurial Inclusion report repeatedly references equity for minority- and women-owned firms — yet disability is missing from every major section, including background, recommendations, opportunity pathways, procurement analysis, and workforce alignment. Not one policy recommendation for MWBEs includes disability. Not one data table tracks disability.
Only in the conclusion does the report finally acknowledge that “minorities and women, along with people with disabilities, have historically faced systemic employment discrimination.”
A single boilerplate reference in the conclusion of a report from the Public Advocate’s office is not effective policymaking. When 98% of NYC’s businesses are small businesses with less than 100 employees, ignoring the criticality of disability’s intersectional concerns and solutions is the recipe for ineffective policymaking. Accessibility needs to be recognized as a core pillar of policymaking. Treating Disabled New Yorkers as an afterthought creates barriers to impactful and positive outcomes for everyone.
Treating disability like a footnote erases the reality that disabled women and disabled people of color exist across every demographic the M/WBE program is supposed to serve. The omission reinforces a false narrative that “disability” is separate from race, gender, and immigrant identity — when in fact disability is intersectional by definition.
This is how systems quietly exclude us. Not through hostility — through benevolent omission, erasure, and policy silence.
Disability has always driven innovation — Long before the city government noticed
If policymakers took the time to understand accessibility, they would know disability is not a burden. It is the engine of innovation.
Blind Innovation → Typewriter → Keyboard → Every Modern Workforce Tool
In the early 1800s, Italian inventor Pellegrino Turri built one of the first typewriters for his partner, a blind woman, Countess Carolina Fantoni. Her need for independent communication ignited a design lineage that produced: typewriters to keyboards to computers to smartphones to digital work culture.
The modern workplace owes its existence to love and disability access innovation.
Deaf Innovation → Early Electronic Messaging → Email & Real-Time Text
Deaf communities pioneered TTY systems, relay technology, early electronic messaging, and real-time text — decades before mainstream email existed.
Workforce communication today is built on Deaf innovation — period.
Why did disabled people invent these tools?
Because we live in a world not made for us. When the world excludes you, you innovate to survive. Accessibility is not a nice add-on. It is creative problem-solving forged in systemic exclusion.
Disabled people constantly:
- Hack inaccessible systems.
- Invent workarounds.
- Create new tools.
- Generate user-centered design.
- Adapt environments not designed for us
These are the exact qualities NYC claims to value in its workforce of the future: resilience, adaptability, creativity, systems thinking, UX intelligence, and innovation. Disabled workers embody all of them — because we had no other choice.
Ensuring Authentic Representation of Disabled Persons is the Only Way to Design Impactful Policies
When the Public Advocate releases an M/WBE report that erases disability, when transition committees have only token representation, when the incoming mayor’s resume portal doesn’t even request disability knowledge, NYC’s New Era is signaling — “Disabled New Yorkers are not part of the economic future we are planning.” But the truth is the opposite:
- Disabled New Yorkers are entrepreneurs.
- Disabled New Yorkers drive consumer spending.
- Disabled New Yorkers are at the center of racial, gender, and immigrant identity.
You cannot build a New Era without us. You cannot claim inclusion while deleting disability from the data table. You cannot modernize M/WBE policy while ignoring DOBEs. You cannot talk about workforce innovation while erasing the innovators. If NYC wants a future-ready economy, it must recognize what history already proves: disability is not a liability. Disabled New Yorkers are a competitive advantage.
Marc Safman, Founder of Safman Consulting, uses his life experience as a DeafBlind Black man to help businesses and policy makers recognize the competitive advantages of Accessibility’s intersectional solutions to create and expand opportunities for everyone.