The idea of a Disability Glass Ceiling has been circling my brain for a while. I’ve seen brilliant, capable disabled people repeatedly pushed toward lower expectations. Not because they lacked talent, but because the systems around them made it nearly impossible to go further.
One day, it clicked: this is a glass ceiling. A disability glass ceiling. And like other ceilings, it’s not always visible, but you know when you’ve hit it. This piece is my attempt to elevate the term and challenge us to eliminate the need for it.
Defining the Term
The Disability Glass Ceiling is about the invisible barriers that keep disabled people from fully realizing their potential, even when they have the skills, knowledge, and drive to go further. These barriers come in many forms: assumptions about capacity, benefit cliffs that punish ambition, lack of systemic support for advanced education or certifications, and a widespread tendency to steer disabled individuals toward entry-level roles regardless of their actual abilities.
It’s not a question of capability. It’s a question of access, equity, and the systems we’ve built around who gets to succeed.
Barriers That Reinforce the Disability Glass Ceiling
These are not all barriers, but it touches on some of the biggest ones.
Benefit Cliffs
Many disabled professionals are forced to choose between career advancement and critical supports like healthcare, personal care assistants, or housing subsidies. For those who need these services to live independently, advancement can mean you either lose or take on the cost of needed supports. According to a 2023 article from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, workers experiencing benefits cliffs can effectively lose 17%–65% of what they earn due to eligibility thresholds and phaseouts.
Read more about this in the article site.
Low Expectations Within Support Systems
Within many workforce systems, disabled people are often funneled into narrow, low-paying career paths. Even when someone clearly has the skills and ambition for more, they may be actively discouraged from pursuing advanced degrees or professional licensure. Not because they can’t, but because the system isn’t designed to support that level of success.
Access Barriers to Higher-Level Roles
Advancement often comes with increased travel, longer hours, last-minute changes to schedules, more networking, and less flexibility. If the infrastructure isn’t accessible from the conference table to the company retreat it sends a clear message: “You don’t belong.” For disabled professionals, shifts can be compounded by the need to coordinate transportation, personal care assistance, or other supports that require advance planning. Most systems aren’t built to accommodate that complexity, Get the download from the Minnesota Statewide Independent Living Center on employment.
Obstacles in Education and Certification
Graduate programs, licensing boards, and continuing education systems often lack both physical and procedural accessibility. If getting through the door takes twice the work, and the accommodations are seen as a burden, people may give up or never try.
Bias and Stereotyping
There’s still a pervasive belief that disability and advancement don’t go together. People are underestimated, passed over, or seen as “not quite the right fit” for the role, even when they exceed every qualification on paper and in person. Potential is too often measured by how closely someone aligns with “traditional norms.”
What It Costs Us
Wasted Talent
When people with disabilities are locked out of advancement, their skills, insights, and potential go unused. Beyond the personal losses to the individual, there are missed opportunities for innovation, problem-solving, and representation in decision-making roles across every industry.
Economic Loss
Underemployment limits income tax contributions, reduces consumer spending power, and increases reliance on public supports. It costs more to keep people out than to include them. Employers also miss out on qualified candidates in a tight labor market. Businesses miss out on customers.
Workforce Instability
Many organizations seem to be facing workforce shortages. However, even in the tightest markets they continue to overlook or under-invest in workers with disabilities who are ready to grow into more advanced roles. Exclusion fuels turnover, limits internal promotions, and increases recruitment costs. Minor and often no cost accommodations can make all the difference.
Mental Health & Well-Being
We all know being stuck below your potential takes a toll. Especially if it is not because you’re unqualified, but because the system prevents it. Chronic underemployment, exclusion from advancement, and lack of purpose-driven work are linked to depression, isolation, and burnout. Read this college study on impacts of mental health and unemployment.
Perpetuation of Inequity
The disability glass ceiling can hit even harder at the intersections. This is where disability meets racism, homophobia, xenophobia, or other forms of marginalization. People with disabilities who are also BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, immigrants, or part of other underrepresented communities face compounded barriers. Every layer of identity can increase the likelihood of being underestimated, overlooked, or excluded.
Hidden Costs of Exclusion
When people are denied advancement, the consequences often show up in other places: crisis healthcare, housing instability, or long-term unemployment. The systems built to respond are far more expensive than the supports that would have prevented the barriers in the first place.
How We Break the Ceiling
The disability glass ceiling is structural and that means it can be dismantled. But it takes more than surface-level diversity statements or one-time accommodations. It requires changes in how we design systems, evaluate potential, and define success.
Here’s what real progress looks like:
Normalize Accommodations at All Levels
Access shouldn’t end at the entry level. From job interviews to executive retreats, accommodations must be standard, not special requests. If someone needs access, we build it in.
Build Advancement Pipelines That Include Disability
Leadership programs, mentorship opportunities, and promotions criteria need to reflect the full talent pool. The focus belongs on removing the barriers that keep disabled talent out of the running, not about setting aside a spot.
Stop Penalizing Progress
Policy reform is essential. We need to untangle benefits structures that punish success. Advancement shouldn’t mean losing healthcare, housing, or essential services. The system shouldn’t make you choose between ambition and survival.
Rethink the “Ideal” Candidate
Too often, potential is coded in ways that exclude people with disabilities. This can vary from how someone speaks, moves, or networks, to assumptions about their stamina or flexibility. We need to redefine being qualified to include authenticity, lived experience, and adaptive brilliance. Again, this is about barrier removal, not special treatment.
Shift the Narrative
Representation matters in more than photo ops. We need all people to be involved in making decisions, setting strategy, influencing policy, and changing the rules for good.
Include Disabled People in System Design, Not Just Feedback Loops
Workforce boards, advisory councils, and government systems must share decision-making power. When disabled professionals are meaningfully involved in shaping policy, training programs, and hiring systems, the outcomes are more inclusive from the start. Inclusion is a strategy for better design.
Closing Thought
We talk a lot about inclusion, but if we’re still deciding how far someone can go based on disability status, we haven’t really included them.
The disability glass ceiling isn’t made of glass at all. It’s made of outdated systems, unchallenged bias, rigid benefits structures, and narrow definitions of leadership.
The question isn’t whether professionals with disabilities are ready to lead, grow, or innovate.
The question is: Are our systems ready to let them?
Want to talk? Find me at The Information Tamer website
