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If you’re disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, or simply someone who needs reasonable workplace accommodations to do your best work, job searching can come with an extra layer of detective work… we get it. I get it because I live it.

Finding a job you’re qualified for is one thing.

Finding an employer where you can actually work sustainably is another. And sustainably is the keyword here. We’re not looking for an employer that we have to bend over backwards for and only continue to exacerbate our symptoms until we have become so incredibly sick and/or disabled we can’t continue on.

The goal isn’t simply finding somewhere willing to hire us. It’s finding somewhere we’re actually able to build a career.

“We are an equal opportunity employer” at the bottom of a job posting doesn’t necessarily tell you what happens when you need an accommodation, a flexible schedule, accessible technology, an alternative interview format, or a workplace that has actually thought about disability inclusion before you showed up.

So, how do you figure out which employers are actually putting some infrastructure behind the words?

Start with the organizations already doing the homework.

If you’re looking for a list of disability-inclusive employers, you may find what you’re looking for here.

While not primarily a traditional job board, Disability:IN is extremely useful for identifying disability-inclusive employers, recruiting events, and corporate partners. Their NextGen program also connects students/recent graduates with partner employers.

But I know what you might be thinking: companies can put a lot of lovely words on a careers page.

How do we know REALLY?

The 2025 Disability Index from Disability:IN evaluates things including accommodation procedures, flexible work, accessibility, disability ERGs, inclusive recruiting and disability training. Among participating companies, 99% reported flexible-work options, 90% a disability-focused ERG and 88% a disability-accommodation policy.

That matters because instead of relying solely on what an employer says about itself, you can start looking for tangible signs that disability inclusion has actually made its way into company policies, recruiting practices, workplace culture, and accessibility efforts.

And Disability:IN isn’t the only organization doing this work.

The National Organization on Disability also awards a Leading Disability Employer designation. Its 2025–26 honorees include employers such as Accenture, CVS Health, American Heart Association, Centene, and Eli Lilly. 

Also worth noting, the following companies also have notable involvement in disability and inclusion initiatives: Amazon, JPMorgan/Chase, Salesforce, Pfizer, Deloitte, Dell Technologies, Bank of America, GSK, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Boston Scientific. All of them have either had employee reported quality or involvement with Disability:IN programs.

Check out the master list of quality employers here.

What should you actually look for?

No list, award, certification, or corporate initiative can guarantee what your individual experience with an employer, department, or manager will be.

But they can give you somewhere much better to start.

When researching a potential employer, look beyond the obligatory accessibility statement. Search their careers website for information about reasonable accommodations. Look for disability-focused employee resource groups. See whether they discuss accessible recruiting or interviewing. Look for flexible and remote work policies where appropriate. Search for partnerships with established disability organizations. And, perhaps most importantly, look at whether they explain how employees actually request accommodations.

There’s a difference between an organization saying:

“We welcome applicants with disabilities.”

and an organization saying:

“Here is our accommodations team. Here is how to contact them. Here is what the process looks like. Here are some of the accommodations we provide.”

Use these lists as a starting point, not a guarantee.

You can also take the names you find through Disability:IN or the National Organization on Disability and work backwards.

Instead of opening a giant job board and typing in a job title, identify organizations that appear to have invested in disability inclusion first, then visit their career pages and see whether they have positions that match your experience.

It’s essentially flipping the traditional job search around:

Employer → culture/accessibility research → available jobs

instead of:

Job posting → apply → cross every appendage and hope the employer is accessible.

And if you find something promising, keep researching. Read employee experiences. Look at the company’s accommodation process. Search LinkedIn for its disability or accessibility initiatives. Ask questions during the interview process when you feel comfortable doing so.

You deserve enough information to make an informed decision about whether a workplace might work for you, too.

One final thought…

Being recognized as a disability-inclusive employer does not mean every disabled or chronically ill employee will have a perfect experience there. Large organizations can vary tremendously between departments, teams, managers, locations, and individual accommodation requests.

But when you’re trying to narrow thousands of potential employers down to a manageable list, evidence of established accessibility practices, accommodation infrastructure, disability recruitment, and outside involvement gives you something considerably more useful than a corporate careers page covered in stock photos and the word “belonging.”

Check out the master list of quality employers here.

And then do a little digging of your own!!

Job searching is already exhausting enough; invest your energy applying to organizations that have given you some evidence they’ve thought about whether you can actually work there.

So for today’s 🔥 How 2 Not Die While Job Searching tip: investigate the employer just as much as they investigate you!