Trump rolls back federal hiring rules. Are disabled workers at risk?

For Alicia Deal, disability advocacy is deeply personal, forged through years of fighting the very workplace barriers she works to dismantle.

Deaf and hard of hearing since childhood, Deal later learned she has ADHD and is autistic. She says she has had to fight for basic workplace accommodations, such as caption phones, part-time remote work, and quiet workspaces with low lighting.

Her personal experience mirrors a broader crisis. After taking time off to recover from an illness nearly three years ago, she has been unable to find work despite holding advanced degrees.

"Disabled people are vastly and devastatingly underemployed and unemployed in numbers larger than the average population," said Deal, 44, who was recently appointed to the Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities.

A sweeping regulatory overhaul launched by President Donald Trump's administration has eliminated disability hiring targets for federal contractors, rolling back longstanding guidelines designed to boost hiring among people with disabilities like Deal.

Under the Department of Labor’s final rule, contractors are no longer encouraged to meet a 7% workforce benchmark or required to track disability demographic data.

Deal says the federal hiring benchmarks were a critical lifeline for financial independence. Stripping away those targets, she warns, risks triggering…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/money/