Exploring Disability Entrepreneurship Within the United States By: Samantha Aloysius and Caroline Czerwonka Advisor: Dr. Craig Rustici
Introduction and Background
Research Methodology
In 2019, only 19.3 percent of people with disabilities were employed in the United States. However, 10 percent of workers with a disability were self-employed, while only 5.9 percent of workers without disabilities were self-employed (Bureau of Labor Statistics). This indicated that people with disabilities were proportionally more likely to be self-employed than people without disabilities. Some of the reasoning behind this is that people with disabilities are largely discriminated against in the workforce. Moreover, people who qualify for federal aid because of their disability are often not able to have a steady job because they will lose their federal benefits should they show any “substantial gainful activity” (AARP). For this reason, many people with disabilities choose to remain self-employed and engage in entrepreneurial endeavors.
The way in which we approached this was to divvy up our searches into three different categories: .edu, .gov. and .org. We then assessed these programs with a variety of metrics including: ➢ Benefits Counseling ➢ What Cohort Is Being Served ➢ Types of Programs Offered ➢ Ongoing Support ➢ Virtual or Face-to-Face We assessed 18 different organizations that catered specifically to entrepreneurs with disabilities in this analysis.
This population of entrepreneurs is one that the National Center for Disability Entrepreneurship serves. The NCDE provides large scale inclusive support for up and coming entrepreneurs with disabilities. This program is a subset of the Viscardi Center which is a major disability organization on Long Island. We responded to their request for student researchers on a project that looks to compare the resources provided by the NCDE to entrepreneurs with disabilities with the resources that other programs around the United States provide to this same cohort. One hallmark of the NCDE is their Pitchfest, a Shark Tank like competition in which entrepreneurs with disabilities compete for $50,000 in equity free cash prizes, mentoring services and in-kind product donations.
Apart from this we also looked to assess the virtual accessibility of some of these organizations. Our reasoning for choosing to analyze the organizations in this manner was because of the current COVID-19 pandemic. In light of the changes in our nation over the past year, virtual accessibility has become paramount in order for an entrepreneurial support organization to provide inclusive resources for people with disabilities. In order to assess accessibility, we are using WAVE, a web accessibility evaluation tool and HTML Codesniffer. We assessed 6 different organizations that specifically to entrepreneurs with disabilities in this analysis.
Our goal was to ascertain the inclusiveness of the NCDE’s program as compared to other organizations around the country and document the types of support programs for this cohort of entrepreneurs.
General Findings Out of the 18 Programs we Studied: ➢ All were free ➢ 5 were face-to-Face, 6 were virtual, 7 were both ➢ 39% offer benefits counseling (7 programs) ➢ 22% are Veteran-Specific programs (4 program) ➢ 50% are nationwide programs (9 programs) ➢ 33% offer grants or startup funding (6 Programs) ➢ 44% offer ongoing support (8 programs)
Discussion and Future Research Of the 6 programs analyzed using WAVE on the homepage of their website ➢ Had contrast errors present (5 programs) ➢ Had missing alternative text (4 programs) ➢ Had Missing Form Labels (3 Programs) ➢ Had Empty Links (6 Programs)
n terms of more specific programs offered by the organizations: ➢ Only one program offered a Pitchfest (2Gether International) ➢ 28% offered “coaching” or training (5 programs) ➢ 11% offered VR services (2 programs) ➢ 17% offer assistance in developing business plans (3 programs) ➢ 22% are just online resources (4 programs) ➢ One program offers a classroom-type learning approach (Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities) ➢ One program offers a “central hub” for e-commerce (Artfully Gifted)
The research showed that there is a significant lack of programs that provide the tools through which entrepreneurs with disabilities can actualize their business endeavors. The lack of benefits counseling, ongoing support and training sessions in the programs analyzed indicate that the aid being provided is not tailored well enough to this specific cohort of entrepreneurs. The lack of follow-up support makes it harder to discern whether the program is successful or not as there is no data pertaining to the long-term outcome of an entrepreneur’s endeavor. Not only does this make it difficult for entrepreneurs to find successful and beneficial programs, it also makes it difficult from a research standpoint to assess the efficacy of the programs that exist. The WAVE analysis led us to believe that many of the organizations need to be assessing virtual accessibility more aggressively. Many of the websites had HTML code errors as well as aesthetic issues pertaining to low contrast items. These issues widen the gap between an entrepreneur with a disability and the support an organization is trying to provide. As a peripheral finding, we also saw that there were a few programs that specifically catered to the needs of veterans with disabilities specifically. These programs were generally more robust in terms of funding and the tailored resources they provided. Looking forward, we would like to work with the NCDE to conduct more research on why this cohort of entrepreneurs is going unnoticed. Through this endeavor we hope to ascertain ways in which all disability entrepreneurship support programs can become more accessible both online and offline, offer benefits counseling, and provide ongoing support.
Thus far our main conclusion is that we found a lack of resources and programs for this specific community. Further research and f unding would be required for more programs like this to exist and for the existing programs to increase in inclusivity