Sustainability starts with disability inclusion and accessibility.

For starters, for every 1 % increase in people with disabilities working, $25 billion would be added to the US economy.

Authors note: Because of Medium’s refusal to address its accessibility issues for both authors and readers, I’ve moved my last three years of blogs to Substack. Please sign up there for notices of all new articles. Also, I will be updating older articles (like this one) and the updates will only be published on Substack. Thank you for your continued readership and support.

Many people start the year with New Year’s resolutions:

• Reduce, reuse, recycle
• Purchase more sustainable solutions
• Buy local

But each of these resolutions only addresses one small aspect of the overall sustainability problem. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) are a series of 17 integrated goals that are part of the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Most UN SDGs can be tied to disability and accessibility, either directly or indirectly.

GOAL 1: No Poverty — People with disabilities are twice as likely to be at poverty level in the US due to the impact of inaccessible education and job discrimination on their earning abilities.