Barriers to employment of people with intellectual disability

Abstract

BACKGROUND: People with intellectual disability are likely to face long-standing employment barriers in finding and keeping jobs, for a variety of reasons. This study, therefore, investigated barriers to employment of people with intellectual disability. The participants in this study were made up of sixty-five stakeholders who were recruited from six different categories. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to determine barriers to employment of people with intellectual disability. METHODS: A qualitative and quantitative research design was used in the study. The qualitative method was used to systematically identify barriers to employment for people with intellectual disability while the quantitative method was used to rank the barriers. RESULTS: Findings indicate that barriers to employment for people with developmental disabilities are discrimination, stigma, employers’ attitude, and management style, feeling unappreciated, and working environment such as culture to accommodation, understanding and strengths. Moreover, results shows that discrimination was ranked the highest while feeling unappreciated was ranked the least of the barriers to employment of people with intellectual disability. CONCLUSION: The paper provides information about barriers to employment of people with intellectual disability in Nigeria that is required to initiate change in policy development.