If you are disabled, you can earn money by working a variety of different jobs. With the prominence of the Internet and home computers, many disabled people find opportunities to work from home, while others take positions in more traditional settings. Resources, tax breaks and anti-discriminatory protections help ensure that qualified individuals with disabilities enjoy equal opportunities to secure employment and earn a living for themselves and their families.

Incentives for Companies to Hire People With Disabilities

Federal incentives and protections ensure that people with disabilities have access to a wide range of employment. Federal tax incentives include a business tax break, an architectural and transportation tax credit, a small business tax credit and a work opportunity tax credit for those businesses that hire employees with disabilities and comply with federal workplace accessibility guidelines. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission prohibits companies under the jurisdiction of the Americans with Disabilities Act from treating disabled employees unfairly, such as firing them, neglecting to promote them or harassing them because of their handicap.

Working from Home

Many disabled people find working from home easier than traveling to an office, and the Internet allows more and more people with disabilities to earn a living from home. Most at-home jobs require a basic degree of computer literacy and self-discipline. According to Disabled World, disabled people can work from home as medical transcription employees, call center and customer service representatives, affiliate marketers who sell other people's goods and mystery shoppers; alternatively, they can sell their own items on auction sites.

Resources

Many resources help disabled people who are in the job market. The website Disability.gov offers, at the time of publication, more than 14,000 resources from both the local and federal government, as well as academic institutions, and covers many topics of interest for disabled people including employment. You can conduct searches on a state or national level and find information about job fairs, job openings for those with disabilities and jobs for veterans who have sustained injuries.

Federal Employment

While many disabled people work in the private sector, federal jobs employ a larger number of handicapped Americans. Since the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Executive Order 13078, government jobs have made conscious efforts to hire qualified applicants with disabilities to contribute to the diversity of the workforce. Since 1980, disabled people have comprised 7 percent of the civilian federal workforce, and they work across all types of government jobs.