One great barrier to successful employment is a disability. Many individuals with disabilities are able to work. Their disabilities may prevent some activities, but not all, and often accommodations can be made to allow a person with a disability to do a job. It is important, therefore, not to think of people with disabilities as unable to work, but rather as coping with a barrier to employment. Nevertheless, adults with disabilities are less than half as likely to find and keep a job as fit adults. Disabilities are categorized as mental, sensory and physical; they can be mild or severe. 

Indianapolis has a relatively high number of residents who have disabilities compared with its suburbs, Indiana as a whole and the nation.

In 2005, 31,440 Indianapolis adults reported having some kind of mental disability. This was 5.77 percent of all adults. That rate is nearly twice the 2.97 percent of adults with mental disabilities in the eight suburban counties. Indiana and the United States fell between those extremes.

A similar pattern appears for both sensory (blindness, deafness, etc.) and physical disabilities. Indianapolis is higher and the suburban counties are lower than either the state or the nation. Indianapolis had 20,690 residents with sensory disabilities (3.8 percent) and 51,356 with physical disabilities (9.43 percent).