As I’ve expressed many times before, often the greatest obstacles we face as people with disabilities are the barriers imposed on us by the non-disabled community. People who have no personal contact with disability are seldom able to understand what we can achieve. They usually assume wrongly that our disability means we are restricted or limited in what we can do. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of employment.
It is estimated that fewer than 5% of people with disabilities in South Africa are employed. While the figures may be somewhat higher in other countries, the employment rates of persons with disabilities are woefully lower than those in the non-disabled sector, no matter which country you research. And yes, the reasons for this are complicated and stem from multiple different areas that we’re not going to dive into today.
In essence, this makes us no different from what the non-disabled community is faced with when it comes to earning an income. Those who cannot find a space in mainstream employment are being forced to consider other options, including entrepreneurship.
But where does one gain the knowledge to start and run a sustainable business as an entrepreneur? Naturally there are many books and courses available that offer suggestions on the best ways to do this. But few of these products take the specific needs of the disability community into consideration. And while I believe that we are capable of doing almost anything that a non-disabled person can, the truth is that we may need to use different tools and techniques to do so.
All of this explains why I was so excited to learn about a book on entrepreneurship designed specifically with the disability community in mind. Not only does it draw on stories of people with disabilities who are running successful entrepreneurial businesses, but it is written by them as well. The book is Trailblazing and Transforming: Success Stories of Entrepreneurs with Disabilities, which was published on 30 April 2025 and was compiled by Kat Paz. It contains chapters by twelve people with disabilities sharing the stories of how they work as an entrepreneur. I have a copy of the book and can’t wait to get started on learning what each author has to share.
As an added bonus, I’ll be interviewing Kat Paz to learn more about the story. The interview will be released on my podcast feed and on YouTube next week, so watch for that if you’re keen to learn more.
To grab a Kindle version of Trailblazing and Transforming, hop onto https://www.amazon.com/Trailblazing-Transforming-Success-Entrepreneurs-Disabilities-ebook/dp/B0F3S6BRP3
If you’d like to engage with episodes of my podcast, A Different Way of Seeing, you can find my library of shows on https://www.loisstrachan.com/podcast/#acc-content
Or check it out on my YouTube channel on https://youtube.com/c/loisstrachan/
