People with disabilities (PWD) often face barriers to inclusion at work. To tackle this challenge, past research focused on the role of organizations to create more inclusive workplaces. What has been overlooked, however, is the role that PWD often take themselves in shaping their inclusion experiences. In this vein, we take a co-constructionist perspective on inclusion and study disability voice as PWD’s self-inclusion efforts with which they claim inclusion at work through speaking out about their disability-related needs, concerns, and ideas. Using mixed methods, we explore disability voice and study how disability voice affects the inclusion experiences of PWD in two studies. In study 1, we draw on 50 interviews with PWD in Germany and in Switzerland and identify seven disability voice behaviors. In study 2, we build on our findings from the first study and use a sample of 275 PWD to test a theoretical model on the relationship between disability voice and PWD’s inclusion experiences. We find that disability voice is positively related to PWD’s perceptions of opportunity for authenticity and belongingness. Further, we find that disability visibility moderates the relationship of disability voice and belongingness such that the effect is stronger for employees with visible disabilities.
