Official statistics in Jordan indicate that nearly one in nine Jordanians aged five and above can be classified within the disability category, a figure that makes this issue neither rare nor marginal, but a daily reality for thousands of families, representing 11% of the population and tightly linked to the labor market, public services, and the ordinary details of life.

 

With numbers like these, integrating people with disabilities becomes more than a social or humanitarian headline, it touches the core of economic participation and daily functionality, because when this large segment is limited in work, services, or public spaces, the effect does not stop with individuals, it extends to families who carry additional costs and pressures, and to an economy that is not fully benefiting from the capabilities already present within it.

 

In this context, Jordan has seen growing attention to inclusion in recent years across public policy, national plans, and social discussion, a shift that reflects movement from a language of care toward a language of empowerment, yet real participation still depends less on what is written in official documents and more on how systems operate on the ground.

 

This is where a small but decisive gap appears, inclusion is often approached as assistance rather than participation, assistance can reduce hardship, but it does not secure a real place within the economic and social cycle, participation means enabling people to work, access services, move through public life, and belong to daily routines as a normal part of them, and this difference shapes independence as well as the long term cost of support.

 

The gap shows most clearly in the labor market, where policies exist to encourage employing people with disabilities, but real implementation remains hesitant in many cases, not necessarily from refusal but from uncertainty, employers often lack clarity on what inclusion looks like in practice, what arrangements are needed, what expectations are reasonable, and what responsibilities fall on each side.

 

That uncertainty begins earlier than employment, because the pathway to participation is shaped from the first years of schooling, education is where a person’s self image is formed and where society’s expectations take root, when education is built around presence, participation, and skill development it opens a gradual road toward training and work, while separation or lowered expectations accumulates dependency and delays participation, and when education and employment are treated as one connected path rather than a chain of exceptions, participation becomes the natural outcome rather than the exceptional achievement.

 

Public spaces then determine whether that path can continue, transport, public buildings, and shared spaces decide who appears and who disappears from daily life, when the presence of people with disabilities becomes familiar in these spaces, participation shifts from exception to routine, and social interaction becomes simpler and less tense over time.

 

Practical experiences from countries with contexts not far removed from Jordan show that inclusion improves when managed as a clear operational process, in the United Arab Emirates, integrating people with disabilities into workplaces has increasingly been organized through institutional procedures, where accommodations and adjustments are treated as known administrative steps, which reduces hesitation and normalizes participation, and in Spain, the transition from education to training and then employment has been designed to continue rather than break at graduation, which has strengthened real participation rather than limiting inclusion to symbolic gestures.

 

Real inclusion is built around enabling contribution, when participation becomes a normal feature of education, work, services, and public space, support stops being a label and becomes part of design, and disability is no longer treated as an obstacle to participation but as a difference that can be managed within a society capable of benefiting from all its people.

 

Zaid K.Maaytah – Researcher in Economics and Behavioral Policy