One way to approach this question might be to borrow experiences from the dependant employment field, like are there similar barriers that might hinder people with disabilities from starting a self-employed occupation - or: Can self-employment as a (more) independent form of labour even be an exit from barriers faced by employees?

What is your study aiming at?

I think there are three areas to address, firstlythe idea of the disabled as a generic group is a little misleading, disability has a vast scope, hence its impact is complex and cannot easily be generalised. That said it is possible to ask whether a persons disability acrues any practical barriers to entrepreneurship, here I am specifically thinking about backing, buisness finance etc which is linked to an ability to effectively pitch for suport and sell the project. Secondly whether a persons disability accrues any personal barriers, particulary in terms of self efficacy and their corresponding scope of ambition. Disability identity is a complex phenomenon and I suspect this has the potential to errect barriers as much if not more so that any imposed through society. My starting point for encouragment factors would be a duel platform of self belief in the buisness project potential and a supportive culture that affirms that belief.

In my opinion the environment has a lot do with the success and failure of such endeavors since the environment can be one which is enabling or otherwise. The person with disability's view of self and their self efficacy can also contribute significantly.

I think that the first factor is the social environment which includes people with and without disabilities. Talking about my country, I think that the awareness of the problems of persons with disabilities is not well developed. While there are plenty of activities to address physical barriers, which in my opinion is one of the first conditions must be made aware that other people with disabilities must be equal in all daily activities. And this can be solved only through education. Other barriers that people with disabilities have in my opinion can only be resolved by direct examination of the user-survey in some specific area or country.

This whole comment is most relevant to spatial movement.

Another thing that everyone here can be of use is exchange of information from different backgrounds and countries so that the story could be expanded.

Hello,

You can find some papers in my publications on self-employment among people with disabilities that can help you. Best

Mental Health, can affect the ability of someone with a disability to become successful as an entrepeneur. Some conditions like mild bipolar actually help, while others like psychotic depression hinder.

As someone who attempted to become an entrepeneur and failed, I have to say that not even a supportive environment is enough if mental health gets in the way.

I think the factors that encourage or discourage EWDs (entrepreneurs with disability) depend on the degree of a person's disability and the specific context in which the person pursues entrepreneurship activities. If the general environment of business is difficult, many entrepreneurs will be affected except that the likelihood of EWDs remaining at the bottom of the ladder is high. For instance, in Africa a PWD who lives in a rural area and is female is more likely to be marginalised in relation to access to capital, entrepreneurial training, and social resources. Many male EWDs are driven into business out of the need to stop depending on others for help and because it is hard for them to find gainful employment due to limited formal education. We have done a study on these entrepreneurs in Africa and you may find the results at http://www.trustafrica.org/documents/research_findings/NamatovuEntrepreneurs.pdf

According to my experience working with EWDs, their self-image, difficulty in movement, capital constraints and business skills are the major barriers.

Capital is a major barrier to any entrepeneur.

Thank you very much everyone for sharing your opinions and studies in this area.

I am trying to look at the factors that could facilitate PWDs in my country to become entrepreneurs. The government has provided assistance and grants to them, but we have yet to see one successful entrepreneur from this group.

Tania, you are right, when you said that we have to take into consideration the different categories of disabilities when looking into this matter. I will certainly take this factor into account in my study.

One experience with assistance and grants is that on the one hand side they of course can help PWDs overcoming ability issues they might have (like hearing aids can further the communicative ability, a very important criterion in the work area). On the other side, an issue can be the provision of the aids, like what criteria must one fulfill in order to be eligible, how much can the government officers decide themselves who gets or doesn't get access to the aids, etc.

What I found out here in Germany: There are pretty good social laws for assistance, but the government practice prevents people from actually getting them, either it's too complicated to even find out what possibilites you might have or the allocation process is in some ways ineffective.

The assistance itself can also be evaluated: Does it provide what is needed (for a broad range of possible special needs depending on the kind of "disability" and its degree)? Is it limited to certain categories of assitance, like technical, human, financial, organizational, etc. or is it relatively open to individual needs and provides, say, a certain budget that one can invest independendly in whatever he or she might need? And if so, is the budget sufficient or far away from being that?

So the bottom line with aids is: How effective can PWDs make use of them and how much do they really help?

And on top: How far are people (psychologically) able to be entrepreneurs, and to make use of the aids? Like: Are there stigmas that prevent people from showing their "disability"? In this case a major issue might be the psychological and social impacts that support or prevent people from being entrepreneurs, in addition to the supportive system.

I might add to that, that it is often the case that while a government might pay lip service to support of people with disabilities that they often put barriers in the way of using the supports so that the money doesn't get spent.

They can therefore announce a new program, but limit it's use.

It looks good on paper.

We did a study on dyslexia and entrepreneurship:

Franks, Karen and Frederick, Howard 2011, Dyslexic and entrepreneur : typologies, commonalities and differences, Journal of Asia entrepreneurship and sustainability, vol. XI, no. 1, pp. 95-115.

you can go through my book on "business entrepreneurship: Gender performance analysis " by Kasamsetty Sailatha. this book is available in mybook.com. this is my Ph.D. thesis published as a book and it will help u out with wast review of literature and many motivating factors, issues/challenges/problems, characteristics and managerial abilities.

Thank you all for such rich and useful information. I will try to find all the literature recommended.

A classical theory by Shapero and Sokol (1982) could provide an answer (or at least spark some ideas) to your question. According to the theory, "displacement" is a motivator for people to engage in entrepreneurship. Could it be one motivator to encorage people with disabilities to become entrepreneurs?

Shapero, A. & Sokol, L. (1982). The Social Dimensions of Entrepreneurship. In C.A. Kent, D.L. Sexton and K.H. Vesper (Ed.) The Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurship, pp. 72-90. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Ajzen (1991) theory of planned behavior may also give you some ideas.

Ajzen, I. (1991). The Theory of Planned Behavior, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179-211.

The above two are particular useful if your study focuses on cognitive process of entrepreneurship.

Thank you very much for your input.

The OECD has a project on inclusive entrepreneurship, which studies these questions. See http://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/inclusive-entrepreneurship.htm for more details. A short policy brief on fostering entrepreneurship for people with disabilities is forthcoming and will be published on their webpage soon.

Very helpful indeed, thank you. Waiting anxiously to read the policy on fostering entrepreneurship for PWDs. The Malaysian government has introduced several schemes and grants as well as tax subsidy programmes to PWDs but the percentage of takers is so small. That leads to this study which attempts to look at factors that could hinder PWDs from becoming entrepreneurs.

Tax subsidies and so on, probably won't work for PWDs because marginalization sets in so soon after disability that taxes aren't a problem anymore. What you want to do is build up support systems for PWDs by giving tax subsidies to people who act as mentors for PWDs rather than tax subsidies for the PWD themselves. Give the tax subsidy to someone who has an income, and get THEM to find the PWDs for your programs.

Dear Graeme Smith,

That is an excellent idea indeed. I will include that in my data collection.

Thank you.

In my opinion we have to distinguish between two type of entrepreneur: necessity driven entrepreneurs (those who become entrepreneur because of the lack of occupational alternatives) and opportunity driven entrepreneur (those that are mainly driven by the value of the profit occasion discovered). If you accept this definition, I believe that opportunity driven entrepreneurship is not influenced by disability, but only by the ability of discovering and exploiting profit opportunity (which we can assume is indipendent from the being disabled or not) . The argument is different for necessity driven entreprenership. In this case, if the institutional system favor the inclusion of disabled people in the labour market I except a low number of necessity driven entrepreneur, viceversa if the institutions are less favorable towards disabled people.