Disability Employment Awareness Month? A race every body can join.
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Mark it with something better than a poster: a team challenge where walking, wheeling, swimming, stretching — any movement — counts.
Avatars advance with every activity logged. 80+ types all move the team along the route.
Teams that have raced with Racery
7 Disability Employment Awareness Month ideas for work (2026)
NDEAM, led by the U.S. Department of Labor every October, celebrates the contributions of workers with disabilities. One in four US adults lives with a disability — many invisible. Here are seven ways to make the month participatory instead of performative.
Run an any-movement-counts team challenge
A virtual route your whole team travels together, where wheelchairing, water aerobics, walks and stretching all move the team forward. Run it as one big team and the goal is a shared finish, not a podium. How it works.
Hand the mic to your disability ERG
Let ERG members who want to share tell their stories — in a panel, a newsletter series, or milestone messages inside your team challenge. First-person beats corporate-voice every time.
Host a disability inclusion lunch-and-learn
Bring in a speaker on disability etiquette, invisible disabilities, or accessible hiring. One strong session does more than a month of posters.
Audit something for accessibility
Pick one thing — your careers page, your office entrance, your all-hands slides — and fix its accessibility gaps during October. Publish what you changed.
Take an adaptive sports class together
Seated volleyball, adaptive yoga, wheelchair basketball with a local club. Able-bodied teammates experience adaptive play; everyone logs it as challenge activity.
Tie team milestones to a donation
Peg company giving to your team's collective progress — supporting a disability employment nonprofit your ERG selects. Movement becomes measurable support.
Make a captioning and alt-text pledge
Use the month to make captions on videos, alt text on images, and live captions in meetings the default. Small habits, permanent inclusion.
How a Racery NDEAM challenge works.
Pick a route
Start from a ready-made route or build your own. Your ERG shapes the milestones and stories. On packages from $4,500, we help build the route, bling and emails.
Build it, or we helpInvite your team
One registration link. Members log any movement by hand on the web or in the app, or sync Garmin, Apple Watch or Fitbit through Strava.
No app requiredRace, then report
Real-time feeds, photo gallery and team totals during the race. Afterwards, download a race report PDF with charts for leadership.
Race report PDFIf your body moves, it counts.
Racery challenges count 80+ activity types, let anyone log by hand without a tracker, and need no app download. Teams across time zones add to one shared goal, whatever their ability, location or schedule.
NDEAM is also a chance to show colleagues with disabilities, visible or not, that inclusion at your company is structural, not seasonal. A challenge shaped by your ERG and joined by everyone makes that point better than an awareness email.
What your team gets.
Any-movement logging
Wheelchairing, water aerobics, stretching and 80+ more all count.
Log by hand
No tracker required. Log on the web or in the app.
Real-time photo gallery
A healthy Instagram: racer photos in one live stream.
One-big-team mode
Everyone's miles move a single marker toward a shared goal.
Digital bibs and awards
Personalized with each racer's name. Everyone who takes part gets an award at race end.
Wearable sync through Strava
Garmin, Apple Watch and Fitbit, if you turn it on.
"Thanks for all your help – we had such a successful race!"
Inclusion that already raced.
- Wheelchair athlete Chris Fletcher challenged his coworkers to a Racery race
- A two-week race retracing Mike King's 1985 wheelchair trek from Alaska to DC raised over $24,000 for Powered to Move
- Teams at AWS, Genentech, Biogen, BlackRock and BCG have raced with Racery
- Hosting virtual races since 2014
NDEAM challenge FAQs.
October, every year. NDEAM is led by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy.
Disability Pride Month is July, marking the ADA's anniversary and celebrating disability identity. NDEAM, in October, focuses on employment: the contributions of workers with disabilities and inclusive hiring. Both deserve marking.
Yes. Wheelchairing, hand cycling, swimming, water aerobics and stretching all convert to miles, and you can add activities such as seated exercise. Standings are by miles logged, not pace. If you would rather not have teams compete, run it as one big team with a shared goal.
Please do. ERGs typically pick the route, write or approve the milestone stories, and decide which organization receives any donation.
Setup is $0. In self-serve races, each racer pays Racery's per-racer fee at registration. Sponsors who prepay $4,500 or more in racer fees get branding, pindrops and our help. A month-long self-serve challenge for a 100-person team typically lands around $1,800. See pricing or get a quote for your headcount and dates.
A self-serve race on a ready-made route can go live in minutes. Races we help build usually take 4 to 8 weeks from first conversation to launch, so start in August to give your ERG time to shape the route and stories.
More months your ERGs will ask about.
Hispanic Heritage Month
A route through Latin American landmarks with e-postcards and culture trivia along the way.
Plan HHMBreast Cancer Awareness Month
The biggest charity race month of the year — donations unlock as your team moves.
Plan OctoberVeterans & Military Families
A memorial route with team relays and pindrops honoring service.
Plan Veterans DayBlack History Month
A ready-made route from Selma to Atlanta through civil rights history.
Plan FebruaryERG Engagement Platform · Pride Month · Corporate Wellness · Solutions · Pricing · Contact us
Planning for October?
Start in August so your ERG has time to shape the route and stories.