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Promoting Inclusive Innovation for People with Disabilities: Who Does What and Why?


Within the social investment approach, innovation policy plays an important role and People With Disabilities (PWD) are a central target category. However, we know very little about what governments do in this domain. This paper aims to offers a small step in bridging that research gap by investigating how innovation policy is employed for advancing the labor market inclusion of PWD. Specifically, we analyze two critical interrelated questions: what do governments do to guide innovation in this area? And why do governments pursue certain programs/policies while at the same time deemphasizing others? Utilizing a qualitative comparative framework,we focus on Canada, Israel, Sweden and the United States. We find that policy across all countries is similar, especially in the emphasis on universal design. Additionally, differences between countries cannot be satisfactorily explained within the classical leftright ideologicalpartisan theoretical framework. Countries that are leaders in terms of social support for PWD such as leftleaning Sweden are not necessarily leaders in PWDrelated innovation. This is particularly noticeable upon examination of government programs for support of Assistive Technology (AT) development. Governments that are more supportive of subsidizing AT purchases on behalf of PWD are laggards in supporting its development and vice versa

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