My colleagues at The Banyan along with the Chennai Mission embarked on an employment initiative two years ago, as a collective project led by people with disabilities themselves, rather than a service delivered to passive recipients. It began with extensive discussions with people who had attempted employment before; three systemic barriers emerged, none of them to do with individual capacity. The first issue was of compensation: not charity, not incentives, but fair, fixed, market-competitive remuneration that recognised their labour as legitimate work. The second was transport to get to work, to not have to navigate hostile, overcrowded, overstimulating, unpredictable urban transport that drained half their energies. The third—workplace support—is the presence of a person who could coach the workplace to meet their daily needs and who could work with them to build confidence with patience by allowing them to get familiar with work at their own pace. Since inception, 50 people have participated in this initiative that runs canteens or cafes across four locations in Chennai. Through the knowledge acquired from the collective lived experience of psychosocial disability, the initiative has now learned that when someone says they can’t do a job, the system needs to interrogate why they are saying this and how the workplace can be fixed to address these needs.