Anna Leighton has an intellectual disability and works in office administration at Ballarat Day Procedure Centre three days a week and said she would like to see more employers taking on staff with a disability.

"I think people just look at disability and go 'nope'," she said.

"We can do a lot more than people without disabilities think, they look at us going, 'I don't think you can work on a computer', then they find out I work at a computer all day, and I'm fine with it - they look at us differently."

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A recent report by the National Skills Commission on recruitment difficulty showed in the May to December period last year 16 per cent of employers outside capital cities were able to fill vacancies within a month, compared to 41 per cent that had unfilled vacancies for more than a month and 25 per cent that filled vacancies but it took longer than a month.

The same report noted the top reason for employment difficulty for employers outside of capital cities to be a lack of applicants, followed by a lack of suitable applicants.

Disability employment service AXIS Employment regional manager Tom Robertson said there were misconceptions about hiring people with disabilities, including baseless ideas around more sick days and unreliability.

"Hospitality, cleaning, manufacturing, truck driving - most industries at the moment seem to have shortages to some degree," he said.

"People with disability have a range of skills, talents, abilities and qualifications - including trade or tertiary - people with disability usually have a clear understanding of their abilities and are unlikely to apply for jobs they cannot do."

One in five Australians have a disability, and Mr Robertson said employers being more open to diverse talent could have a positive effect on workplace culture.

"If you look in your own workplace, it's likely there are already employees around you with a disability who are thriving in their roles," he said.

Western Victorian disability support service McCallum people and culture manager Lauren Baker said making workplaces more accessible is a step employers can take to increase their candidate pool.

"There's the traditional barriers to employment for people with disability, which is obviously the people that are not disabled don't believe that people with disabilities have capacity. When the reality is, they do, and they can do many things," she said.

"You might need to make some reasonable adjustments to enable them to access the work or to make it more accessible but it doesn't mean that they can't do it ... we should be asking the question about whether or not this job can be made more accessible and then putting it out there."

For Ms Leighton, her journey to employment began in the midst of the lockdown in 2020 when her mother Therese, who works at the centre as a nurse, brought her to work to help out when they were short staffed.

She said her employment was part luck, part good timing, and while she had some friends with a disability who were employed, a majority were "desperate" for work.

"We're friendly - we're always smiling," she said.

"[Employers] should employ people with disabilities because we can bring so much to people."

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