Be an Upholder and Defender of the Victims of Oppression

Pioneers

Ed Roberts contracted polio at 14 and used an iron lung to breathe. In 1962 he became the first severely disabled student at the University of California, Berkeley. With the Rolling Quads he built services run by and for People with Disabilities, helped build Berkeley’s Center for Independent Living, and later directed the California Department of Rehabilitation, the agency that once judged him unable to work. The Centers for Independent Living that grew from this model now number in the hundreds across the United States.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• The Radical Life of the Father of the Independent Living Movement
• Ed Roberts, hero of Berkeley’s disability rights movement, gets his first biography
• The Curb Cut Effect
• Curb Cuts: A Brief History, Carleton College (outside ShiningLamp, archived copy)
• The Heart of Authenticity: Why Disability Pride Month matters beyond July in mid-Michigan
• Advocacy
• When others speak for you, you lose

Pioneers

Judy Heumann contracted polio before her second birthday, and her neighborhood school refused to enroll her. In 1970 she became the first wheelchair user to teach in New York City public schools. As cofounder and president of Disabled in Action, she led the 1977 occupation of a federal building in San Francisco that pressed officials to issue the rules for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. She cofounded the World Institute on Disability and served as the first Special Advisor for International Disability Rights at the State Department. The film Being Heumann tells her story.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Because she made a fuss, Judy Heumann made everyone's life better
• Judy Heumann: Tenacious Symbol
• Being Heumann captures joy in fight for disability rights
• Phamaly premieres '504: The Musical' as states try to weaken the law that inspired it
• Being Heumann Review: Siân Heder's Drama About the Fight for Disability Rights Strikes Familiar Notes
• Ruth Madeley Is Disability Rights Activist Judith Heumann in Powerful Being Heumann Teaser Trailer
• How the Being Heumann Crew Built a Set for Its Disabled Cast on the Fly
• These children's books show disability as a part of everyday life
• Removing Barriers
• Unity in Diversity
• Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things needed to lead one’s life

Organizers

Bob Kafka, a Vietnam War veteran paralyzed in a 1973 car crash, organized with American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) in Austin. Friends called him a policy wonk who could leave a march and then negotiate with federal officials. He used direct action and policy strategy to confront systemic ableism and to build power for People with Disabilities and others targeted by exclusion, not as charity but as liberation. In 1984 in Chicago, ADAPT organizers rolled into intersections to stop buses ordered without lifts, wearing tags that read “My name is Rosa Parks.” Anita Cameron carries that work forward, holding that bus access is a civil right and that civil disobedience remains necessary when policy backslides.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Disability rights advocate Bob Kafka dead at 79
• How Rosa Parks’ legacy inspired a new fight over who could ride the bus
• Disability rights movement sprouted in Colorado
• Charity vs Service: Do You Actually Know the Difference?
• Rosa Parks couldn’t sit at the front of the bus, and those of us who use wheelchairs couldn’t even get on the bus

Organizers

Jack Fisher, a World War II veteran with a disability who had just joined the Michigan bar, petitioned the Kalamazoo City Commission in 1945 to cut curb ramps downtown. The commission built test ramps that year and later paid for 34 more. His story shows how much of this history was never recorded.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• The Curb Ramps of Kalamazoo: Discovering Our Unrecorded History (outside ShiningLamp, by Steven E. Brown)
• The Curb Cut Effect

Courts and law

Haben Girma is a lawyer and disability rights advocate. When the menu in her college cafeteria was not accessible, she used the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to insist on access. France named her a Knight of its Order of Arts and Letters, and she used the moment to defend Braille.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Advocacy (on how she used the ADA to win an accessible cafeteria menu)
• France made me a Knight, and my mission is Braille!
• Haben Girma’s official website (outside ShiningLamp)
• How to Write Meaningful and Inclusive Descriptive ALT Text for Images
• Inclusive, Accessible Email Messages
• Access is a right, not a favor
• I am not asking for permission to participate — I’m showing up because I belong

Courts and law

Karla Gilbride is a Blind civil rights lawyer. In 2022 she argued Morgan v. Sundance before the United States Supreme Court, which ruled 9 to 0 for her client, and she was the first Blind lawyer to argue before that court. In 2023 she was sworn in as General Counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the first person with a known disability in that role.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Shattering Injustice and Raising Expectations: Dedication to Equality by a Blind Attorney
• We can all do more than other people think we’re capable of doing
• I never forgot what it felt like viscerally to be held apart, to be treated as less than others

Courts and law

Louise B. Miller filed a class action lawsuit after her Deaf son Kenneth and other Black Deaf children in Washington, D.C., were denied admission to the city’s only school for the Deaf. The court ruled for the families on July 3, 1952, before Brown v. Board of Education, yet her name is still often left out of civil rights history. Gallaudet University’s Necessity of Now campaign includes the Louise B. Miller Pathways and Gardens and support for the Center for Black Deaf Studies.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• The enduring legacy of a D.C. mother who fought for Black deaf children

Organization leaders

Alice Wong (1974 to 2025) was an activist, writer, and founder of the Disability Visibility Project who reshaped public conversations on access and inclusion. She launched the project in 2014 with an oral history collaboration, co-founded #CripTheVote in 2016, and served on the National Council on Disability from 2013 to 2015. She received a MacArthur grant in 2024. She died at age 51, and her friends have vowed to keep mentoring newer organizers and telling stories.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Disability rights activist and author Alice Wong dies at 51
• After Alice Wong’s Death, Her Friends Vow to Keep Fighting for Disability Justice
• I Know We Can Transform the World: Remembering Disability Rights Activist Alice Wong
• The Afterlife of Alice Wong
• We must build a world that acknowledges our interdependence
• A world that’s rather hostile and not designed for us in the first place
• The many identities you hold and your lived experiences are not in conflict with each other; they make you sharp, whole, and extraordinary.
• Disabled people don’t need to be ‘included’
• Change comes from wild imaginings of what is possible
• I resist policies and programs that keep people with disabilities from living the lives they want.
• People with disabilities have always existed, whether the word disability is used or not.
• Disability is pain, struggle, brilliance, abundance and joy.
• Advocacy is for all of us; advocacy is a way of life.
• Access is love

Organization leaders

Mark A. Riccobono urges Blind People to resist second class treatment and to teach society what they know about their own dignity. On December 5, 2025, he joined members of Maryland’s congressional delegation to announce legislation designating the Museum of the Blind People’s Movement as a national museum, to be owned, operated, and led by Blind People.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Creativity, Persistence, and Hope: Reclaiming Our Stories through the Organized Blind Movement
• Dignity, Respect, and Determination: The Momentum of the Blind People's Movement
• A National Home for Our Stories: Members of Maryland Congressional Delegation Introduce Legislation to Designate the National Museum of the Blind People's Movement
• Resonance, Amplification, and Interplay: The Counterpoint of the Organized Blind Movement
• People Who Are Blind Remove Barriers in Schools, Jobs, and Public Life Through the Bonds They Share
• Thirty-four years is long enough to make government websites accessible
• Making On-line Meetings and Presentations Accessible
• I am not my blindness: What the blind community wishes you knew
• Charity vs. Service: Do You Actually Know the Difference?
• Learn about and Use Audio Description in Video for Blind and Low Vision Accessibility
• Every day that passes without accessible digital services is another day that blind people face barriers
• Screen Sharing Withholds Visual Information
• When we give blind youth opportunities to discover that blindness does not define them
• We are not asking for special treatment
• For centuries, blind people were understood to be incapable of contributing to society
• The history, lived experience, and contributions of blind people are essential parts of the American story
• Why are employers obsessed with candidates having a driver’s license
• The promise of equality was not fulfilled in 1776
• We cannot go back to a time when we were relegated to being passive recipients of another’s charity

Organization leaders

These three leaders founded the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition (CCDC), a disability rights organization run by and for People with Disabilities. At the 2023 ADA Access Awards in Denver on July 28, CCDC honored Jean Parker for Making the ADA a Reality, Kristen Castor for Community Building, and Christina Johnson for Leadership.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• The Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition (CCDC) Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 2023 Access Awards

Organization leaders

Darby Lee Young was born with mild cerebral palsy, uses an electric scooter, and could not find a place to meet friends. She turned that exclusion into Level Playing Field, which grew from a one person Calgary consultancy into work across Canada and the United States. She chaired the City of Calgary’s advisory committee on accessibility.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Parker: Level Playing Field grows into international force tearing down barriers for people with disabilities

Organization leaders

Angie Reagan is a Physical Therapist with a Disability and the founder of Access Tahoe and Peace Love Tahoe. She argues that People with Disabilities belong in planning seats, paid consulting roles, and leadership positions before a barrier is built.

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• A sustainable Tahoe must be an accessible Tahoe
• Access means designing places and experiences that consider disabilities from the beginning
• Creating a Place Where People Believe It
• Accessibility cannot remain the responsibility of those most affected by its absence
• Ask Who Is Missing
• Accessibility is more than ADA compliance, ramps, bathrooms and parking spaces
• Disabled people are already part of every community our institutions serve
• Access to a place is not the same as belonging within it
• Access creates belonging
• People Protect Places Where They Belong
• Visible and Not Visible
• Disability exists in every community
• Anyone Can Become Disabled

Organization leaders

Vilissa Thompson is a Licensed Master Social Worker and the founder of the Ramp Your Voice! Conference, a gathering where Black People with Disabilities can belong and be celebrated. She centers Black women, femmes, and marginalized gender persons with disabilities, and she urges people to document their own stories so that Black disabled history is kept.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Ramp Your Voice! Conference 2026 Celebrates Black Disabled Joy, Leadership, And Community
• By exceeding my life expectancy, I’ve become a model for other Black disabled women
• Bucking Societal Expectations and Barriers
• Disabled people have the full ability to create more authentic stories than ever before
• Black disabled people aren’t just the statistics we know of; we’re a powerful group of people in this world
• We are more than the barriers and challenges thrusted upon us in and by society
• In the U.S., our health care system fails disabled people throughout their lives

Voices

Emily Ladau is an author and disability activist who has Larsen syndrome. She first spoke about disability on Sesame Street at age 10, and a revised edition of her book Demystifying Disability is coming from Penguin Random House. She says the work of pushing back against ableism looks the same as always while the stakes are higher.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• She Appeared On ‘Sesame Street’ At Age 10 To Talk About Disability. Decades Later, She's Still Fighting.
• What Leaders Can Learn From Emily Ladau About Allyship In An Uncertain Climate
• Disability as Identity and Culture
• Mobility Equipment Without Shame

Voices

Tom Shakespeare is a bioethicist and social scientist whose work spans academia, broadcasting, and the arts. He speaks for embracing diversity over trying to eliminate difference, and for removing the barriers that keep People with Disabilities from full participation.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Tom Shakespeare: Redefining disability (a BBC Radio interview)

Voices

Sa’diyya Nesar lives with a rare congenital muscle condition and uses a wheelchair. Her writing centers empathy and community care, and she was a finalist in the perseverance category of the Spirit of Hong Kong Awards.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Spirit of Hong Kong Awards: author breaks barriers for disability inclusion
• Hong Kong writer Sa’diyya Nesar on the intersection of disability and faith
• I felt increasingly tired of receiving pity
• Storytelling is a way to shatter misconceptions
• I started writing not only to cope with life’s difficulties but also to clear misconceptions about disability
• Promote Collaboration Between Different Communities
• Don’t just focus on disability alone, but the intersection of disability, race and faith

Voices

In a conversation published by Gucci Equilibrium, Sinéad Burke describes moving from blaming people for inaccessible environments to seeing inaccessibility as a shared problem to solve. She says access belongs in the design from the start instead of being patched in later.

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• Beyond awareness: Sinéad Burke on actioning disability inclusion

Voices

Gary Wunder writes from the philosophy of the National Federation of the Blind, where Blind People speak for themselves. He challenges the Golden Rule when sighted people act on their own fears about blindness, names schools, employers, and companies that shut Blind People out, and asks for accessible textbooks, software that works with screen readers, Braille and cane training for Blind children, and high expectations for them.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• The Golden Rule, the Platinum Rule, and the Right to Speak for Ourselves
• Changing Words, Changing Minds, Changing the World
• Charity vs. Service: Do You Actually Know the Difference?
• Best Practices for Identifying People with Disabilities within an Organization
• Blind People at the table as a deciding force
• Nothing of importance has changed
• The real problem of blindness is not the physical absence of sight
• Blind people must reject the limitations imposed by fear and low expectations
• Blindness is not the characteristic that defines our future
• Blindness is not best understood by closing one’s eyes and trying to cross a room
• Allies, Friends, and Neighbors
• A blind child may need Braille, cane travel, high expectations, and chores at home
• If sighted people decide what blind people need without listening to blind people, even good intentions can produce bad systems
• Fewer Barriers for the Next Blind Person
• Less Space for Outdated Assumptions
• Hires and Promotes Blind Workers
• Blind people do not need the public to pretend to be blind for a day
• Research by blind scholars and testimony from blind workers are not biased detours from objectivity
• Help must not become control. Assistance must not become ownership. Friendship must not become management

Voices

Jen Deerinwater is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, a BIPOC disability justice activist, and the founder of Crushing Colonialism. She argues that disability justice must meet the needs of specific groups, and she points out that Indigenous communities face compounded shortages in housing, employment, and health care.

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• To Be BIPOC, Disabled and Fighting for Justice

Voices

Stella Young (1982 to 2014) was an Australian comedian, journalist, and disability rights activist. In her 2014 TEDxSydney talk she challenged inspiration porn, the habit of treating disabled people as objects of inspiration for nondisabled people, and asked for disabled people to be seen as ordinary, capable members of society.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Inspiration porn and the objectification of disability: Stella Young at TEDxSydney 2014
• Removing Barriers
• My disability is part of who I am — not a tragedy
• I am not your inspiration, thank you very much

Voices

Julienne Dallara of Camarillo, California, woke up paralyzed from the waist down about thirty years ago because of transverse myelitis. She has built her life around advocating for People with Disabilities, and in 2024 she served as Ms. Wheelchair California.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Always a way: Camarillo woman who woke paralyzed advocates for others

Champions

Tanni Grey-Thompson won 16 Paralympic medals, sits in the House of Lords as Baroness Grey-Thompson, and has spent decades speaking about disability equality. In a documentary for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), she traced 50 years of changing attitudes toward disability, from Wales to India, Pakistan, Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil, and New Zealand.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Tanni's lifetime road to disabled equality (with a link to the full BBC documentary)
• BBC Sounds: Tanni Grey-Thompson, Tanni’s lifetime road to disabled equality (outside ShiningLamp)

Champions

Elana Meyers Taylor raises her sons Nico and Noah with her husband, Nicholas Taylor, and travels the season with them. She uses her platform to grow awareness and to show what disability looks like day to day.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Elana Meyers Taylor is reshaping the world for her sons and the disability community
• Everyone has value regardless of what they achieve

Champions

Catalina Devandas Aguilar is a lawyer from Costa Rica who was born with spina bifida. In 2006 she took part in drafting the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and in 2014 she became the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities. In that role she collected testimony and evidence of human rights violations from People with Disabilities around the world and recommended how governments should protect their rights in law and practice.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Celebrating disability as part of human diversity (her TEDxGeneva talk)

Faith in action

ʻAbdu’l-Bahá centered his life on unity and justice and on including historically marginalized people, among them People with Disabilities. He honored Louis Gregory, a Black guest, with the place of honor at a luncheon, visited poor and homeless men at the Bowery in New York, supported the movement for women’s suffrage, and fed starving people in Palestine during World War I.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Building Inclusive Communities: Learning from ʻAbdu’l-Bahá’s Examples on Valuing Marginalized Members
• The Equality of Men and Women
• Unity in Diversity
• The Baha'i Faith and People with Disabilities:
• Tips and Suggestions for how to Plan for a Welcoming and Inclusive Accessible Event or Gathering
• 'You will make it': An anonymous neighbor stepped in when a single mom felt hopeless
• How a quadruple amputee overcame countless rejections to make his pilot dreams take off
• About Us
• How to Write Meaningful and Inclusive Descriptive ALT Text for Images
• Removing Barriers
• Hypocrisy of Religious Organizations Regarding Their Treatment of People With Disabilities.
• Think ye at all times of rendering some service to every member of the human race.
• How unpleasing to the eye if all the flowers and plants, the leaves and blossoms, the fruits, the branches and the trees of that garden were all of the same shape and color!
• Difference in capability is a reason for unity and not for discord
• The rain showers upon everybody and the heat of the sun is destined to warm everyone.
• The spirit is as the lamp, and the mind as the light that shines from it
• Consider the flowers of a garden: though differing in kind, color, form and shape, yet, inasmuch as they are refreshed by the waters of one spring, revived by the breath of one wind, invigorated by the rays of one sun
• Free man from every prejudice and do away with every difference and distinction
• Ignorance and lack of education are barriers of separation among mankind

Organization leaders

Jonathan Mosen of Wellington, New Zealand, is a Blind broadcaster, access technology advocate, and consumer advocate. He served as President of Blind Citizens New Zealand and chaired the board of the Blind Foundation, and in 2019 he was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the blind community. He calls online attacks on Blind people who build their own software unacceptable, and he asks Blind users to help train new technology so it does not repeat low expectations.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Artificial Intelligence, History, and Blindness: Lessons and Musings
• Safeguarding the legacy, investing the inheritance - A tribute to the transformative impact of Louis Braille's invention on the lives of Blind People
• iOS 26 and Braille Access: Apple’s Impressive Investment in Braille Literacy
• How to make materials Accessible to your Blind Friends
• It would be a tragedy to watch quality blindness training options erode
• Blind people have both invented new tools and received them early
• A Solution We Didn’t Help to Create
• We’re moving ourselves to the front of the line through our own effort
• A system trained on a world that underestimates us will underestimate us too
• The mainstream, commercial Internet lifted blind people out of generations of information poverty
• Gains That Made the World More Equitable
• The Old Ways Left Too Many People Out
• AI tools can augment our blindness skills, but they cannot replace them
• Inaccessible code is buggy code, and buggy code is unacceptable code
• Where We’re Going Like Everyone Else
• Braille is the key to literacy and to opportunity
• Blind people must determine our own destinies

Organization leaders

Julie Deden has led the Colorado Center for the Blind as Executive Director since 1999. A member of the National Federation of the Blind since 1978, she has met with members of Congress, testified before state legislative committees, protested subminimum wages and inaccessible digital textbooks, and trained Blind people in Poland in the 1990s. In 2025 the Federation gave her the Jacobus tenBroek Award, which it calls the highest honor it gives a member.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Julie Deden Receives National Advocacy Award, Colorado Center for the Blind (outside ShiningLamp)
• From Amoebas to Monuments: The World at Our Fingertips
• Helping Out: How Chores at Home May Pave the Way to Future Employment for Blind Youth
• To Light a Candle
• Appreciating art beyond sight at the Shared Visions Exhibition
• We need to help parents find ways to teach age-appropriate skills to their blind children
• Training in blindness skills seems to make a significant difference
• There is a strong correlation between doing chores as a child and the expectation of holding a job as an adult
• Parents and caregivers need to find nonvisual ways to teach blind children
• Much that we cannot perceive visually can be available to us through touch
• Tactile literacy is an essential skill for blind children
• Blind children are seldom expected to do household chores
• As blind children and adults we want to experience everything and know the world as everyone else does
• When we encourage blind kids to explore with their fingertips, we bring the world to life for them
• Anything we want to see can be represented tactually
• A Ripple Effect
• We can compete equally when we have the tools and the knowledge we need
• The Opportunity to Explore the World
• Active Learners

Pioneers

Kenneth Jernigan (1926 to 1998) became director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind in 1958 and developed structured discovery, a model of training built on real skills and high expectations. He led the National Federation of the Blind as president from 1968 to 1986, apart from a short break in 1977, and rehabilitation programs today are still asked to carry on his legacy.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Innovate to Elevate: Fostering Excellence in Rehabilitation Services for Blind Youth
• Blindness isn't the problem. Low expectations are

Organization leaders

Carlos Serván became Blind at age 20 in an explosion in Peru that also took his right hand, and he came to the United States in 1989 for blindness skills training. He has spent more than three decades in vocational rehabilitation, coordinating transition programs for Blind youth in New Mexico and serving as Executive Director of the Nebraska Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired since 2017. He presses for structured discovery, travel skills, and self advocacy for Blind youth.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Innovate to Elevate: Fostering Excellence in Rehabilitation Services for Blind Youth
• So blind youth will not just survive but thrive
• Blind individuals can live full, productive lives when given proper training and opportunities
• Expectations drawn from the collective experience and wisdom of blind people
• While the law can influence behavior, it does not necessarily foster understanding
• We need a rehabilitation system that does not primarily see itself as a gatekeeper

Voices

Natalie Shaheen is a Blind special education scholar at Illinois State University. In 2024 she received a $1.5 million National Science Foundation CAREER grant to study the barriers Blind and low vision students face in kindergarten through grade 12 science classes, and to prepare teachers to build classes that are accessible from the start.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Dr. Natalie Shaheen Wins $1.5 Million NSF CAREER Grant

Champions

Abdi Ali-Mumin is a Blind, nationally certified orientation and mobility instructor in Colorado who runs his own cane travel business. After training at the Colorado Center for the Blind, he took mobility instruction to Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa, where many students had never had formal training.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Blindness Beyond Borders
• Blindness does not limit potential, it is society’s perception that does
• Low Expectations Hold Us Back
• The fight for independence does not stop at our borders
• Being blind wasn’t an excuse for low expectations
• Independence is not a privilege, it is a right

Organization leaders

Cary Supalo is a Blind chemist with a doctorate from Pennsylvania State University who founded Independence Science to make hands on laboratory science accessible to Blind and low vision students. He urges the Blind community to raise expectations of its own abilities, and he argues that Blind scientists and engineers must be empowered to contribute to astronomy and space exploration.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• My Walk with Astronomy as a Blind Scientist
• It is our responsibility to educate these individuals as to our true capabilities
• Science is out of reach for them because they are blind
• The unique perspectives and talents of blind individuals
• Astronomy’s call to dream without limits beckons the blind as it does the sighted
• The contributions we can make as blind scientists and engineers should not be diminished or marginalized
• A blind faculty member must figure out how to access information
• We do not need to see the stars to feel their pull

Courts and law

Marilyn Green is a Blind advocate from Illinois who answered her jury summons after being turned away before. She asked to take notes on a laptop with screen reading software and for spoken descriptions of video evidence, was sworn in to the jury, and then recommended accessible digital jury instructions and a standing protocol for jurors with disabilities.

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• Breaking Barriers: My Journey as a Blind Juror
• It is critical for blind people to be seen as full participants in society
• Systems Must Evolve
• Blindness is not the characteristic that defines us or limits our abilities
• Judgment comes from intellect and understanding, not eyesight

Organization leaders

Lachi is a Blind, Black recording artist and disability rights activist who founded RAMPD in 2021 to open the music industry to disabled artists and professionals. She calls for access that goes beyond legal minimums to protect dignity and autonomy, and she names handler’s syndrome, when staff speak to a companion instead of the disabled traveler.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Her bedazzled cane helps her travel the world (and spark change)
• The Same Agency, Spontaneity and Style
• Blind people are often portrayed as frail, mystical, or tragic in media, but in reality we’re lawyers, parents, athletes, CEOs
• Travelers with disabilities just want dignity and autonomy. That’s what every human wants
• Accessibility shouldn’t mean sterile or second-rate

Voices

Chris McCausland is a Blind comedian from the United Kingdom who in 2024 became the first Blind winner of Strictly Come Dancing. He calls out the low expectations that follow People with Disabilities at work and on screen, and he presses producers to cast disabled talent in mainstream shows rather than treat disability as a quota or a spectacle.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Chris McCausland: I don’t want to be in a show because I’m blind
• My blindness is incidental

Voices

Aunty Jane Rosengrave is a Yorta Yorta woman with an intellectual disability who was confined in institutions from about six months old until age 21. She speaks out to end institutional confinement and violence against People with Disabilities, gave evidence to an Australian royal commission and helped others do the same, and received the Tony Fitzgerald Memorial Community Award at the 2016 Australian Human Rights Awards. She is a member of The Deadlys, a First Nations self advocacy group.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• One hell of a journey: Self-advocacy group for First Nations people with intellectual disabilities launches documentary

Voices

Nina G is a stand up comedian and disability rights advocate who has stuttered since childhood. Her memoir, Stutterer Interrupted: The Comedian Who Almost Didn’t Happen, and her comedy push back on the way audiences and the media treat people who stutter and other People with Disabilities.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• Inspiration porn and the objectification of disability (with a video of Nina G)

Courts and law

Charlotte Woodward is an advocate with Down syndrome on the staff of the National Down Syndrome Society. After her own life saving heart transplant, the Charlotte Woodward Organ Transplant Discrimination Prevention Act was named for her, to stop People with Disabilities from being denied transplants. She calls for awareness and allyship from medical professionals and the public.

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• Down Syndrome: What I Wish You Knew

Voices

Chloé Hayden is an Autistic actor and disability rights activist from Australia who plays Quinni, an Autistic character written with her input, in Heartbreak High. Her 2022 book, Different, Not Less, is a guide for neurodivergent people, and she supports autism rights and neurodiversity.

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• Changing Perspectives: Why a room full of well-intentioned people with no lived experience isn’t enough

Voices

Sarah Marsh is a Deaf writer from the United Kingdom who grew up with hearing aids in a family where her mother and aunts are Deaf or hard of hearing. Meeting her university friend Rosie helped her accept her Deaf identity, and the two later worked on Deaf awareness and inclusion. Her first novel, A Sign of Her Own, centers a Deaf young woman.

Read more on ShiningLamp

• A moment that changed me: I thought deafness was a flaw. Then I met clever, wise, funny Rosie
• Many people assumed that lipreading gave me an almost magical ability
• The only positive narrative society is willing to entertain about deafness and disability
• I’d grown up thinking that my deafness was some kind of flaw
• Learning to advocate for myself as a deaf person in the professional world was tough

Voices

Jillian Mercado is a model with muscular dystrophy who uses her platform to advocate for diversity in fashion and on screen, and for accurate representation of disability in the media.

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• 4 Black Disability Creators and Influencers to Know
• Being a woman who is disabled is an extra layer of being a woman

Voices

Keah Brown is a writer born with cerebral palsy who created the hashtag #DisabledAndCute and wrote the essay collection The Pretty One. Her essays examine how the media depict disability and call for diverse representation.

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• 4 Black Disability Creators and Influencers to Know

Voices

Lauren “Lolo” Spencer was diagnosed with ALS at 14. Through her Sitting Pretty platform she advocates for independence, self empowerment, and removing barriers for People with Disabilities.

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• 4 Black Disability Creators and Influencers to Know

Organization leaders

Stephanie Thomas was born without a right thumb and three toes. A leading advocate against ableism in the fashion industry, she founded Cur8able and created a styling system that helps disabled people dress with dignity and independence, and she teaches brands, retailers, and the entertainment industry about disabled people’s dressing needs.

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• 4 Black Disability Creators and Influencers to Know

Voices

Catarina Rivera is a Blind and Deaf Latina advocate who runs Blindish Latina, an Instagram account with more than 30,000 followers that debunks stereotypes about disability. She speaks and consults with workplaces on inclusive practices and promotes disability pride, saying the ADA is only the minimum standard.

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• I’m Deafblind: Here’s How Traveling the World Helps Me Embrace My Disabilities and Educate Others

Organizers

Shawn Reynolds of the Puyallup Tribe, whose sons are Autistic, proposed a special for dancers with disabilities at the South Sound Powwow and let dancers bring blankets, tablets, and headphones. He wants powwows to add specials and a full dance category for People with Disabilities.

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• Powwow dancing isn’t always accessible. This Puyallup Tribe dad wants to change that

Organizers

Kitty Cone, Brad Lomax, Corbett O’Toole, and Hale Zukas were among the organizers of the 1977 occupation of the federal building in San Francisco, which drew together People with different disabilities and helped win the Section 504 rules. Brad Lomax, a member of the Black Panther Party, brought the Panthers’ support to the protesters.

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• Phamaly premieres ‘504: The Musical’ as states try to weaken the law that inspired it
• Being Heumann Review: Siân Heder's Drama About the Fight for Disability Rights Strikes Familiar Notes

Voices

Abbie Goldberg is a neurodivergent writer and a Person with a Disability who organized at an independent living center. She wrote the book and lyrics of 504: The Musical, premiered by Phamaly Theatre Company in Denver, to put disabled characters at the center and give substantial roles to disabled performers.

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• Phamaly premieres ‘504: The Musical’ as states try to weaken the law that inspired it
• When you do meet people’s needs, people are able to bring so much of themselves
• We’re here. We’re not going away

Voices

Imani Barbarin is a Black disability rights activist and writer with cerebral palsy. At a VidCon 2025 panel she described accessibility as imagination and practice and warned that disabled people are rarely treated as reliable narrators of their own stories.

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• Creators talk accessibility and building inclusive spaces at VidCon 2025
• Disabled people are some of the most creative people on the planet, because we have to adapt every single day to our environment
• Disabled people are rarely seen as reliable narrators of their own stories and experiences

Voices

Dr. Cheri Blauwet is a physician and former Paralympic wheelchair racer who argues that ableism affects all of health care, just as racism does, from primary care and surgery to cancer care.

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• Doctors call out ableism in cancer care: The biggest barrier is attitude

Organizers

Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus in 1955, turning the question of who gets to ride into a civil rights question. In 1984 ADAPT protesters in Chicago wore tags reading “My name is Rosa Parks” as they fought for buses that carry People with Disabilities.

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• How Rosa Parks’ legacy inspired a new fight over who could ride the bus

Organization leaders

Daniel Hodges is a Blind nonprofit leader and advocate who leads the Pieces of Me Foundation, which offers disability education, training for organizations, and connections to resources. Through its Access Opportunity Tour he gives workplaces, churches, nonprofits, and website owners real time guidance on making their spaces fully accessible, and he speaks about his life as a Blind parent who has faced scrutiny.

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• Accessibility Works When We Stop Treating Disability As Defect with Daniel Hodges

Voices

Dr. Tammy Bernasky is an assistant professor of political science at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia, Canada. Known for long standing work on accessibility, equity, and inclusion across her campus and community, she was a 2025 finalist for the Accessibility Trailblazer Award of the Accessibility Confident Employers Awards.

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• CBU assistant prof nominated for Accessibility Trailblazer Award
• People with disabilities should not only be included but have opportunities to lead and shape the environments we all share

Organization leaders

Jane Douch, Philip Douch, and Paralympic cyclist James Brown founded Active Impact in Gloucestershire, England, in 2010. Rather than relying on scarce specialist programs, it trains ordinary activity providers so more groups welcome disabled children as standard practice, and it became a registered charity in 2020.

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• 15 Years Worth of Removing Barriers

Organizers

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 to win women the right to vote, standing up for women who were shut out of public life.

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• Women’s History Milestones: A Timeline

Voices

Anna Zivarts is an advocate for nondrivers and the author of When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency. She shows how many people, among them many People with Disabilities, young people, and older adults, cannot drive, and she calls for transportation planned around them.

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• I’m a Nondriver, and There’s a Good Chance You Are, Too
• All Walks - Limiting cars in cities can help People with Disabilities, too.

Organization leaders

Tiffany Yu founded Diversability after a childhood car accident reshaped her life. She speaks about her disability without apology and works to create spaces where disabled people are seen, supported, and celebrated, calling on others to listen to disabled voices and follow disabled leadership.

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• A Brief But Spectacular take on embracing disability pride
• I was nine when I learned what ableism is
• What happens in community
• Disability pride is the way a disabled person asserts their sense of worth in a society that tells us to feel shame
• There’s a particular pain in feeling like you don’t belong anywhere, not because of who you are, but because of how society perceives you
• True inclusion isn’t about making space at the table. It’s about recognising that disabled people have always belonged there
• Bias shows up for disabled people the most through exclusion. It’s through not even being thought about
• How liberating is it to just be myself
• Accessibility isn’t just about ramps and elevators. It’s about attitudes, policies, and systemic change
• Disability is not a flaw to be fixed

Voices

Nadia Ibrahim Mossburg is an author and disability activist with cerebral palsy who uses a power wheelchair. In her book Divinely Disabled and her writing on faith, she challenges how churches treat disabled people, including unwanted prayer offers, and asks people to look again at how disabled people are labeled.

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• My Dad Was Worried When I Started Going To Church: But This Is What He Understood Better Than Most
• Federal Supports Shrink While Congregations Shut Out People with Disabilities
• My faith community treated me like a project
• It’s taken decades for the disability community to secure the rights to learn, live and lead
• It’s time we view disability as an ordinary aspect of our communal life rather than a problem to be managed
• Perceived anger may be masked sadness or frustration at constantly being misunderstood or dismissed
• Only one of the eight churches I’ve attended has had a disability ministry
• Responses to my disability have ranged from acceptance to patronization
• Institutions measure what they value

Voices

Saba Salman is a British journalist whose book Double Discrimination examines the racism and ableism faced by People of Colour with learning disabilities. Her youngest sister, Raana, who is British South Asian and has a learning disability, was the reason she wrote it, and she consulted many people with lived experience.

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• Living at the intersection of race and disability

Voices

Jordyn Zimmerman is a nonspeaking Autistic disability activist who did not receive a way to communicate, augmentative and alternative communication on an iPad, until she was 18. Once she could communicate, inclusion followed, and her story is told in the documentary This Is Not About Me.

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• This Disability Education Law Turned 50 Today. Disability Advocates Want More.
• When I finally gained access to effective communication, there was a realization that I could learn

Voices

Anna Landre is a disability campaigner and wheelchair user who was given the Freedom of the City of London for her work in computer science and disability campaigning. At the ceremony on July 19, 2024, she could not reach the stage because the organizers had not put out a ramp. The City of London Corporation apologized and began an urgent review of accessibility at its buildings, facilities, and events.

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• Celebrating Advocacy for People with Disabilities While Ignoring Accessibility and Inclusion: The Stark Hypocrisy and Systemic Ableism of This Egregious Injustice at an Awards Presentation

Voices

Kenny Fries is a writer who edited Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out (1997), which he describes as the first commercially published anthology across genres by writers with disabilities writing about disability. His memoir Body, Remember tells of his life as a disabled and gay man. In a Disability Pride Month essay he argues that literature must let People with Disabilities describe their own lives.

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• Why Disability Literature Matters, Now More Than Ever: ‘In One Quick Instant, Anyone Can Join Us’ (Exclusive Essay)

Voices

Abdulla Al Humaidan is director general of the Zayed Authority for People of Determination in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Writing in The National in February 2026, he argued that employers should stop treating People with Disabilities as charity, compliance, or short pilot programs, and should build barrier removal into how work is designed.

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• How hiring People of Determination can help companies thrive

Organization leaders

Thomas Hasbrook lost his sight during World War II and spent his life working for Blind People. He organized the Indiana regional group of the Blinded Veterans Association in 1946 and was elected the association’s national president in 1948. In the 1950s he helped found Bosma Enterprises, which created paths to employment for Blind People in Indiana.

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• Divorce Me