Consent Doesn't End With Touch: Why Photographing Disabled People Matters Too

Ryan, his fiancée, and Lovey attend the Seattle Mariners game.

Yesterday’s Seattle Mariners game was just about everything you could ask for on the Fourth of July. Beautiful weather, a 4-0 win over the Toronto Blue Jays, and an afternoon at T-Mobile Park with my fiancée and Lovey, who was, as always, on her game. Thanks to Canine Companions®, we were able to spend the holiday there together, and by the end of the game I was already thinking what a great day it had been.

Like we usually do, we stayed in our seats for about 20 minutes after the final out. When you’re navigating a crowded stadium in a wheelchair with a working service dog, waiting for the crowd to thin out is the easiest way to avoid thousands of people moving in every direction while you’re trying to find a safe path out of the stadium.

While we were waiting, a young girl came over and asked if she could pet Lovey. I appreciated that she asked because that’s exactly what people should do. I explained that Lovey was working and that I couldn’t let anyone pet or distract her. She continued reaching toward Lovey anyway, and as I looked over, I noticed the woman who was with her holding up a phone.

My fiancée heard her say, “That’s okay. I got the picture.”

Before I even knew what had happened, there was already a picture of me and Lovey sitting on a stranger’s phone. I don’t know where that picture ended up or why she wanted it. What stayed with me was the realization that someone had already decided my consent wasn’t necessary.

Many disabled people experience versions of this all the time. Sometimes people touch our wheelchairs without asking. Other times they pet our service dogs, even after we’ve explained they’re working. Sometimes they take our picture because they find us, or our dogs, interesting.

On the surface those are different interactions. What they have in common is that someone else has decided our boundaries are optional.

That leaves disabled people in an impossible position. If we enforce a boundary, we’re often perceived as unfriendly. If we object after someone crosses it, we’re accused of overreacting. The attention quickly shifts away from the person who ignored the boundary and toward the disabled person who had the audacity to set one.

Disability doesn’t change the fact that we have the same right as anyone else to decide who touches us, who distracts our service dogs, and who photographs us. Being in public doesn’t mean we’ve given up our right to consent.

I don’t believe most people who do these things have bad intentions. I think many have simply never stopped to consider how it feels from the other side. That’s exactly why conversations like this matter.

So I’m curious. If someone you didn’t know started taking pictures of you simply because they found you interesting, would you expect them to ask first?

If your answer is yes, why should that expectation change because the person they’re photographing happens to be disabled?

How Ticketmaster's Exchange Policy Created An Accessibility Paradox

Ticketmaster Logo displayed on a smartphone screen, behind a Live Nation backdrop.

I spent nearly two hours this week trying to convince Ticketmaster to let me spend more money.

If that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is.

I’m attending a comedy show this weekend and already had accessible seats. Then I noticed something that seemed like a win. Accessible seats two rows closer became available.

As someone with a visual impairment, those two rows matter.

The only catch was that dynamic pricing had made the closer seats less expensive than the ones I’d originally purchased.

I thought, “No problem. I’ll pay the exchange fee.”

Instead, I spent nearly two hours speaking with customer service, a supervisor, and the Service Resolution Team. Every person I spoke with understood exactly why I wanted to move. Every person was professional, patient, and genuinely tried to find a solution.

None of them could. The system wouldn’t allow it.

As the conversation continued, the irony became harder to ignore. I wasn’t asking for a refund. I wasn’t asking for free tickets. I wasn’t even asking Ticketmaster to lose money. I was asking them to let me pay an exchange fee so I could move to seats that would better accommodate my disability.

The closer seats were cheaper. The system treated that as the problem.

By the end of the second call, I realized something that has stayed with me. The employees understood the problem. The policy couldn’t.

Working in federal public affairs and disability advocacy, I’ve learned most accessibility barriers aren’t created because someone doesn’t care. They’re created because systems are almost always designed around the “normal” use case. Then someone comes along with a perfectly reasonable situation that falls just outside the box, and suddenly everyone can see the problem, but no one has the authority to fix it.

This wasn’t a story about bad customer service. The representatives listened, they empathized, they escalated my case. They stayed with me for nearly two hours. This was a case of genuine people being hamstrung by a policy that couldn’t account for an accessibility need when it happened to intersect with dynamic pricing.

That’s what makes inclusive design so challenging. Accessibility isn’t just about ramps, captions, or accessible seating. Sometimes it’s asking whether our policies, technology, and business rules still work when real people use them in ways we didn’t anticipate.

What Accessible Wedding Venues Still Get Wrong In 2026

A wedding venue told me it was “accessible.”

Then my fiancée and I arrived and were immediately staring at a hill that felt borderline dangerous as a wheelchair user.

I joked she might want to kill me by our wedding day with all the stress of planning. She laughed, looked at the hill, and said:

“I won’t. The venue might.”

We recently got engaged and started touring wedding venues around the Pacific Northwest, and honestly, part of this process has been so absurd that I keep bouncing between laughing and wanting to cry. Nothing exposes people’s definition of accessibility faster than wedding venue shopping.

Before every tour, we ask the same question: “How accessible is the venue?”

Disabled people learn quickly that photos don’t tell you much. A venue can look gorgeous online and still become completely unusable the second you arrive.

Sometimes there’s a small lip or awkward transition point and you can work around it. Other times you show up and realize the entire accessibility plan was basically:

“Well, somebody could probably help you.”

At one venue this week, there were technically ramps throughout the property. The problem was that some of them were so steep they felt genuinely unsafe. The pathways were gravel. Some were too narrow. Several doorways were so tight I couldn’t even fit through them to see parts of the venue.

At one point we were told:

“Well, we’re accessible, just not ADA compliant.”

Which, respectfully, is the whole point.

The longer this process goes on, the more I realize that for a lot of businesses, accessibility still means “we’ll figure something out if a disabled person shows up.”

We’re not looking for improvisation on our wedding day. We’re looking for autonomy.

If I need three or four people helping maneuver me through my own wedding venue, the venue is not accessible.

My fiancée and I aren’t just touring venues. We’re silently running calculations the entire time:

• Can I safely get there?
• Can Canine Companions® Lovey navigate this path?
• Can I fit through that doorway?

That changes the experience completely.

What makes this especially strange is that these venues are selling beauty, intimacy, serenity, “your perfect day.” And many of them really are beautiful. If I were nondisabled, some of these places would probably be incredible options.

Accessibility in hospitality spaces still feels like an afterthought. Some of it has crossed so far into absurdity that my fiancée and I have started laughing during tours because we genuinely don’t know what else to do.

What’s wild is that most reviews never mention any of this because the people affected by these barriers often never book the venue in the first place. So the feedback loop never happens.

Disabled people deserve better than spending joyful moments navigating workarounds.

What’s a place that claimed to be accessible until you actually had to use it?

#Accessibility #WeddingPlanning #InclusiveDesign #AccessibleSpaces

The Human Cost of AI Efficiency In The Workplace

Work is getting faster.

Not everyone is being given a way to keep up.

We tend to build things with the intention of making life easier, more connected, more efficient, and for a while, that’s exactly what happens.

Over time, we start asking different questions about what those systems are doing to us.

I’ve been thinking about that in the context of the recent lawsuits against Meta and the way Lennon Torres at Mashable described growing up on social media as “digital nicotine.” These were tools meant to connect us, but they also changed how we interact, process information, and how much of ourselves we outsource to systems we don’t fully question or understand.

That same tension is starting to show up in how we talk about AI at work. The dominant narrative is speed, efficiency, and output, even as broader analysis from the World Economic Forum has started to warn that these systems may widen the gap between who benefits and who gets left behind.

Most leaders say the design of human-AI interaction matters, yet Deloitte’s latest Human Capital Trends report notes only 6% feel they are actually doing it well.

What I keep coming back to is the difference between using AI to support thinking and gradually or wholly outsourcing thinking to it. Those two can look very similar on the surface, especially in environments that reward speed, but they lead to very different outcomes over time. At a certain point, the tradeoff stops being about efficiency and starts shaping how we collaborate, make decisions, and evaluate work.

As output increases, the space for human judgment, collaboration, and pushback shrinks, and over time that has consequences not just for quality, but for the kind of thinking we bring into our work.

I find myself thinking about this through my own relationship with technology. I’ve always leaned in early, partly out of curiosity and partly because, as someone living with a disability, I’m constantly looking for ways to make systems work better in practice. That instinct to optimize and streamline has real value, and it also makes tradeoffs harder to ignore.

Speed is never neutral. Every system optimizes for something, and in doing so, deprioritizes something else. When speed and output become the primary measure, what often gets deprioritized is the human context that makes work sustainable.

That’s the part that feels most important to pay attention to, not just who gets left behind, but how gradually and quietly that process can happen when speed becomes the primary measure of value.

As we continue to integrate AI into how work gets done, the question that keeps coming up for me is not just what these systems allow us to do, but what kind of work and what kind of participation they are shaping in the process.

Where are you seeing that balance being handled well, and where is it starting to break down?

Inclusion Only Works When You Mean It: The Numbers Behind Disability Employment

Line chart showing disability employment declining from 38.4% in January 2026 to 38.1% in February 2026, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, with note on a 0.3 percentage point drop.

Disability employment just dropped.

From 38.4% to 38.1% in one month.

That change represents hundreds of thousands of people losing ground in a single month, according to the latest nTIDE report from the Kessler Foundation based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

On paper, it looks small, just a fraction of a percentage point. In practice, it reflects movement in the wrong direction at the same time LinkedIn is full of companies talking about their commitment to inclusion.

For those of us who have been living in this space for a while, it feels predictable. This is what it looks like when inclusion is treated as messaging instead of something structural.

We get hired, and for a moment it looks like progress. Once we are inside the role, the reality starts to narrow. Job requirements that never quite made sense begin to matter, accommodations that were described as straightforward turn into drawn-out processes, and support that was implied becomes something that has to be justified repeatedly.

Over time, the system finds it easier to question us than to examine whether the environment was ever set up for success in the first place.

That is the part that does not show up in the celebration posts. It is also the part that explains the numbers. When people cannot get in, cannot stay, or cannot grow, the math does not hold.

Inclusion only works when you mean it. It does not work as a campaign or a metric. It works when leadership and infrastructure actually shift to support the people brought into the organization.

Right now, many organizations have not made that shift, and the data is reflecting that in real time. We feel it at every stage, when applications go unanswered, when more energy is spent fighting for access than doing the job itself, and when strong performance still leads nowhere.

We can continue to celebrate progress, but the numbers are telling a different story.

If inclusion begins to fall apart the moment it becomes inconvenient, what exactly are we building?

What Happens When Airlines Damage Wheelchairs? The Reality of Flying With A Disability

Every time I fly, I have to ask myself:

Will my wheelchair still work when we land?

Because airlines damage thousands of them every year.

As a wheelchair user, I’m handing over the piece of equipment that functions as my legs and hoping it comes back in one piece.

So I prepare in ways most people never have to think about. I travel with a laminated one-sheet explaining exactly how to handle my chair. I bring backups of everything. I carry a full binder for Canine Companions® Lovey, even though all of that has already been submitted ahead of time.

And even then, none of it guarantees anything.

This shows up clearly in what happened to Emily Ladau, whose $75,000 custom wheelchair was severely damaged after a Delta Air Lines flight, as reported by USA TODAY and Zach Wichter.

Stories like this feel shocking if you’re new to it. If you live in this reality, they don’t. They feel familiar.

People often point to the numbers and say about one percent of wheelchairs are mishandled, which sounds small until you actually translate what that means. Because if there were a one percent chance your legs would be broken when you got off a plane, you wouldn’t call that acceptable risk. You would question whether the system is safe at all.

Wheelchairs aren’t luggage. They aren’t interchangeable.

They are how we move through the world.

When they’re damaged, the question shifts from “how was your trip?” to “how are you going to function now?”

If you break someone’s wheelchair, you didn’t damage their property. You took away their ability to move.

The uncomfortable reality is that stories like Emily’s get traction because she has a platform. Most people don’t, which means this is happening every day to people who don’t have the visibility to force a response, and who are left dealing with the fallout on their own.

We’ve been talking about this for years. There has been real advocacy, real momentum, even policy movement. Yet the system still treats essential mobility equipment like cargo and fixes problems only after they happen.

If you knew there was a real chance your ability to move could be taken from you at the end of a flight, would you still see this as acceptable risk?

Unpaid Internships and Disability: Why 'Opportunity' Often Leads Nowehere

Bryan Rowe seen working at his internship at a waste management company.

A disabled worker spent nine months doing unpaid work and still didn’t get the job.

He did everything right, and still got rejected. Twice.

He walked away thinking he wasn’t good enough. That part hit me immediately. Because I’ve lived a version of it.

Early in my career, I took unpaid internships trying to build something out of nothing. Showing up, doing whatever was asked, hoping that if I proved myself enough, stayed long enough, it would turn into something real.

Sometimes it didn’t.

I remember what that felt like. Watching something you invested in just… stop. No explanation that made sense. No clear path forward. Just the quiet realization that effort alone wasn’t going to change the outcome.

And when you’re starting out, it’s easy to turn that inward. To assume you’re the problem. That you just don’t understand how things work yet.

This isn’t rare.

I’ve seen this happen in different places, in different ways, across roles and organizations.

People show up, do the work, prove they can contribute. And then the opportunity ends right before it becomes employment.

It’s a pattern. And for disabled workers, that pattern hits harder.

We’re already navigating systems that weren’t built with us in mind. We’re adapting constantly just to show up and do the same job.

So when someone does exactly what they’re asked to do, proves they can contribute, and still doesn’t get the job, it sends a message that sticks.

You can do everything right and still not be chosen.

Disabled people are not free labor.

We are not here to make your organization look inclusive without actually being included. We’re here to work, contribute, and build careers.

Disabled professionals bring perspective most organizations don’t have. We solve problems differently because we’ve had to. We see gaps because we’ve lived in them.

And when you leave that out, it doesn’t just impact us. It limits you.

A lot of people will read stories like this and focus on the individual. They’ll say he’ll be fine. That he’ll land somewhere better.

Maybe he will. But this isn’t about one person.

This is about a system where “opportunity” often stops right before it becomes employment.

And it happens more often than people think.

So I’ll ask this:

If your organization offers internships or entry-level roles, what do they actually lead to?

Because if there’s no real path forward, it’s not opportunity.

It’s unpaid labor with better branding.

How the SAVE Act Could Impact Disabled Voters and Access to Voting

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) (left), and Ken Cuccinelli (background), former attorney general of Virginia, hold a news conference on the House steps of the U.S. Capitol to introduce the "Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act," which would mandate proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration in federal elections, on Wednesday, May 8, 2024.

When we talk about access to voting, we tend to describe systems as “accessible” even when they depend on help to work.

That gap becomes a lot more visible when you look at the SAVE America Act, which would require documents like a birth certificate or passport just to register to vote.

For some people, that might sound like a reasonable safeguard.

But it only feels simple if you assume those documents are easy to access.

A recent TIME piece by Naomi Hess points out that disabled voters already face significant barriers when it comes to participating in elections, and adding more documentation requirements builds on top of those challenges rather than removing them.

At the same time, we are watching national negotiations stall while tying government funding to these same voting restrictions, which shows how central this issue has become in the broader conversation about participation.

I’ve spent most of my adult life voting by mail, not because it’s easier, but because the alternative didn’t work for me. The few times I tried to vote in person, the barriers weren’t subtle. They showed up in whether I could move through the space independently, whether the layout made sense, and whether the process assumed a level of mobility I didn’t have.

But even systems that are meant to improve access come with their own conditions. Before you ever get to a ballot, you have to prove who you are, and that process assumes access to documentation, time, and energy that not everyone has.

I know how to navigate those systems. I’m organized. I’ve done it before.

And even then, it takes effort.

That’s the part that tends to get flattened in policy conversations.

We often describe something as accessible when it can work with assistance, and that distinction matters more than people realize. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to call ahead to a venue or a restaurant just to understand what “accessible” actually means in practice, and whether that access depends on someone being available to help.

Because once it does, the experience changes.

If access depends on someone else stepping in, it’s not really access. It becomes something you have to coordinate, request, and hope will be available when you need it.

When you apply that same logic to voting, the implications are hard to ignore. Every additional requirement does more than verify identity. It shapes who is realistically able to participate.

We say voting is a right, but the way we structure access to it tells a more complicated story.

So I keep coming back to this:

If the goal is participation, why are we building systems that make it harder to achieve?

Lyft Agrees On Settlement After Service Dog Ride Denials

Disability advocate Ryan Honick reacts to a new Lyft settlement after a blind college student, Tori Andres, was repeatedly denied rides because of her service dog.

Yesterday I joined CBS News to talk about a new Lyft settlement after Tori Andres was repeatedly denied rides because of her service dog, Alfred.

If I ever get the chance to meet her, the first thing I’d say is thank you.

Speaking up about discrimination takes courage, and it helps highlight a pattern that service dog teams have been documenting for years.

Service dogs like Alfred and Canine Companions® Lovey are our medical equipment with a heartbeat and our access partners in a world still too often built without us in mind.

Accountability like this is how change starts.

Thank you to Jennifer Williams and the entire CBS team for amplifying disabled voices and helping move the conversation toward real access and equity.

Don't Push My Wheelchair: Unsolicited "Help" At The Airport Isn't Help

Close-up of Lovey, a yellow Labrador service dog sitting calmly in an airport terminal, looking directly at the camera; a blue Canine Companions service vest and purple leash are visible, with the background softly blurred

A stranger grabbed my wheelchair at LAX.

And started pushing me.

No “Do you want help?”
No “Hey, can I give you a hand?”

Just hands on my chair. And suddenly I’m moving.

Last week, I was in LA for my best friend’s 40th.

Early. Loud. Crowded. Lines are long and everyone wants to get to their gate.

I’m in my chair. My girlfriend’s with me. Canine Companions® Lovey, is working. We have a rhythm, a pace that’s ours. I know her speed. She knows mine.

And then, it happened.

A stranger saw me pushing up an incline and decided, without asking, that they were going to “help.”

My chair isn’t a shopping cart. It’s not luggage. It’s not a stroller you can grab when you’re feeling helpful.

It’s an extension of my body.

So when you grab my chair without consent, you’re not “assisting.” You’re touching me. You’re moving me. You’re taking control of my body in public.

My body knows it before my brain finishes the sentence.

There’s this sensory shock the second someone touches my chair, especially from behind, because suddenly I’m moving at a pace I didn’t choose.

Which means Lovey is suddenly moving at a pace I didn’t choose.

Which means the most trained, steady, brilliant dog on the planet has to recalibrate in real time because a stranger decided they know better than her handler.

It’s disorienting. It’s dangerous. And yeah, it makes my blood boil.

On top of the violation, there’s the performance.

Because in that moment, I’m not just thinking:
• Stop this now
• Keep Lovey safe
• Keep myself stable
• Keep my girlfriend safe
• Don’t get clipped by the river of people rushing past
• Don’t escalate in a public space at 6 a.m.
• Don’t become “the angry disabled guy” in somebody’s little morality play about “helping”

So what did I want to say? Honestly?

What the f— are you doing? Get your hands off me.

But I don’t have the social luxury to say it the way my nervous system wants to say it. The second you push back, it becomes:

“Wow. I was just trying to help.”

And now I’m the problem.

People can mean well and still do harm. Good intentions don’t grant permission. Kindness doesn’t override consent. “Help” that takes autonomy is a takeover.

For the record, I bought my chair without handles on purpose. Years ago. Intentionally. Because I’ve lived this before. I tried to build boundaries into the design.

And still, people find a way.

The issue isn’t the handles. It’s the assumption. The entitlement that says, “I get to decide what you need.”

Here’s my ask:

If you see a disabled person struggling, ask. If you want to help, ask.

And if you don’t get a yes?

Don’t touch. Don’t push. Don’t grab. Don’t steer.

Autonomy isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the whole point.