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

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?

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.

More People Are Asking For Accommodations—That's A Good Thing

Female college student sits in a library composing a paper. She appears tired with her hand on her forehead.

I’m bone tired. Tired in a way that comes from realizing the fight for access never actually ends. It just changes locations.

It starts in school, when you learn that if your disability isn’t obvious, you have to document every inch of it, defend it to people who aren’t medical professionals, and then brace yourself for the moment you’re approved but quietly judged anyway. I learned early that asking for what I was legally entitled to somehow made my education “less fair,” as if my access diluted the value of the degree instead of making it possible for me to earn it in the first place.

You carry it into adulthood, into workplaces where you are expected to be calm, articulate, strategic, and endlessly patient while proving you deserve the same tools everyone else takes for granted. If you’re competent, people assume you don’t really need accommodations. If you ask for them anyway, the narrative shifts to unfair advantage. You’re working twice as hard with fewer margins, and still managing other people’s comfort.

Today, two headlines landed at the same time. Keely Cat-Wells, founder of Making Space wrote in Forbes that disabled talent is one of the largest untapped workforces in the country, and that leaving us out is no longer just an equity issue but an economic one. We’re used to surviving and thriving in spaces that aren’t built for us, and so we bring unique solutions to the table. Preston Fore at Fortune meanwhile, focused on the rise in college students seeking disability accommodations, calling it a "phenomenon."

These stories are connected in a way many may not see.

More people asking for accommodations does not mean the system is being abused. It means stigma is finally loosening its grip. It means people are learning the language of their rights and realizing they don’t have to suffer quietly to belong. Accommodations are the difference between access and exclusion.

The real problem is not that too many people need accommodations. The problem is that we still treat access like a moral test instead of a design decision.

If we actually care about the future of work, we need to stop asking whether access is fair and start asking why it was ever optional in the first place. Accommodations are not burdens and they are not unfair advantages. They are lifelines that ensure equity and access.

Not All Disabled Leaders Are Allies, And That’s the Conversation We Need to Have

A man in a wheelchair sits in a doorway high on a dark glass skyscraper, kicking away a golden ladder as pieces fall toward a crowd of people reaching upward beneath stormy skies.

As October wraps up, I keep circling back to something we rarely say out loud: not all disabled people are allies.

John Oliver once joked on HBO Last Week Tonight about former Rep. Madison Cawthorn that “being an asshole is truly accessible to everyone.” He wasn’t wrong. We like to assume disabled leaders automatically champion the disability community, that lived experience guarantees empathy.

But it doesn’t.

Governor Greg Abbott, a wheelchair user, has consistently pushed policies that harm disabled Texans. Senator John Fetterman, once celebrated for normalizing assistive technology and comfortable clothing on the Senate floor, now carries the label “Trump’s favorite Democrat.” Representation does not always translate to advocacy. Sometimes it just makes the betrayal sting more.

And I have seen that same pattern play out closer to home. Early in my federal career, when I first needed a telework accommodation, I turned to a senior colleague who was a respected disability advocate. I expected empathy. Instead, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Keep your head down. Don’t fight this.”

That moment never left me. It might have been practical advice, but it was not allyship.

It taught me that proximity to power is not the same as solidarity, and that some of the hardest lessons come from people who should have known better.

We love to talk about inclusion in the workplace. The posters. The hashtags. The polished commitments to mental health and belonging. But the moment someone actually uses those systems, asks for flexibility, PTO, or an accommodation, the tone shifts. Suddenly inclusion has an asterisk. Suddenly the same people preaching wellness start whispering about fairness and team morale.

Genuine allyship is not about the company newsletter or the press release in October or the panel during Disability Pride Month. It is about the quiet, consistent work of believing people when they tell you what they need, without making them prove it. It is about creating systems where asking for help does not feel like a liability.

There is a hierarchy in disability culture we do not talk about enough. The visible versus the invisible. The acceptable versus the difficult. The wheelchair user makes a great photo op. The employee with PTSD, chronic pain, or neurodivergence gets side-eyed for needing too much. Passing privilege is real, and too many use it to climb the ladder only to kick it down behind them.

Having a disability does not make someone an ally. It does not even make them kind. Sometimes it just makes them powerful enough to prove they are not.

If allyship means anything, it is how we act when no one is watching, especially toward each other.

What It Took to Get to the DOJ v. Uber Lawsuit

A close-up of a person holding a smartphone displaying the Uber app logo. The phone is held in one hand inside a vehicle.

I’ve been denied rides with my service dog more times than I can count.

Not because I was unclear. Not because the law wasn’t on my side. But because a driver could take one look at us and decide: nope. And Uber, no matter what it says in press releases, let them.

Over the years, drivers have challenged me to file complaints, knowing nothing would happen. And they were mostly right. I started documenting the rejections publicly in 2018. I called it “rejection time,” the extra hour I’d build into my schedule just to find a driver who wouldn’t leave me at the curb.

If I needed to be somewhere at 1pm, I’d call a ride by noon. Not because the drive took that long, but because I had to plan for the fight.

Once, before Uber Pet was even a backup option, I was in such a rush I paid for an Uber Black. It cost exponentially more than UberX, just to avoid being denied again. I paid a premium to be treated like I belonged.

This wasn’t rare. It was weekly. Sometimes daily. And when I shared my experiences, the pushback came fast:

“You’re overreacting.”
“Maybe try Uber Pet.”
“Why didn’t you just leave the dog at home?”

Lovey isn’t a pet. She’s a highly trained service dog from Canine Companions®. She’s my access partner. Before her, it was Pico, my first service dog, who stood next to me through the worst of this. I still wish his name could be in the court record.

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Uber for violating the ADA, denying rides to people like me. My name is in the complaint. CBS News covered it and quoted me saying what I’ve felt for years:

“The incidents are not isolated, but evidence of a widespread civil rights failure.”

“No one should be forced to choose between their mobility and their legal rights.”

It’s validating to be heard. But also exhausting that it took this long.

This lawsuit isn’t just about one company. It’s about a culture of compliance theater that leaves disabled people behind. And then expects us to be grateful for the ride when it finally shows up.

What I want now is simple: real enforcement. Not just good PR. Because access isn’t a suggestion. It’s the floor.

If you’ve never had to schedule rejection time, count yourself lucky. If you have, I see you.

And I hope you’ll answer this:

When have you had to shrink yourself just to get through the day?

What does accountability look like where you work, not just in writing, but in action?

Uber denies rides to passengers with disabilities, Justice Department claims in lawsuit

Disability Accommodations at Work: Why Employees Fear Speaking Up

A diverse group of professionals, including wheelchair users and employees with headphones, collaborate in a modern office, promoting workplace inclusion and accessibility.

Who gets to be "disabled enough"?

That’s the uncomfortable debate unfolding in workplaces across the country—and one I recently discussed in The Wall Street Journal alongside Justina Plowden and Keely Cat-Wells.

As more employees request accommodations, some worry we’re stretching the definition of disability too far. But here’s the real question: Are we diluting the meaning of disability, or are we finally acknowledging the full spectrum of barriers people face?

Here’s where I stand: Pitting disabilities against each other is dangerous. It’s not up to me, an employer, or anyone else to decide whose disability is “valid enough” to deserve support. If someone says they need an accommodation, believe them. Full stop.

And yet, many disabled employees don’t feel safe disclosing their disability at all. Why? Because they know what happens next:

🚫 They’re seen as less competent.
🚫 They’re overlooked for promotions.
🚫 They’re often the first to go in layoffs.

This is why so many people don’t ask for accommodations, even when they’re legally entitled to them. It’s not simply that remote work itself makes disabled employees more vulnerable—it’s that stigma and workplace bias make disclosing a disability a risk.

I appreciate WSJ and Callum Borchers for giving space to this conversation, and I hope it pushes more employers to rethink how they support disabled workers—both those who disclose and those who don’t.

Disabled Workers Debate Who Is Really One of Us