As a person with a disability, I often get frustrated when people treat my need for accessibility as if it were a special privilege. I have heard people say, “Oh, you are so lucky you have a handicap parking placard.” I am not lucky that I need one. I would give anything to park at the far end of a lot and walk in without pain, fatigue, or risk. That is simply not an option for me.
Accessibility is not a favor. It is a basic right in our society. We have laws that are supposed to protect that right, yet those laws are not enforced the way they should be. Too many people, both in leadership and in the general community, still do not see accessibility as essential, so they ignore it, assuming nothing will happen if they cut corners. Most of the time, they are right and nothing does happen.
Even with laws in place, people with disabilities have to do extra work before going out. They search online for entrance photos, call ahead to ask about elevators, ramps, and accessible restrooms. and make backup plans in case those features are broken or blocked. Most people never have to think about any of this. For a person with a disability, it is part of daily life.
As a person with a disability, this is my reality because accessibility is often overlooked or an afterthought. Sometimes, the automatic door doesn’t work. The ramp might be hidden behind the building near the trash dumpster. The front door may be open, but the door leading from the ramp may be locked. There might be an accessible restroom, but it could be out of order for weeks or down a hallway made too narrow by chair storage. I’ve learned to expect these problems, but I shouldn’t have to.
So understand, I refuse express gratitude for the bare minimum. I’m not going to gush with thanks because a public space has a ramp or an elevator. They are basic requirements that allow disabled people to participate in everyday life. They are required. Expecting us to be thankful for access to the world around us is so unfair.
Real progress will only happen when businesses and public places stop treating accessibility as a charitable gesture and start treating it as a core responsibility. This will happen when enforcement is taken seriously and accessibility is seen as nonnegotiable. Equal access is not a special privilege. It is a fundamental right.
Every year, teachers from northern states consider relocating to Florida for the weather, perceived lower taxes, or lifestyle. Florida can be a beautiful place to live, but the Tampa Bay region is not inexpensive, and teaching conditions differ significantly from many other states. Anyone considering relocation should understand the full financial and professional realities before making the move.
This information applies specifically to Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, and Manatee counties.
Housing Costs and Rental Requirements
Housing is the single largest expense and the biggest shock for newcomers.
Typical Monthly Rent (2025–2026)
One-bedroom apartments:
Manatee and Pasco counties: approximately $1,400 to $1,800 or more
Hillsborough and Pinellas counties: approximately $1,700 to $2,200 or more
Two-bedroom apartments:
Manatee and Pasco counties: approximately $1,900 to $2,500 or more
Hillsborough and Pinellas counties: approximately $2,300 to $3,200 or more
These figures represent modest, basic apartments in safe areas, not luxury properties. Most affordable housing is located inland, not near the Gulf of Mexico.
Move-In Costs
Most landlords require:
First month’s rent
Last month’s rent
Security deposit
Application fees for each adult
Utility deposits
Renter’s insurance
Total move-in costs commonly range from $5,000 to $9,000 or more.
Additional requirements often include:
Verifiable income equal to at least three times the monthly rent
Credit score typically between 600 and 700 or higher
Clean rental history
Background checks for all adults
Pet fees, often $300–$400 per pet plus monthly pet rent
Many apartment complexes require proof of employment from a local employer or a formal job offer letter.
Income Needed to Qualify for Apartments
Because landlords typically require income equal to three times the rent, many starting teachers do not qualify for market-rate apartments on salary alone.
Examples for one-bedroom units:
$1,500 rent requires $4,500 monthly income ($54,000 annually)
$1,800 rent requires $5,400 monthly income ($64,800 annually)
$2,000 rent requires $6,000 monthly income ($72,000 annually)
$2,200 rent requires $6,600 monthly income ($79,200 annually)
Examples for two-bedroom units:
$2,300 rent requires $6,900 monthly income ($82,800 annually)
$2,600 rent requires $7,800 monthly income ($93,600 annually)
$3,000 rent requires $9,000 monthly income ($108,000 annually)
Beach Living Expectations
Many people assume that living in the Tampa Bay area means living near the beach. In reality, affordable housing is usually far inland.
Typical home prices:
Inland homes not near water: roughly $350,000 to $600,000 or more
Modest homes within a short driving distance of beaches (30 minutes or less): roughly $600,000 to $900,000 or more
Modest homes in true beach communities or on barrier islands: commonly $1 million to $5 million or more
A budget of $500,000 rarely buys a home near the beach in this region.
Even residents of the Tampa Bay area often live 45 to 90 minutes from Gulf beaches depending on traffic.
Beach Access Challenges
During winter tourist season, spring break, and summer weekends:
Parking lots frequently fill by 7:00 to 8:00 AM
Traffic to barrier islands becomes gridlocked
Some beaches close access when parking is full
Leaving the beach can take several hours
Many locals avoid weekend beach trips for this reason.
Buying a Home: Property Taxes and Homestead Exemption
Florida property taxes differ from those in many other states.
If the property is your primary residence, you may apply for the Homestead Exemption, which provides:
A property tax reduction (minimum $25,000 exemption)
Limits on annual tax increases through the Save Our Homes provision
Strong legal protection against forced sale by most creditors
Requirements include establishing Florida residency and applying by March 1 of the year following purchase.
Properties without homestead status can be taxed at much higher rates.
Home Insurance and Hurricane Risk
Insurance costs are one of the largest ongoing expenses for homeowners in Florida.
Premiums have risen dramatically statewide, especially in coastal regions.
Most policies include a separate hurricane deductible that applies when a storm is officially named. This deductible is typically $5,000 at minimum and may be far higher depending on the home’s value.
Wind damage during named storms is extremely common. Homes may lose:
Roof shingles or entire roofing sections
Fences
Sheds
Pool enclosures
Screens
Trees and landscaping
Exterior structures
Flooding is not required for significant damage to occur.
After major storms, insurance claims may take months or even years to resolve due to high demand, contractor shortages, and disputes over coverage.
Utilities and Transportation Costs
Common ongoing expenses include:
Very high electric bills during summer due to continuous air conditioning
Variable water and sewer costs depending on municipality
Auto insurance rates among the highest in the United States
Potential flood insurance requirements for homeowners
Public transportation is limited in most areas. Most residents need a personal vehicle, and traffic congestion is severe, especially in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. Population increases during winter due to seasonal residents further worsen traffic conditions.
Teaching in Tampa Bay Area School Districts
Florida eliminated traditional tenure for most teachers. Employment is generally based on annual contracts renewed each year. Job security depends heavily on evaluations and district funding. As an ‘at will’ employment state, districts do not have to give a reason for non-renewing a teacher.
Advancement positions such as instructional coach or literacy specialist are typically filled internally. New hires often must teach for several years in that specific district before being eligible to join that hiring pool.
Teacher unions have less bargaining power than in many northern states, and raises are often modest. Health insurance premiums typically increase annually.
Some districts provide additional pay only if advanced degrees directly match the teacher’s current assignment. Changing positions can eliminate these supplements.
Starting Teacher Salaries for 2025–2026
The following figures represent approximate base salaries for new teachers with a bachelor’s degree.
Hillsborough County (Tampa) Starting salary approximately $48,000 per year.
Pinellas County (St. Petersburg and Clearwater) Starting salary approximately $52,000 to $53,000 per year.
Pasco County Starting salary approximately $47,000 to $50,000 per year.
Manatee County Starting salary approximately $55,000 per year including local referendum supplement.
Estimated Monthly Take-Home Pay
Florida teachers contribute 3 percent of salary to the Florida Retirement System and pay federal taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and insurance premiums. Total deductions typically range from about 22 percent to 30 percent of gross salary.
Estimated monthly net pay for a single teacher:
Hillsborough County Gross monthly about $4,000 Estimated take-home about $2,850 to $3,050
Pinellas County Gross monthly about $4,350 Estimated take-home about $3,050 to $3,300
Pasco County Gross monthly about $3,900 to $4,150 Estimated take-home about $2,750 to $3,100
Manatee County Gross monthly about $4,580 Estimated take-home about $3,200 to $3,450
Actual take-home varies depending on insurance selections and optional benefits.
Family Logistics
School bus service does not reach all neighborhoods, requiring parents to provide transportation. Childcare costs are high, and quality daycare programs often have waiting lists.
Climate and Weather Conditions
Living in Florida is very different from visiting.
Summer temperatures frequently reach the 90s with heat index values between 100 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit, making outdoor activity difficult during midday.
The rainy season typically runs from June through September. Daily afternoon thunderstorms are common, bringing heavy rain, lightning, and occasional street flooding. High humidity can cause mold problems in homes, and power outages sometimes occur.
Hurricane season runs from June through November. Storms may require evacuations, school closures, and significant preparation expenses.
Tourism and Seasonal Population Changes
Many parts of the Tampa Bay region rely heavily on tourism. Population increases substantially during winter months when seasonal residents arrive. Traffic congestion worsens, hotel rates increase, and public spaces become crowded.
Some industries experience reduced hours during off-peak periods, making financial planning important. This is especially true for teachers counting on a second income to afford basic expenses.
Moving Without a Plan
Local community groups frequently report families who relocate without securing housing or employment first and struggle to meet rental requirements or save for deposits. Hotel living is expensive and can quickly deplete savings.
Experts strongly recommend securing both employment and housing before relocating and maintaining savings sufficient to cover at least three to six months of expenses.
Positive Aspects of Living in the Region
Despite the challenges, many people enjoy living in the Tampa Bay area. Advantages include no state income tax, mild winters, access to beaches and natural areas, diverse communities, and ongoing demand for teachers.
Final Advice
Anyone considering relocation should:
Visit during the summer, not just winter
Research the specific school district thoroughly
Secure a written job offer
Secure housing before moving
Budget for full living costs, not just rent
Maintain substantial savings
With careful planning, relocating to Florida can be successful. Without preparation, it can be financially and professionally difficult.
There is so much happening in our country right now. It can be hard to make sense of what we’re seeing, or to even know where to place our attention.
In every society, especially in chaotic times, people fall into roles. There are the perpetrators, the bystanders, the upstanders, the protesters, and the rescuers.
But these roles are not permanent identities. In different circumstances, the very same person can move between them, depending on their courage, their convictions, and how much they fear losing if they refuse to remain silent.
There is a pattern that repeats itself throughout modern history. It’s a pattern we have seen again and again, even when we don’t want to recognize it. It starts with a small group of people who seek power by villainizing another group of people; people who are different from the majority in some visible or cultural way.
The people who do the villainizing are often referred to as perpetrators. Perpetrators don’t see themselves as villains. They see themselves as heroic. They are often ordinary people who convince themselves that harm is necessary, justified, deserved, or simply not their responsibility to question. They convince themselves that their actions are not only acceptable but heroically justified.
Sometimes they do it for power or political gain. Sometimes, they do it for a financial benefit. Sometimes they believe they are protecting something important: a way of life, religious beliefs, or moral traditions. They tell themselves stories that make their actions easier to live with.
History is full of examples of this; ordinary people who participated in systems that harmed or brutalized others because they were told it was acceptable, necessary, or for the greater good, and they allowed themselves to believe it.
And here’s something important to understand — perpetrators are typically a very small percentage of the population — often around three to five percent, but they are very vocal and make promises that, at first, seem very beneficial to the majority.
Perpetrators usually begin as people who are deeply disgruntled because their lives are not what they believe they should be. They feel held down, cheated, or overlooked. And rather than examining systems or circumstances, they find a group of people to blame.
They band together, they form a mission, and that mission becomes singular: defeat those they believe are responsible for their dissatisfaction.
As they grow louder, they build a base of followers. But most of the harm they cause is not driven by their increasing their numbers. It’s driven by something else entirely — the silence of the majority.
The group targeted by perpetrators becomes the persecuted. They absorb the anger and frustration of a society looking for someone to blame. And when the majority remains silent, perpetrators grow bolder. They grow more confident, more brazen, and more brutal.
Meanwhile, the perpetrators repeat the same messages, over and over again.
They tell people: “This group is evil.” “They are criminals.” “They are murderers and rapists.” “Because of them, you are not safe. Your children are not safe.”
They insist: “This group is taking your jobs.” “They are taking your money, your future.” “You are struggling because of them.” “If they were gone, your life would finally be better.”
At this stage, the perpetrators themselves still represent a very small portion of the population, often less than five percent.
In truth, large-scale cruelty is rarely powered by millions of villains. It is driven by a few and enabled by the silence of many.
This majority, on the other hand, are often called the bystanders. They see what is happening. Many of them disagree with it, sometimes vehemently. But they remain largely silent, usually for one of three reasons: fear, personal benefit, or uncertainty.
Typically, sixty to seventy percent of people remain bystanders. They have thoughts. They have opinions, but they keep them private or confined to safe conversations with friends. They don’t participate in cruelty, but they don’t intervene either.
Sometimes they remain silent because they are afraid. Sometimes it’s because they do not want to lose social standing. Sometimes it’s because they are overwhelmed. And often, it’s because they assume someone else will step in.
Bystanding feels safer than action. It preserves comfort. It protects reputations. It avoids conflicts. But silence has it’s price. And history shows us that widespread silence is often what allows brutality to grow.
Then there are the upstanders. They usually make up about ten to twenty percent. These are the people who do speak out — to friends, colleagues, neighbors, and yes, sometimes publicly.
They do not always stand on stages or hold signs. Sometimes they simply refuse to participate in something they believe is wrong. Sometimes they ask hard questions in quiet rooms. Sometimes they speak up when something feels wrong, even when it draws negative attention to them.
Upstanding is often small, personal, and costly. It may mean challenging a policy at work. It may mean correcting misinformation in a conversation. It may mean refusing to laugh at a cruel joke. Upstanders disrupt the ease of wrongdoing. They make silence harder to maintain.
A smaller group — often about five to ten percent — become active protestors. They organize. They gather. They march. They write. They demand change. They attend vigils, demonstrations, and public actions.
Some are injured. Some are targeted. Some lose their jobs, their status, or their sense of safety and security. Protesters step into public view. And they often pay a huge for doing so. Their actions are visible, and visibility carries risk.
Protesters are often dismissed as dramatic, extreme, or disruptive, especially by the persecutors. Yet protest has been a catalyst for nearly every major expansion of rights and protections in modern history.
Protest is rarely comfortable. It requires time, energy, and a willingness to endure criticism. But protest moves issues from private discomfort into public visibility.
And finally, there is the smallest group of all — often less than three percent. These are the rescuers. Rescuers go further. They intervene directly. They shield. They protect. They sometimes place themselves in personal danger to defend someone else. Rescuers rarely know they are rescuers at the time. They simply recognize that silence has a cost they are unwilling to pay.
Rescuers are often remembered by history because their actions are unmistakable. They do not simply object. They act.
Rescuers like Irena Sendler, Viola Liuzzo, Judith Heumann and Nelson Mandela did not act because it was safe, or popular, or rewarded. They didn’t do it to be heroes. They were ordinary people who made a decision in a moment when inaction would have been easier. They acted because doing nothing was not an option they could live with.
Rescuers actively help people who are being persecuted. They take enormous risks — risks that could cost them their livelihoods, their freedom, and sometimes their lives. And often, those risks extend to their families as well.
We like to imagine that we would all be rescuers – that we would all live our beliefs in heroic ways — but history tells us something much harder to face. Very few people are willing to risk everything. Most of us turn away.
The Uncomfortable Truth
The unsettling reality is this. Most of us have been in more than one category at different points in our lives.
We may have been a bystander in one situation and an upstander in another. We may have protested one injustice and ignored another. We may have benefited from systems we privately questioned. Character is not tested in calm seasons. It is tested when something costs us.
When speaking up risks our reputation, when refusing participation risks our income, when intervening risks our safety, or when dissent risks our belonging, that is when our character is truly tested.
In chaotic times, the pressure to stay silent increases. The fear of losing status, relationships, or security becomes real. That is when categories shift. That is when we decide who we are willing to be.
What Do We Stand to Lose
One of the most powerful forces shaping behavior is not cruelty. It is fear.
It is the fear of losing a job, fear of social isolation, fear of being labeled as difficult, the fear of legal consequences, or the fear of standing alone, that leads most people to be bystanders.
The question is not whether people know right from wrong. The question is what they are willing to risk to act on what they know.
And that calculation is different for everyone. Some people have more to lose. Some people are already vulnerable. Some people are protected by privilege. Those realities matter but they do not erase responsibility.
Our Country Today
What we are seeing now, in our country, follows this same historical pattern. But there is one difference that matters. We have something that people in the past did not; we have immediate access to information.
In earlier eras, perpetrators could travel from place to place, making promises to one group and then offering completely different promises somewhere else. They could break the law with impunity, confident that there would be no real consequences. By the time information was gathered, printed, and distributed, events had already unfolded.
News rarely traveled far or fast, and often, it came from a single source. When that source was biased, or controlled by the perpetrators themselves, the full truth was never told.
Today, that is no longer the case. We often see video of events within minutes of them happening. We can see the same moment from multiple angles. We can uncover blatant lies. Even the most skeptical among us can watch and decide for themselves what actually occurred.
This doesn’t mean we should believe everything we see online. We still have to question, verify, and slow down our reactions.
But it does mean this: when what we are being told directly contradicts what we can see with our own eyes, we have a responsibility to pause and to believe what is real, not rhetoric we are being told or propaganda that directly contradicts the reality we see and hear. We have the choice to make our own determinations.
That choice matters because the simple act of refusing to look away can move someone from being a bystander to being an upstander. And upstanders, quietly, steadily, and often without recognition, can change the course of history.
The question is whether we are willing to see what is happening, or if we can live with the cost of looking away.
History’s Memory
When we look back at difficult periods in history, we rarely ask what people believed privately. We look at what they did.
We remember the architects of brutality. We remember, but can’t quite understand, the quiet majority who did nothing. We remember the voices that that did speak out. We remember the ones who resisted. And we remember the ones who sheltered and protected those being unjustly harmed.
History does not record what people intended. It records the actions they took, the lives they saved, and the justice they restored.
Our Choice
The categories are always present. The scapegoated groups of people will always exist. Perpetrators will exist. Bystanders, Upstanders, Protesters, and Rescuers will exist. The only real question is who we become when staying quiet would be easier.
Silence always gives more power to the perpetrators and increases brutality towards the persecuted. And in the end, what will matter is not what we thought or believed in private, but what we said aloud in public, what we demanded, and yes, what we did.
Every action carries a cost. Even silence. Even looking away. The only question is who will pay it.
A Rollator and Wheelchair User’s Experience Navigating Inaccessible Medical Offices
Often, when I venture out into the ‘real world’ on days I need my upright rollator, I’m reminded just how inaccessible that world can be for rollator and wheelchair users. The places you would expect to be the most accessible, like doctor’s offices, are, in reality, often the least accessible. This is especially true for the smaller medical practices in older buildings and at specialists’ offices.
Almost every doctor’s office I’ve visited using my rollator has been surprisingly difficult to navigate. First, many of the specialists I deal with have only one or two handicapped parking places in very overcrowded parking lots, and they always seem to be taken.
I can understand that, and I park wherever I can, but often, the only way to get to the ramp that leads to the entrance if I’m not parked in the handicapped accessible parking spot means I have to walk in traffic to get to it, and that isn’t always safe. So often, the sidewalks at medical practices lack curb cuts until you get to the actual handicapped ramp. People who walk without assistance can utilize the sidewalks, but without appropriate curb cuts, wheelchair users and rollator users are forced to wheel behind parked cars that may back up at any minute, or risk rolling through the driving lane.
I live in an area where the number of people with handicapped placards is much higher than the actual number of handicapped parking places available. Our area has a large elderly population and honestly handicapped placards are held by a large percentage of our residents.
I don’t judge people, if they have a placard, then their doctor certified that they met the requirements and that they need it; I’m not going to argue with that. I realize many people have invisible disabilities, and I’m glad people get what they need.
But I can’t imagine how hard it is for wheelchair users with so few accessible spaces available. Most need to extend a ramp to get in and out of their vehicle, and you can’t do that in a regular parking space; they aren’t wide enough. So, if the accessible spaces are filled, they simply can’t get out of their van.
There are also people like me, who don’t necessarily need an oversized parking place, but I can only walk short distances. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to call inside a medical office to tell them that I’m outside in the parking lot, but because I can’t find a parking space close enough that I can actually walk in, that I’m going to be late. It’s great that they have an overflow lot across the street, but I can’t walk that far, even with my rollator.
Once I get there, and find a parking space that is close enough that I can get in, I’m faced with the fact that there are rarely automatic or accessible doors at doctors’ offices. The doors at doctors’ offices are typically security doors, and they are incredibly heavy, and nearly impossible to open while using an upright rollator. If you have weak arms or hands, or are a person seated in a wheelchair, they are next to impossible to open.
You have to remember, not every person in a wheelchair is being pushed by a caregiver. Many wheelchair users are on their own, and have lightweight chairs they can push themselves, or powerchairs. The doors to most doctor’s offices are not made to be opened from a seated position, or when both hands are occupied by a rollator or crutches.
Once you get inside the doctor’s office, the check-in desk is usually too high for a wheelchair user which makes checking-in a bit awkward. As a rollator user, I don’t have that issue, but it does make me stand further back from the desk, and if they hand me a clipboard and pen, I can’t carry it and hold on to my rollator. Rollators, like crutches, take both hands. Holding it under my arm makes it awkward, too.
I’ve noticed there is almost never open space for a person in a wheelchair to “sit.” Instead, there are rows upon rows of chairs but with no designated open areas for wheelchairs to remain while waiting, which means they end up parked in the walkway, and that’s really awkward. It must be frustrating to be in the way and there is nothing you can do about it.
As a rollator user, I can tell you, there is rarely a place where I can sit and keep my upright rollator within reach. Usually, there are tables, or other rows of chairs in the way. Often, I have to ask other people to move so I can find a place I’ll fit.
People are very nice about it, and often move without me saying a word, but sometimes, they are absorbed in their own issues, or busy on their cell phone, and they don’t notice. It can be uncomfortable to have to ask people to rearrange themselves for me. It’s hard to ask strangers ‘for a favor’ because the waiting room isn’t set up for the assistive devices many people use.
My upright rollator is customized, and many people are curious about it. I tend to field questions from other people in the waiting room about where I got it, would it work for their aunt or mother-in-law, and that it looks so much better than a regular rollator. I don’t mind answering their questions, but sometimes when you are at the doctor’s office, you aren’t at your best, and you’d really rather just be left alone.
Once you are called into a clinical room, you often have to follow a medical assistant down a long, narrow hallway. They tend to walk very quickly, which is something people using rollators or crutches aren’t really able to do. I can’t tell you how many times the medical assistant disappears around a corner, and I stand there lost until they come back looking for me.
If there is an exam table, it often lacks grab bars or any way to use it safely. The token two-step platform attached to most exam tables offers little help for people with balance issues or who cannot safely climb steps. Adjustable exam tables that lower for patient access and then raise for the physician do exist, but very few medical practices actually have them.
Fortunately, most exam rooms have chairs in them. The only problem is that my upright rollator is quite large, and often, it takes up the only vacant space in the exam room, leaving no room for the doctor or nurse to work. I’m often told by the nurse that they need to move it outside of the exam room but can’t leave it in the narrow hallway because that would be a fire hazard. When they say this, I always wonder what I’d do without my assistive device if there were a fire and I couldn’t get out by myself, and I was left by myself in an exam room with the door closed.
They say they will bring it back when the exam is over. I cannot tell you how many times, even after I remind the doctor that I need it, the doctor leaves quickly and no one returns with my rollator. It is not safe for me to try to go searching for it on my own.
So I am left there, waiting until someone eventually comes, usually when a medical assistant arrives with the next patient. Then there is a sudden rush to locate my rollator and return it to me so the room can be turned over. Often this happens 20 minutes or more after the doctor, who always promises to let someone know, has already left.
More than once, I have resorted to calling out just to get someone’s attention, so I do not have to wait indefinitely. It is embarrassing, but honestly, they are the ones who should be embarrassed.
I want to be clear, I’m not here to shame doctor’s offices or their medical staff. Many staff haven’t been trained to realize that separating a disabled person from their assistive device is simply not an acceptable practice.
Some offices have a larger exam room for power wheelchair users or for patients who are much larger than a typical patient, but these rooms aren’t always available because of the variety of disabled patients who need to use it.
I understand that medical offices must serve patients with many different types of disabilities, and I do not expect them to anticipate every possible need. But some accommodations should not be considered unusual or optional. Patients who use rollators or wheelchairs are among the most common mobility-impaired visitors to any medical practice, so spaces that can safely accommodate them should be standard.
Features such as doors that are easy to open, front desks that are not so high that a shorter person or wheelchair user cannot see the receptionist, and exam rooms large enough to maneuver with a wheelchair or rollator are not extraordinary requests. They are basic elements of accessible healthcare.
Doctors’ offices do not intentionally set out to be inaccessible. Accessibility gaps are usually not about intent; they arise from not seeing the space from the perspective of a patient who cannot even open the door. No one may be trying to exclude disabled patients, but good intentions do not erase real barriers or their impact.
Seeing a doctor is stressful enough. For someone with a disability, there is something quietly discouraging about pulling into the parking lot and immediately wondering, “Can I even get inside?”
From that moment on, every step requires calculation. Will I find a parking spot close enough to walk from? Is the ramp actually usable, or too steep or tight for my rollator to navigate? Will I be able to open the door without help?
Once you’re inside, there is the stress of wondering, will I be able to sign-in at the desk? Where will I be able to fit in the waiting room with my assistive device? Will I be able to get on their scale when they take my weight? Will I be left behind by a medical assistant rushing to the exam room, when I just can’t walk that fast? Will I even fit into the exam room with my rollator?
What assumptions are being made about me just because of how I walk? If I bring someone with me, will the doctor talk to her instead of me, as if I am unable to understand or speak for myself? (Don’t worry — I always set them straight.) Will I be treated as a capable, intelligent adult? Will I be treated with dignity?
Will my medical concerns be taken seriously, or will I hear that familiar line, “This is probably just part of your disability progressing,” without any effort to investigate the real cause? Will my physical limitations lead the doctor to assume I am not willing or able to do the hard work required to recover from a separate condition? Will certain treatments or options simply not be offered to me because I am less mobile? Will I be seen as a “poor dear” whose quality of life is not worth the effort or assumed to matter less?
All of these questions would make anyone’s head’s spin. The stress of a doctor’s visit is so intensified for a disabled patient.
And if you happen to be a medically complex patient, you have the added worry that the doctor will only look at one small part of your complex medical issues, and never look at you as whole person with multiple medical needs.
Some of these barriers are physical, like the heavy doors, the too-steep ramp, or the cramped exam rooms. But there are also so many attitudinal barriers as well, such as your intelligence being discounted due to the fact you have a physical disability, decisions to move a patient’s assistive device out of reach, or failing to offer newer treatments because your life is assumed to be limited anyway.
People with disabilities already know the world was not built with us in mind. Realizing that the very places meant to help us, medical offices, often present additional barriers to care only adds to that burden. These obstacles do not merely inconvenience us. They quietly exclude us and, at times, openly diminish us. No one should feel shut out of medical care simply because their mobility looks different.
I am not sharing this because I enjoy complaining or want special treatment. I am sharing it to offer a small glimpse into what it can be like to seek medical care as a person with a mobility difference.
I don’t for one second believe that medical offices don’t want to be accessible. Many practices do not own their buildings and may have little control over the parking lot, ramps, or curb cuts. Still, accessibility laws exist for a reason. Property owners can be required to make needed improvements if a tenant insists on them. Practices also make decisions about where they lease space, and they can choose not to occupy buildings that fail to meet basic accessibility requirements. Occupying a space that doesn’t meet basic accessibility standards is ultimately a decision.
Most of the improvements needed to make doctors’ offices more accessible are not expensive. Many do not require major renovations. Small changes can make a meaningful difference.
Installing automatic door openers or adjusting door pressure, leaving intentional open spaces in waiting areas instead of filling every gap with chairs or displays, ensuring there is at least one flat, accessible unloading area near entrances, and training staff to recognize barriers and offer appropriate assistance are all practical steps that can dramatically improve access.
Accessibility is not about special treatment. It is about equal participation and equal access. Disability is the one minority group that anyone can join at any time. The shift from able-bodied to disabled can happen in an instant, through one accident, one illness, or one unexpected medical event.
Accessibility is not about convenience. It’s about dignity, safety, and the basic ability to participate in our own healthcare. When medical offices remove barriers, they are not offering special treatment. They are simply making it possible for patients to be patients. No one should have to fight their way into a doctor’s office before they can even ask for help. No one should ever have to say, “I needed help, but I couldn’t even get in the door.”
You say that when I became a teacher, I knew what I was “signing up for.”
I’m here to tell you that I didn’t. I don’t think most of us did.
When I accepted the job and saw that wonderful, yet modest, pay scale, I didn’t know I didn’t know it existed mostly on paper. I didn’t know that for the first five years I taught, all pay increases would be frozen. I didn’t know we would receive only a one- or two-percent cost-of-living increase while, at the same time, the cost of our “free” healthcare quietly increased.
I didn’t realize that for five straight years, my actual take-home pay would decrease each year, even with outstanding evaluations and high test scores. By year five, I was earning several thousand dollars less than I had in my first year in the exact same position. I certainly didn’t realize I would never recover the raises that were promised but never delivered.
I didn’t realize the pay scale would be “revised” later in my career, revised in ways that paid new teachers more while experienced teachers earned less.
I didn’t realize the system would change so that no matter how many years I had taught, I would have to be renewed every single year, and could lose my job without explanation, no matter how long I had taught. I certainly didn’t sign up to spend every spring wondering whether I would still have a job the next fall.
I thought I was hired to teach during contracted hours, with time built into each day to plan lessons, prepare materials, make copies, grade papers, and return calls and emails. I didn’t realize that much of that existed only on paper. I didn’t realize that most of it would spill into evenings and weekends, carving out large pieces of my personal life.
Instead of planning and grading during the school day, we sat through mandatory meetings, answered administrative emails, graphed data, and completed endless administrative forms and sumamries.
I didn’t sign up for a job that required so much unpaid labor after hours that I couldn’t hold the second job I needed just to make ends meet.
I didn’t realize I would be so physically and emotionally drained that I would have little energy left for the people and things I loved.
I came prepared to teach content. I came prepared to understand pedagogy and child development. I came prepared to nurture, engage, and inspire.
I didn’t sign up to produce mini theatrical performances for every lesson, productions that often took longer to plan than to teach. I didn’t know I would be expected to compete with Emmy-winning actors, multimedia designers, and video game developers just to hold my students’ attention.
I also didn’t know how many things would be completely outside my control.
I didn’t know I wouldn’t be allowed to send an unruly student to the office.
I didn’t know that when a student spit on another student, or defiantly refused to stop, that I would be blamed for that child’s actions. Somehow, it became my failure as a teacher.
I didn’t know that when a student failed to complete work, I would be required to call, email, text, write notes home, and even send letters; and when none of those were acknowledged, I would still be held responsible for the lack of response.
I didn’t know that if a parent failed to attend conferences, I would have to document every attempt at communication as proof that I had done my job, because the default assumption was that I hadn’t.
I didn’t know that a parent could appear two days before the end of the school year claiming they had never been contacted, demand make-up work and extra credit, and that I would be required to not only to provide it, but then grade that last-minute, incomplete work as though it were a heroic effort deserving praise and a passing grade.
I didn’t know that I would have no say in the curriculum or how it must be delivered.
I didn’t know that schools could advertise small class sizes that didn’t match reality. Class size was calculated by dividing the total number of teachers, including specialists who didn’t have their own classrooms, by the total number of students.
On paper, our second-grade classes had 18 students. In reality, there were 24 children in each room.
A high school math class might be listed as having 28 students — but if you walked in, you might count 42 desks filled.
I didn’t know I would have no meaningful input in how many students with significant behavioral challenges were placed in my classroom, or that I might receive no warning at all, even when their behaviors were already well known by the people making those decisions.
I didn’t know that violent outbursts could become normalized. I didn’t know that a student who overturned tables or threw chairs might return to my room the same day, sometimes with a bag of chips and a Capri Sun in hand.
I didn’t know I would have no real control over whether students with disabilities actually received the services and accommodations they were promised, and that I would not be permitted to speak openly about those gaps, even when parents asked directly.
I didn’t know I would be held accountable for test scores tied to curriculum I didn’t choose, pacing guides I couldn’t adjust, and students who arrived multiple grade levels behind.
I didn’t know I wouldn’t be allowed to slow down for struggling students even when I knew they needed it.
I didn’t know that students who were years behind would be moved forward regardless, and that when they became frustrated, disengaged, or disruptive, I would be the one who was blamed.
Teachers have very little authority over the systems that shape their classrooms, and yet their work is micromanaged at every turn.
We’re told to “keep control of the classroom,” while the very tools that used to help us do that have slowly and systematically been taken away.
We are told to hold students accountable while our hands are tied.
We’re judged by test scores, even when the tests don’t line up with the curriculum we’re mandated to teach.
No, I didn’t know all of this when I “signed up.”
And neither did most of us.
So, the next time you’re tempted to say that teachers shouldn’t complain because they “knew what they signed up for,” understand this: we didn’t sign up for most of what the job has become.
We talk about surviving cancer as though it’s the finish line. You ring the bell, everyone cheers, and you move on. What rarely gets mentioned is that sometimes the treatment that saves your life also leaves lasting damage that deeply affects your quality of life.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this whispered in private, “I’m grateful to be alive, but if I’d known how damaged I’d be after radiation and chemo, how much it would limit my life, I’m not sure I’d have gone through with it. I’m not sure I’d have agreed to the treatment.”
Most survivors barely dare to say that out loud, but we sometimes share it quietly with each other. The world assumes that once you survive cancer you’re beaming with gratitude, you live a wonderful life, and everything goes back to normal. What people don’t see is what many of us live with afterward.
Some end up with stents, feeding tubes, or ostomy bags. Some live with bowel obstructions, chronic diarrhea, constipation, or malabsorption that leads to malnutrition. There are fistulas and radiation damage that never fully heal. There is neuropathy, nerve damage, vocal cord paralysis, balance problems, hearing loss, or changes in memory and concentration.
Skin can become fragile and tear easily, and wounds may take far longer to heal than they once did. Bones can weaken, and joints can stiffen, making ordinary movement more difficult. Breathing may not come as easily as it used to, and the heart itself can be affected by treatment.
Hormones shift in ways that disrupt sleep, mood, and overall health. Fatigue is not occasional but persistent, and the immune system often never fully regains its former strength.
The daily reality can be far more personal. You learn that you need to know where every bathroom is before you agree to go anywhere. You avoid long car rides and carry discrete personal supplies. Some survivors are left with digestive damage that severely limits what they can safely eat, and that can make eating outside the house feel stressful instead of enjoyable.
You have to calculate how long you can stand, how far you can walk, and whether there will be a place to sit. Sometimes, you decide it is safer not to go at all.
Along with everything else, there’s grief. You miss the body you lived in before every ache and twinge meant something. You miss the freedom of saying yes without having to think through every possible consequence. You miss the person you were before your life had to be rebuilt around limitations, and you grieve the future you once assumed was secure.
There’s another layer to all of this, and that’s the financial side of things. Cancer treatment can financially bankrupt you. Treatment costs more than most people have, and the bills don’t stop when treatment ends. The complications that follow often require ongoing appointments, medications, supplies, and procedures that add up quickly.
Even ordinary things like going out to dinner, attending a wedding, or contributing to a group gift can become stressful decisions when money is tight. For many survivors, the cost of staying alive slowly erodes financial stability in ways that are hard to explain to people who have never faced it.
Cancer doesn’t just affect your body; it changes your personality in ways you’d never expected. You stop being spontaneous because everything requires thought, planning, and a careful analysis of whether you can tolerate the consequences. Do you have the energy? Can you drive that far or ride in a car that long? Will you be able to park close enough? Will there be a place to sit? Is there a restroom nearby?
Instead of saying yes with excitement, you find yourself saying, “Let me check,” because you need time to think it through. You hesitate, not because you don’t want to go, but because you’re trying to be realistic about what your body can handle. Sometimes you end up canceling when you realize it will cost you more than you can physically afford. Other times, you wait so long to decide that the moment passes, and the choice is made without you.
Some friends or family members may think you’ve become distant or negative. They may wonder why you’re still talking about things they believe you should be over by now. A few may quietly decide that staying close to you requires more effort than they want to give. Simply speaking, they quietly decide that you’re too much work.
They don’t realize that while surgery and radiation can leave visible changes to your body, it also leaves damage you can’t see. They don’t see the numerous complications that now dictate what you can do, how long you stay, and whether you can go at all. They don’t see that movement can hurt, breathing can be strained, and fatigue often gets in the way. They don’t understand that you’ve had to rebuild your entire life around staying functional.
There is also an emotional cost that lingers long after treatment ends. You do not simply forget what your body went through. The procedures, the scars, the burns, the vomiting, the needles; and that vulnerability stays with you long after treatment is finished.
When you feel a new ache, you immediately wonder it might be. Scans and follow-up appointments can bring a kind of anxiety that is hard to explain to anyone who has not lived it. And somewhere in the background, there is often a quiet panicky thought that you cannot quite silence; you wonder if it’s come back.
I’m not pretending that surviving cancer isn’t something to be thankful for, because it is. But that doesn’t mean everything goes back to the way it was. It doesn’t mean the damage disappears, or that life feels simple and easy again. A lot of us are learning how to live in bodies that were permanently changed, and we’re doing it while people assume we should just feel lucky and move on.
If you haven’t walked this road yourself, I hope what I’ve shared here makes it a little easier to understand. And if you have walked this road, I hope you know you’re not wrong for admitting it’s been hard.
You can be grateful to be here and still be honest about what it cost you. Those two things don’t cancel each other out.
Accessibility Does Not Mean Everything for Everyone
Accessibility does not require that every space be usable by every person with every possible disability, nor has that ever been the standard. Absolute accessibility is neither realistic nor necessary. The relevant question for leaders is not whether perfection is possible, but whether reasonable and foreseeable barriers are being left in place without justification.
A rock-climbing wall, for example, cannot be made accessible to a person without upper or lower limb function without ceasing to be a climbing wall. These are legitimate limits and acknowledging them is not discrimination. It is clarity.
Most public spaces and civic functions, however, do not fall into this category. Meeting rooms, polling places, sidewalks, libraries, schools, parks, public hearings, and community events lose nothing by being designed or renovated to be accessible. In these settings, barriers such as stairs without ramps, hallways being used for storage that makes them inaccessible for mobility-impaired people, meetings without captions or interpreters, inaccessible seating, or restrooms that cannot be utilized by wheelchair users do not serve the function of the space at all. They simply exclude people.
The False Dilemma of “You Can’t Include Everyone”
When leaders argue that “you cannot include everyone,” they often confuse real limitations with design choices that could easily be changed. This framing creates a false dilemma that justifies inaction. The appropriate standard is inclusion wherever access does not interfere with the intended function of the space, and exclusion only where that function would be fundamentally altered.
Doing nothing about accessibility is still a decision about who gets to participate. It is a policy decision that prioritizes convenience, tradition, or cost over participation. Effective leadership treats accessibility as infrastructure rather than accommodation, assumes disabled people will be present, and removes barriers that exist only because no one in authority bothered to question them.
The Problem with “Accessibility Reactions”
But another way of not planning for accessibility is by doing “accessibility reactions.” Accessibility reactions are when new or modified accessibility is determined only by requests from a single family seeking a modification for one specific disabled child, family member, or small, yet vocal advocacy group. Leaders and front-end staff should of course respond with care and urgency when a need is raised, but the request should also trigger a broader question: is this an isolated situation, or is it a visible symptom of a larger access gap that affects many disabled people?
If accessibility is handled only through one-off requests, communities risk investing time and money in highly specialized solutions that serve one person while leaving larger, more basic barriers untouched. That approach can create the appearance of inclusion while continuing to exclude a far greater number of people from essential services, public participation, and civic life.
Baseline Access Must Come First
A better approach is to look for baseline access barriers first and then layering individualized accommodations on top of that foundation when needed. For example, a city might install a wheelchair-accessible swing at one park to meet the needs of a child who uses a heavy electric wheelchair. That may be a meaningful improvement for that family, but it does not address the larger question of whether wheelchair users can access the pavilions at any of the parks, whether there is usable seating throughout the space, or whether restrooms and pathways are truly accessible.
Similarly, holding a major public meeting in a venue where the only seating is bleachers sends a clear message about who is expected to attend. Even if staff are willing to “make adjustments” on request, the default setup already excludes wheelchair users and others who cannot use bleachers. If leaders want participation, access cannot be optional, improvised, or dependent on individuals having to ask for what should have been anticipated.
When Easy Fixes Replace Real Solutions
Too often, community leaders are willing to address accessibility issues that are easy, visible, and politically safe, while avoiding harder, more systemic barriers that require coordination, enforcement, or internal conflict. Installing a ramp in a location where there is ample space and minimal pushback may be straightforward.
Addressing the fact that on-street parallel parking is the only parking available, making access impossible for wheelchair users, is not. Enforcing laws against residents who block sidewalks with parked cars is not. When people park across sidewalks so they can fit more vehicles into their driveways, they block access not only for wheelchair users, but also for people using rollators, parents with strollers, and others with mobility needs.
Yet these violations are often ignored because enforcing them would require police departments, public works, and local leadership to prioritize accessibility over convenience. When a police chief dismisses parking enforcement by claiming there are more important things to do, the result is predictable. Disabled people are the ones who lose access to essential meetings, services, and civic life.
Internal power struggles and departmental avoidance may be invisible to the public, but their impact is not. When leaders fail to resolve these conflicts, accessibility becomes optional, and people with disabilities pay the price.
When Accessibility Exists Only on Paper
Another critical and often overlooked area is code enforcement. Many communities are diligent about regulating visible, easily measured requirements such as the number of designated accessible parking spaces in shopping centers, which are typically calculated by square footage and routinely inspected. These requirements are clear, familiar, and relatively easy to enforce.
Accessibility inside buildings, however, is far less consistently monitored. Small stores and boutiques often fill their spaces with merchandise to the point that aisles are too narrow for a wheelchair user, a person using a rollator, or someone with mobility limitations to even enter the store, let alone shop independently. Beauty shops and nail salons, particularly those that are independently owned rather than national chains, frequently create similar barriers. In an effort to maximize revenue, they install too many service stations or crowd their floors with product displays, leaving insufficient space for disabled customers to navigate safely or reach services. These barriers are rarely checked proactively. At best, they are addressed only after a complaint is filed, and even then, follow-up is inconsistent or incomplete.
The same pattern appears in restaurants and public buildings where accessible restrooms technically exist, but hallways leading to them are blocked by boxes, stacked chairs, or stored equipment. When access routes are obstructed, the presence of an accessible restroom becomes meaningless. In many retail stores, accessible changing rooms are routinely used for storage, filled with boxes of hangers, incoming stock waiting to be put out, or outgoing trash, rendering them unavailable to the people who need them.
In larger buildings, elevators that serve both the public and janitorial staff are frequently treated as storage or transport space. Trash bins, laundry carts, bundled linens, or bags of refuse are left inside, sometimes for extended periods. When this happens, a disabled person may be completely blocked from reaching another floor, with no way to alert staff or meeting participants that access has been cut off.
Outdoor access is undermined in similar ways. The striped access areas next to designated parking spaces are often blocked by motorcycles or street-legal golf carts. This can make it impossible for a wheelchair user to deploy a ramp or safely exit their vehicle. In some cases, people return to their cars only to find they must wait until the motorcycle or golf cart owner reappears, which is especially dangerous in extreme heat, high winds, or heavy rain. Sidewalks are also frequently obstructed by bicycles or scooters chained to poles and traffic signs, blocking passage for hours at a time. When this happens, disabled people who are stopped by the obstruction often have no practical way to resolve the situation.
In each of these cases, accessibility exists on paper but not in reality. Without consistent enforcement and clear accountability, basic access can be undone by everyday operational decisions. The result is predictable. People with disabilities are excluded from spaces and services they are legally entitled to use, not because access was impossible, but because maintaining it was not treated as a priority.
Rethinking “The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number”
For community leaders, the answer to accessibility cannot be reduced to the old adage of “doing the greatest good for the greatest number,” because that logic breaks down the moment disability is involved. If left unchallenged, it simply becomes a way to justify serving the largest non-disabled majority while treating disabled people as a secondary concern or an added expense. That is not sound leadership.
Accessibility is not about maximizing convenience for most people. It is about removing barriers that prevent entire groups from participating in shared civic life. The right question is not “who represents the largest group,” but “who is being prevented from entering, participating, or being heard at all.”
When leaders focus on removing the barriers that fully block participation, access decisions become clearer and more defensible. Designing for people who are most likely to be excluded almost always improves the experience for everyone else as well. Ramps also help parents with strollers and workers with carts. Clear signage benefits visitors and first-time attendees. Wider aisles reduce congestion and improve safety.
Accessibility works best when it is treated as a requirement for full participation, not as a favor or an exception. A community should be judged by whether people with the least power can take part without having to ask for special permission or extraordinary help.
Making Hard Choices with Limited Resources
Communities also have to acknowledge that accessibility decisions are made within real budget limits. City and county resources are not infinite, and leaders are often faced with difficult choices, such as whether to allocate funds to make one public building accessible or to direct those same funds toward improving access in a park, library, or transportation corridor.
These decisions are especially complex in historic communities, where many civic buildings were constructed long before accessibility standards existed. Stair-only entrances, inadequate or poorly placed ramps, buildings without elevators, and narrow interior layouts are common. Mixed-use neighborhoods further complicate the issue, with government offices, private homes, apartments, and businesses sharing limited on-street parking and constrained public space.
Acknowledging these constraints is necessary, but it cannot become a reason for inaction. Prioritization must be guided by impact.
Leaders should focus first on changes that open access to essential services, public decision-making, and daily civic participation for the greatest number of people. When budgets are limited, the question is not whether accessibility can be afforded everywhere at once, but whether investments are being directed where exclusion is most severe and consequences are highest.
In historic communities especially, thoughtful planning, phased improvements, and coordinated use of funds are essential to avoid preserving tradition at the expense of participation.
Accessibility as a Measure of Leadership
At its core, accessibility is a leadership decision. It reflects whose time, presence, and participation are valued enough to plan for in advance. Communities already make choices every day about where to invest, what to enforce, and which problems are considered urgent. Accessibility belongs in those decisions.
Accessibility is not achieved through good intentions or symbolic gestures. It is built through planning, enforcement, and follow-through. Communities that treat access as optional, reactive, or secondary inevitably create systems that work only for those already able to navigate them.
Communities that plan for access make a different choice. They recognize that participation in civic life is not a privilege reserved for those who can climb stairs, fit into narrow aisles, or advocate loudly for themselves. It is a shared responsibility. Leadership is not defined by how well a community preserves convenience or tradition, but by whether it makes room for people who have too often been pushed aside or left unheard.
When you come from a world shaped by trauma, you learn to explain and justify everything so others don’t misunderstand you or get upset with you. You are always bracing for the explosion of anger, dismay, or indignation. You assume their response might be to tear you down, no matter how carefully you choose your words or how hard you try to do everything “right.”
This is the reality of some forms of trauma. You are kept off balance because you never know whether you will be appreciated, dismissed, or attacked. That instability is often intentional on the part of those who traumatized you, even if they will never admit it.
As you heal, you begin to understand that you only need to explain yourself when you choose to. You learn that how others perceive your truth is up to them. And if there is misunderstanding, the people meant to be in your circle will ask, not assume, not explode, and not tear you down.
So when you feel the urge to over explain, to justify ordinary actions, or to soothe ruffled feathers before they are even ruffled, pause. Notice how far you have come. Remind yourself that you don’t just need people in your life. You need the right people. The people who listen. The people who respect you. The right people.
Other articles by Jan Mariet that you might enjoy:
You live in every corner of my heart. I hear your voice In the quiet pauses And gentle glances that fill a room. I think about you most during Ordinary moments.
Thinking back, when I was young, You were strong And the world seemed safe. You hugged me tight And I thought you’d Never let me go.
Now, I remember you most When time stole your thoughts And memories.
You’d look to me In the confusing moments. I’d smile, Hug you tight, And you knew You were safe.
As your thoughts Disappeared into the haze, I held your hand tight And reminded you That you were safe.
I wish I had hugged you tighter But I didn’t realize it would be Our last hug.
When your voice fell silent I heard my soul break Into a million small memories That don’t fit together But that define Us together More than any Mere words.
02/03/2025
If you’d like to read more poetry, try these links.
If you think ableism is just about rude comments or outdated language, you couldn’t be further from the truth. It runs far deeper than that. Ableism is structural. It is embedded in how our communities are designed and who is allowed to shape them.
You can see this most clearly when disabled people are shut out of leadership and decision-making roles—by the very glass ceilings and systemic inaccessibility that prevent us from rising into those positions in the first place. Yes, disabled people are sometimes “included,” but too often only as symbolic representation, limited to one narrow or convenient form of disability access.
These are not accidents. They are the predictable outcomes of excluding disabled people from authority and leadership.
This is what happens when disabled people are pushed to the margins instead of trusted as experts in our own lives. And it shows up everywhere.
No accessible entrances.
Accessible bathrooms used as storage for boxes and supplies.
Baby-changing tables mounted so high a wheelchair user couldn’t possibly reach them.
Inaccessible public meetings.
Housing policies built around a mythical “one size fits all.”
Services optimized for cost savings instead of human impact.
“Alzheimer’s” jokes tossed around casually.
Public meetings held without sign-language interpreters.
Schools without adapted facilities.
The R-word still being used as a punchline.
And the list goes on.
Ableism is so ingrained in our society that many people don’t even see it anymore. It’s normalized, excused, and minimized. Most people aren’t even aware they’re being ableist until someone points it out, often after harm has already occurred.
Representation cannot be merely symbolic. It is too important for that. Current statistics estimate that one in ten people has a disability. So why aren’t one in ten politicians disabled? Why aren’t one in ten CEOs disabled? If one in ten people has a disability, why are so few leaders disabled?
And while there is no single, universally agreed-upon statistic for daily wheelchair use in the U.S., multiple sources estimate that approximately one in forty people use a wheelchair as their primary mobility device. When was the last time you saw a top politician or community leader who was a daily wheelchair user? What about community planners, landscape designers, or architectural designers?
If one in approximately 40 people are wheelchair users, why isn’t a single member of the House of Representatives a daily wheelchair user? Why is only one member of the Senate an occasional wheelchair user? There are 535 voting members of Congress, and yet, only one is a wheelchair user.
If Congress reflected the general U.S. population, you would expect about 13–14 daily wheelchair users among its members. In reality, there is only one wheelchair user.
Obviously, some professions have essential physical requirements that naturally exclude wheelchair users. You would not expect to find NFL players who are daily wheelchair users, nor active-duty firefighters, combat soldiers, roofers, or commercial airline pilots.
These are roles in which the core physical functions of the job genuinely cannot be performed from a wheelchair. This is not discrimination; it is reality. It would be no more reasonable than expecting a deaf and non-speaking person to be an opera singer, or a person missing both upper and lower limbs to be a rock climber.
There are, in fact, a small number of professions where essential physical requirements naturally exclude wheelchair users or people with other disabilities, but they are the exception, not the rule. Yet these few examples are routinely used to justify exclusion everywhere else.
When we talk about the absence of people with disabilities, community and political leadership do not fall into that category. Our leaders come from a wide range of backgrounds, professions, communities, and educational paths. These roles are not defined by physical endurance, speed, or mobility, but by judgment, experience, and the ability to serve
The absence of disabled leaders isn’t accidental. Leadership in the U.S. has long been built around an able-bodied ideal, and when disability appears, it’s either hidden, reframed, or erased.
When disabled people are in leadership, systems shift. Barriers are anticipated instead of apologized for later. Access is built in, not patched on afterward. Exclusion is prevented, not explained away.
Nothing changes unless we, disabled people and those who support full accessibility, use our voices. Real change does not come from isolated stories spoken into the social-media void. It comes from collective pressure, shared advocacy, and disabled people showing up together where decisions are actually made — if we can get through the door, up the steps, or find accessible seating.
My mother, myself, Two sides of a mirror, When the glass is dim And cloudy.
Stained in a few places, A scratch here or there, There is no doubt We are alike in so many ways And yet, we always Moved in different directions.
I recall the similarities And the differences As if they were items on a shopping list I left home on the counter Even though I knew it well.
Same disability, Both treated differently. One in the 1930s and the other In the 1960s. So differently, but still Barbaric by any modern definition.
Cloaked in trauma That ruled our adult lives While we were both so clueless About how it affected us.
We were both told stories About ourselves that hid the truth.
You, the child of a disabled father Who was denied an education That was considered a waste Of time and resources In a world that once Considered a handicap A moral failing.
Me, the child of a disabled mother Who never allowed that word to cross Her lips or be said in any conversation And who overcame every obstacle.
Also me, the child who never understood How dangerous the word ‘handicapped’ Used to be back when Handicapped children had no legal right To a public education.
You taught me to say, I’m not Handicapped. There was a little problem with my legs When I was born, and I had surgery To fix it, and it left me a little bit lame.
Just as you were taught to say you weren’t Either. You were simply dropped Down a flight of concrete stairs By an elderly aunt And that injury led to your issues.
You grew up believing your story As much as I grew up believing mine Until the facts that had been concealed So long ago, could no longer Be hidden.
Until the photos, the records, the Whispered stories among relatives, Could no longer be denied.
You spent your life Saying only what needed to be said, Keeping silent Or spinning a story that made things Less dangerous, less ominous Until neither of us could tell The truth from the story. You chose the reality You could bear.
I spent my life Saying everything That came into my mind Oversharing with anyone who’d listen Or spinning an ever-changing story that made things Happier, calmer, or in some way richer, Until I became lost in it As well. I chose the reality I could bear, too.
My mother, myself, Two sides of a mirror, We became the flip side Of each other. Forever imitating one another But always moving to The opposite side.
Only able to touch Through the cold, shivery Smoothness That kept us eternally moving The other way.
I’m right here. You may not notice me anymore, but I am still here.
You may think my smile means something. You may believe me when I say, “I’m fine,” because you want to believe me — and then move on.
What else am I supposed to say? When your body repeatedly falls apart, and there is nothing left to try to stop it, are you going to announce, “I’m desperately ill… again”?
I’ve learned that my reality makes people uncomfortable, because eventually, even compassion has a limit. But it’s still my reality.
My reality is more than you want to know, or maybe more than you can handle knowing. But either way, I’m still here, handling it, because what other choice do I have?
Planning feels pointless when every plan dissolves before my eyes. It’s hard to take action when your body repeatedly, relentlessly lets you down; when illness and medical urgency demand to be heard above all else.
I hold back even on the things I genuinely want to do, not because I don’t care, not because I don’t have desires, but because caring has become exhausting, and hoping has a cost I can no longer pay.
I’ve stopped imagining the future, not because I don’t care, not because I don’t want one, but because I no longer know where I fit inside it. Every time I imagine a life ahead, it crumbles before my eyes, and no amount of work or effort changes that reality.
Hope becomes dangerous. Planning becomes cruel. When every plan is eventually taken from you, what is the point of hoping?
The dreams I held, and still hold, don’t disappear, I just quietly let them go as quickly as they appear. My hand can’t hold the string tight enough, and I watch them, like balloons, disappear into the sky.
They linger as reminders that I am no longer fully living, and yet, I am not dead yet, either. I’m living in the ether of illness. I am slowly becoming a memory; someone old friends check in on once in a while before scurrying on with their real lives, that no longer include me.
Empathy becomes cruel when it is the only pattern left in your life. Sympathy is even crueler.
When your choices are ‘hope and constant disappointment’ or ‘planning for something that will be taken from you and leave you emptier than before’, what do you choose? After a while, you stop choosing at all.
Do you sit and watch the world go by? Do you keep talking about the illnesses that quietly steal your life away? Or do you try to converse, carefully, briefly, until even that becomes too much for others to carry?
After a while, conversation seems useless, too. You stop contacting anyone, and you imagine their great relief. And in many ways, your voice starts to embrace the silence. It’s just easier.
So, I read. I think. I write about things that seem important to fill the minutes and hours that I exist. I tell myself these things matter. And I try to believe it.
Then, even that becomes hollow, because I know, so well, that words are not actions, and the actions are beyond what I can do. Naively, I thought maybe my words would enough, but slowly, relentlessly, I have realized that is not true – at least not for me.
How desperately I want it to be true, how desperately I wanted my written words to become my voice, but desperation does not change reality. Words unread are nothing at all. Words just become something to fill the relentless time that each day takes.
That is the rhythm of my life now. I am a songbird that no longer has a voice. I am an eagle that can no longer soar. I am the broken-down old horse that grazes on a barren field, trudges to a cold stall at night, and searches for a slice of apple in the empty pockets of faceless people I no longer know.
This is nothing like living. I have lived and I remember what it feels like. I remember having a small spark that lit one person’s way. The spark is gone, the way has gone dark, and this is nothing like living.
I am the old dog who waits by the door for an owner that has passed away, and I have no idea – only long, empty, faithful days of waiting for a joyful reunion that will never come.
I’m right here. You may not notice me anymore, but I am still here. Please, someone notice me.
