Letter from the editor: We missed Disability Pride Month

The Word didn’t publish in July — a month dedicate globally to disability and accessibility — because we ran out of funding

You probably noticed we didn’t have a July issue. If you missed the social media notifications, we had to suspend The Word in July due to a lack of funding.

And we are still short on funding to pay reporters and columnists this month.

I wish I could say that our parent organization, the Organization for Accessible Journalism, was alone in struggling for funding. But this is a sign of the times in the U.S. for nonprofits that focus on accessibility, disability, diversity, equity, inclusion, LGBT+, and social justice issues.

The Center for Effective Philanthropy raised the issue in a report earlier this year when it noted funding of all types is down for these types of nonprofits since Jan. 2025. Nonprofits are responding by laying off staff or closing operations all together.

But that’s not really showing the true harms. So let’s talk about it.

When we talk about a loss of federal grant funding, we’re talking about educational grants that support students who are learning in adaptive environments or using adaptive technology to learn.

We are talking about a loss of funding for educational aids for disabled students.

But we’re also talking about a loss of funding for research such as in the case of The National Research Center for Parents with Disabilities, who relies on a federal funding for the Center’s critical work.

“The Center’s work has illuminated many disparities that parents with disabilities experience. This includes discrimination within the child welfare system, exacerbated health disparities, social and economic inequalities, and penalties from discriminatory laws and policies that measure their right to parent solely on the presence of disability,” according to a July 15 press release that announced the federal grant the Center had previously received was no longer available to the Center.

In some ways, OAJ is lucky: we never had federal grants, so we don’t have to worry about them being pulled. Our budget has never exceeded $1,000 at any given time — and is usually far less than that — so we’re used to scraping by. We’ve always relied on individual donations, and found it’s hard to convince people to give, so we’re used to this tough situation.

But we’re in a moment, we’re the money is slamming into other political realities.

An attack on disability and accessibility

This summer hasn’t been great for disability rights.

In June, the Supreme Court refused to take up a case that left in place a ruling from the 8th Circuit Court that limited the rights of disabled people to sue to enforce Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act. In practice, Section 208 allows people with disabilities or limited reading skills to ask for assistance from a trusted individual to assist them fill out at their ballot. To enforce this, people have largely turned to lawsuits. Now that right is limited — at least in those states covered by the 8th Circuit Court.

On June 18, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Council issued a slip memo advising the Trump Administration that it had an admittedly novel interpretation of the 1999 Supreme Court case Olmstead v. L.C., which it based on the dissent issued by Justice Clarence Thomas. The DOJ opinion advises that previous understandings of discrimination against disabled people under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act are incorrect, and that states need not “integrate” disabled people. Practically, what the memo was advising was that the administration should not interpret Olmstead, Section 504, or Title II as requiring states to not institutionalize disabled people against their will if they can live in a community setting. The memo was decried by the disability community and disability rights advocates.

A month later, during Disability Pride Month, the DOJ published a notice that Olmstead was not enforceable.

Not to be outdone, the Trump Administration’s Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services looked at the Medicaid cuts from 2025’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” and said, “Hold my beer.” In June, CMS issued a rule finalized on July 31 that required states to implement work requirements so stringent that people considered medically frail may not qualify for the exemptions to work requirements previously created under Medicaid and continued in the 2025 Bill. Twenty-six states sued, stating that this violated the intention of the law passed by Congress and induced an undue administrative burden on the states.

“The Trump Administration’s attempt to impose new, burdensome requirements on Medicaid recipients threatens access to healthcare for our most vulnerable residents and families,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell in a press release announcing the lawsuit. “Congress made clear that people with serious medical conditions should not lose coverage. We are asking the court to block these unlawful provisions to protect Medicaid recipients…”

But there are ways to fight back — a few ways to fight back, in fact — and two of them start with journalism.

Fighting back through disability news

If your news outlet isn’t covering news that affects disabled folks, why not? The answer is probably simple: you don’t have someone covering disability news.

There are some great disability reporters doing great work out there — Sara Lutermann for the 19th, Julia Metraux at Mother Jones, and Emile Watkins at WBFO — but that’s not enough. Washington Post used to have the incomparable Amanda Morris, and the amazing Shruti Rajkumar has tons of disability reporting work experience.

These are reporters who know the ins and outs of the community and understand how to report the issues, not just for those with disabilities but so that it matters to all of your news consumers.

I urge you to find the funds to hire a disability reporter. I promise you that at least a quarter of the people in your community live with a disability of some kind, whether or not they identify with the term disabled. Back when we used to rely on the CDC for accurate data, the CDC identified that more than 50 percent of American adults had a chronic illness. This is where your disability reporter becomes so important. These are issues they understand. But they also understand the politics around disability. So hire one.

Fighting back through accessible journalism

One of the best ways to fight back is to inform people about what’s happening. When ICE is in your community. When the Supreme Court makes a decision that affects your city or county. When your state changes voting rules or congressional districts. And this is where making sure your news is accessible is so important.

Is your news site accessible to screen readers? Do you understand how to do alt text for a news photo? Do your news videos have closed captions and audio descriptions? (By the way, these are all things that The Word’s parent organization, OAJ, can train your news outlet how to do.)

If your news lacks these things, how many people can’t access your news? Do you know how many people are using things like alt text, light and dark modes, closed captioning, screen readers, alternative navigation, or other accessibility features on websites that are part of the Web Accessibility Content Guidelines (WCAG)? Let me give you an idea:

• 11 million Americans are deaf or hard of hearing, according to the National Deaf Center, citing the American Communities Survey.
• 48 million Americans are experiencing some form of hearing loss, according to the National Deaf Center citing the American Communities Survey.
• 8.1 million American adults are blind or have low vision, according to the American Foundation for the Blind citing the American Communities Survey.
• 5.6 million Americans live with a limb difference or limb loss, according to the Amputee Coalition citing a study the Coalition commissioned in 2024 with Avalere.
• 13.9 million American adults live with a cognitive disability, according to a Yale survey that followed trends in cognitive disability from 2013 to 2023.

This is hardly all the disability statistics I could provide, but I think it gives you an idea of just how many people in your audience or potential audience are disabled and could benefit from making your news accessible.

Yes, funding too

Of course, we need to fund disability and accessibility nonprofits. I feel like this goes without saying, but I need to say it.

We need to fund organizations that support people with disabilities. We need to fund the research that goes into health, education, work, and living for disabled people. We need to fund research centers like The National Research Center for Parents with Disabilities.

And we need to fund OAJ, so we can continue to do the work to train journalists, make tools like the Style and Accessibility Guide, and publish this magazine.

This administration is cutting off funding, so we need more private foundations to step up. We need businesses to step up. And we need individual donors to step up.

There’s simply no other way the disabled community survives this administration without significant harms.

Stacy Kess is the chief of editorial and accessibility for Equal Access Public Media. She previously worked as an editor and reporter at papers across the U.S. Find her on Bluesky at @stacykess.