What Disability Pride Taught Me

Beyond My Own World

Disability Pride may seem like only a month on the calendar. But it’s built from a decades-long civil rights movement by people with disabilities. It's rooted in the idea that disability is not a deficiency to fix or overcome, but it’s an identity to honor. We belong fully, and the world should be built to reflect that.

I'm Deaf and I use sign language. These are central to my identity and shape how I interact with the world. For most of my life, my world was largely a Deaf world: communicating in ASL, interacting with my Deaf community, and seeing the world through that frame of reference.

I didn’t feel the need to question that perspective until Disability Pride pushed me to step outside of it. When I started connecting with people with other disabilities, I felt a change in the way I viewed the larger disability community. I felt connected hearing people's actual stories. 

Those conversations also showed me how much overlap there is. A Deaf person's frustration with a text-heavy page isn't uniquely a Deaf experience. Someone with a cognitive disability feels it, too. So does a non-native English speaker. When we start with the people most often left out, we end up building something that works better for everyone.

Reframing How We Talk About Accessibility

When I work with people across Harvard, whether content creators, designers, developers, faculty, or managers, I notice that technical compliance requirements work best alongside human context. While compliance standards are essential, I find that when people also hear from someone with lived experience, their understanding deepens and their commitment grows.

 Storytelling builds connection: 

• A student with a mobility disability navigating a form that times out before they can finish it. 
• Someone with anxiety trying to make sense of a page so cluttered it's impossible to know where to start. 
• A person with low vision hitting a wall of images with no alt text, left to guess what the page is even about.

We sometimes assume we know what a disabled person can or can't do. A Deaf person won't major in music. A blind person won't pursue art. These hidden biases can shape how we build content. Disability is a spectrum, far more complex than any single definition allows. When we design with that in mind, we stop building for a narrow idea of disability and start building for the full range of human experience.

Finding Joy in the Work

Disability Pride reminded me that disability culture is rich, creative, and joyful. Holding that fullness in mind changes how I show up: I'm more curious when I review content, more creative when I suggest solutions, and more energized overall.

Giving voice to disability in an inaccessible world can feel like an uphill battle at times. Pride adds celebration to the mix, and that balance is good for the work and honestly, good for me, too.

Turning Accessibility Into A Values-Driven Practice

Are you interested in building on your own accessibility knowledge? Digital Accessibility Services and University Disability Resources offer trainings, workshops, and events that cover technical guidance, Harvard-specific examples, and the lived experiences of people with disabilities. 

You’re also welcome to join AbilityPlus, an employee resource group for disabled faculty and staff and their allies. These are spaces to hear directly from disabled people and build an understanding of the real-world experiences of colleagues with disabilities at Harvard. 

Beyond Harvard, the City of Boston’s Disability Events page and the MassAbility program can point you toward community spaces. It is a great way to connect with local disability communities. Showing up and listening, and building genuine relationships is one of the most valuable things you can do. Those connections may change how you think about everything you build.

A values-driven practice works best when you consider who you can learn from before you design and build accessible content. When disabled people are part of your professional world and not just the subject of your work, your questions get better, your assumptions get challenged, and the content you create reflects a much fuller picture of who will actually use it.