Disability and other identities are intrinsically linked together, and the disability community has long called for DEI to include disability. Anyone can become disabled at any time, and identity can impact access to, and likelihood of, various diagnoses. Unfortunately, disability is often used as a bogeyman, or a way of gatekeeping access. For example, some states have regulations that “create barriers to gender affirming care for autistic people and people with mental health disabilities” (Autism Self Advocacy Network, 3/22/23). Conversely, there are efforts to limit accessibility to only include some disabled people. For example, a key argument of an ongoing court cases attacking section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Texas v. Becerra) is that gender dysphoria cannot be validly included under the definition of disability (Mother Jones, 10/15/24). And although the disability community has always included people of color, trans and LGBTQ people, it has not always fully welcomed them.

To unpack this, it helps to understand what “counts” as disability. Disability is defined quite broadly in relevant federal laws (Section 504 and the ADA), as anything that “substantially limits a person’s ability to perform major life activities,” has a “record of such impairment“, or is “regarded as having such an impairment.¹” However, ableism, bias and politics may influence access to this status. For example, many organizations require diagnosis to provide accommodations, and this process can exclude people more likely to encounter medical ableism², lower income groups,³ or those who lack access to information about their disability rights⁴. An alternative (which I use in my work) is to trust disabled people to know whether and how they are disabled. This includes trans people, who may have gender dysphoria that is disabling.

Now there is a federal campaign to against against Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA)⁵ . This includes accessibility: The White House has stopped including sign language interpretation in press briefings and videos (National Association of the Deaf, 1/31/25) and taken away interpretation services from federal employees (The Daily Moth). It also includes DEI. An Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memo issued 2/5/25 argued against not only affirmative action, but also any “training or professional development.” The memo includes, for example, ERGs that promote “employee retention agendas.” The National Science Foundation (NSF) wrote to PIs that “All NSF grantees must [cease] all non-compliant activities… that [use] DEIA principles and frameworks.”

Yet this campaign is also trying to divide us. On the one hand, the campaign is aggressive to the point of being nonsensical. One recent example is the recent document purge at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which includes documents that simply use words such as “diverse” no matter the context. A case in point is the recently deleted “OSHA Best Practices for Protecting EMS Responders During Treatment and Transport of Victims of Hazardous Substance Releases,”⁶ which mentions the “diverse conditions under which EMS responders could work.” This rollback in the name of DEIA is not only unrelated to DEIA, it puts workers at further risk of becoming disabled.

On the other hand, that same Feb 5th OPM memo retains some disability related protections, stating “agencies should not terminate or prohibit accessibility or disability-related accommodations, assistance, or other programs that are required by [law].” While this final statement is reassuring regarding basic access rights, it is also critical to recognize that, in the words of Audrey Lorde, “We do not live single issue lives.” This is behind a key principle of disability justice (Sins Invalid), which demands that “no body or mind can be left behind” and is committed to cross-disability and cross-movement solidarity.

I have had to navigate programs in which I was the only woman, and only disabled person that I knew, for much of my early career. I want to emphasize how valuable and essential such programs are. Had I not been invited to attend the very first symposium on women and computing in the 90s, which featured many amazing women in STEM as speakers, I would not be a researcher today — my mentors in college assumed that I would go to med school, without ever asking me. Yet the US government is removing any evidence of such role models from its halls and websites.⁷ It was with the help of disabled mentors as a new faculty member that I began to evolve and grow my disability identity. In my sign language learning, I have only been exposed to signs that describe my queer identity in queer-led spaces.

Despite recent events, it continues to be illegal both to violate laws that provide for disability accommodation, and to discriminate based on “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”⁸ To my mind, obeying the law means actively working not to discriminate, including learning about and trying to rectify unfair advantages where I observe them. The narrow definition of accessibility in the recent OPM memo only protects one thing (accommodations) for one group (disabled people). We must not comply “in advance,” but instead continue working together toward a fair and just world for all affected communities.

Photo credit: Disabled And Here

1. This later statement also means that if a person is effectively using assistive technology for accommodation, they still qualify as disabled even if they can now perform relevant activities (since they have a “record” of impairment). ↩︎
2. Janz, Heidi L. “Ableism: the undiagnosed malady afflicting medicine.” CMAJ 191.17 (2019): E478-E479.
   APA ↩︎
3. N. J. Evans, E. M. Broido, K. R. Brown, and A. K. Wilke. Disability in Higher Education: A social justice approach. John Wiley & Sons, 2017. ↩︎
4. J. Banks. Barriers and supports to postsecondary transition: Case studies of African American students with disabilities. Remedial and Special Education, 35(1):28–39, 2014. ↩︎
5. AAPD has written a great explainer of the campaign and how it impacts disabled people. https://www.aapd.com/explaining-deia-recent-actions/ ↩︎
6. Best Practices for Protecting EMS Responders during Treatment and Transport of Victims of Hazardous Substance Releases, Occupational Safety and Health Administration U.S. Department of Labor, OSHA 3370-11, 2009, available via the Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/20241128074409/https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OSHA3370-protecting-EMS-respondersSM.pdf). ↩︎
7. The Women in STEM blog is working to rectify this: https://womeninstemus.blogspot.com/2025/02/us-women-in-stem-manifesto.html ↩︎
8. Civil Rights Act (1964) https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act ↩︎