Disability rights, accessibility, and inclusive design

Disability rights are civil rights. They are not edge cases, special favors, or side issues to address after everything else. Disability is part of the human condition. It touches every family eventually— through illness, injury, aging, trauma, mental health conditions, or the simple reality of being human over time.

The question is not whether disability exists. The question is whether our systems are designed to include people as they are, or punish them for not fitting some narrow idea of “normal.”

As a disabled veteran, this is deeply personal to me. I live every day through the lens of accessibility. I know what it means to navigate the world through accommodation and access, and sometimes only because the Americans with Disabilities Act gives people the legal power to force systems to do what they should have done in the first place. I know what it feels like when those systems work, and I know what it costs when they do not. Disability access is not abstract to me. It is lived reality.

I have spent years advocating for accessibility, disability rights, inclusive design, and the simple principle that dignity should not depend on how hard someone is forced to fight just to be treated like a human being. Too often, disabled people are made to navigate systems that were clearly never designed with them in mind— and then expected to be grateful for whatever accommodation is offered after the exclusion or harm has already occurred.

That is backwards. Housing, transportation, healthcare, employment, public spaces, government services, emergency planning, and civic participation should be designed inclusively from the beginning. Accessibility should not be an afterthought, and inclusive design should not be treated like an expensive extra that can be cut when budgets get tight.

When we build systems that work for disabled people, we build systems that work better for everyone— parents pushing strollers, seniors aging in place, people recovering from surgery or injury, workers whose abilities change over time, and communities trying to function with greater dignity, independence, and ease.

As a legislator, I will treat accessibility as a design standard across policy areas, not as a separate issue contained in one section of the law. State-funded buildings, housing, transportation systems, websites, public meetings, voting systems, and emergency plans should be accessible from the start.

Government should also be examining the benefits cliffs, employment barriers, and bureaucratic rules that punish disabled people for working, saving money, getting married, or trying to build greater independence.

I also oppose what I often call administrative cruelty— endless paperwork, arbitrary denials, long delays, contradictory requirements, and adversarial bureaucracies that force people to prove their suffering over and over again just to receive support, services, or care for which they already qualify.

That cruelty is not neutral. It is policy violence by exhaustion. And it falls hardest on the people with the least time, money, energy, health, and institutional power to fight back.

Utah’s Medicaid home- and community-based services system is one clear example. These waivers help people with intellectual, developmental, physical, and other qualifying disabilities remain in their homes and communities instead of being forced into institutional care. But a person can qualify for services through Utah’s Division of Services for People with Disabilities and still spend years waiting because the state has not funded enough capacity to meet the need.

As of July 2025, approximately 6,000 Utahns were on the DSPD waiting list, with an average wait of 5.4 years.

That is not simply a benefits problem. It is a budget choice the state continues to make about whose independence is worth supporting now and whose can be placed on hold. Behind every number is a person, a family, or an aging caregiver being told to keep carrying an unsustainable burden because the Legislature has decided that help can wait.

I support funding Medicaid home- and community-based services at a level that reflects actual need, while also investing in the direct-support workforce required to provide that care. Qualifying for help and actually receiving it should not be two different multiyear processes. A promise of support that never arrives is not support.

A resilient society plans for vulnerability instead of pretending it can engineer vulnerability away. It recognizes that disability is not a flaw in the human story. It is part of the human story. A government that understands that reality governs with greater humility, competence, and humanity.

Designing for difference does not weaken society. It strengthens it. It makes our communities more adaptable, more accessible, more humane, and better prepared for the realities of life.

That is not charity. That is civil rights. And it is good governance.