Disability Rights Quotes

“It is time for housing owner associations to move past old prejudices and prioritize making community life fully accessible and inclusive for individuals with disabilities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“There is a growing emphasis on acceptance and inclusion across the globe. This shift is fostering more inclusive societies where people of all backgrounds can thrive. As we continue to break down barriers and promote equality, we can look forward to a future where everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential.”
― J. Edwards Holt

“When we talk about accessibility issues, we're highlighting societal flaws, not the limitations of individuals with disabilities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Accessibility is hindered by societal constructs, not by the capabilities of persons with disabilities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“The obstacle to full accessibility is society's resistance to change, not the functional limitations of persons with disabilities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“law's objective to fostering invention and creativity can only be achieved when IP systems are made fully accessible to everyone, especially individuals with disabilities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Intellectual Property law's objective to foster invention and creativity can only be achieved when IP systems are made fully accessible to everyone, especially persons with disabilities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“The objectives of IP law to advance creative and inventive pursuits will only be effectively served when the IP Office facilitates full accessibility for all, including persons with disabilities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Fulfilling the promise of IP law in encouraging innovation and creativity hinges on the complete accessibility of IP Office systems for all, including persons with disabilities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“IP law's mission to stimulate creative and inventive activities will reach its full potential only when the Indian IP Office's systems are made entirely accessible to all, including persons with disabilities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Full accessibility in IP Office systems for everyone, including those with disabilities, is key to truly fulfilling the objectives of IP law in promoting creativity and innovation.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“The spirit of IP law, aimed at encouraging creative and inventive endeavors, can only be realized when the IP Office ensures complete accessibility for all, including persons with disabilities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“It is a duty, not a choice, for housing communities to ensure accessibility, enabling individuals with disabilities to engage fully and equally in every aspect of life in the community.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Accessibility in housing communities is an essential duty, not a negotiable option, for the complete and equitable inclusion of persons with disabilities in all walks of community life.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Housing associations must view accessibility not as an optional feature, but as an essential obligation to ensure that persons with disabilities have equal opportunities in every aspect of life in the community.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Housing owners' associations need to ensure that persons with disabilities can join in all social and cultural events in the community, just like everyone else by facilitating accessibility.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Imagine a community where everyone truly belongs. Housing owners' associations can make this a reality by ensuring that people with disabilities have full access to social and cultural activities within their communities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Housing owner associations must shed their deep-seated biases and focus their efforts on creating an accessible community where persons with disabilities can participate fully and equally.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Housing owner associations need to put aside long-held discriminatory attitudes and concentrate on ensuring that persons with disabilities have equal opportunities to engage in all aspects of community life.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“The call to action for housing owner associations is clear: abandon ingrained discriminatory mindsets and commit to facilitating an environment where people with disabilities can enjoy full and equal participation in community activities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“For a truly inclusive community, housing owner associations must confront and set aside their deep-rooted discriminatory views, focusing instead on enabling complete and equal participation for persons with disabilities in every facet of community life.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Advocacy is for all of us; advocacy is a way of life. It is a natural response to the injustice and inequality in the world. While you and I may not have sole responsibility for these inequities, that does not alter its reality.

Ki'tay D. Davidson & TL (Talila A. Lewis)
Pg. 30”
― Alice Wong

“Advocacy is for all of us; advocacy is a way of life. It is a natural response to the injustice and inequality in the world. While you and I may not have sole responsibility for these inequities, that does not alter its reality.

Ki'tay D. Davidson & TL (Talila A. Lewis)
Pg. 30”
― Talila A. Lewis, Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century

“Social Progress: There is a growing emphasis on acceptance and inclusion across the globe. This shift is fostering more inclusive societies where people of all backgrounds can thrive. As we continue to break down barriers and promote equality, we can look forward to a future where everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential.”
― J. Edwards Holt

“And that quote, “The only disability in life is a
bad attitude,” the reason that that’s bullshit is because it’s just not true, because of the social model of disability. No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. Never. Smiling at a television screen isn’t going to make closed captions appear for people who are deaf. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshop and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into braille. It’s just not going to happen.”
― Stella Young

“According to The History of the Body, edited by Corbin, Courtine, and Vigarello, the "criminalization of the gaze" that took hold around the dawn of the twentieth century had led to the decline of the freak show, which was subsequently replaced in popularity by the Monsters of Hollywood. Now, with costumes serving as an ethical cushion, people could enjoy ogling deformity without guilt or reserve.”
― Saou Ichikawa, Hunchback

“The disability justice solution is not to abandon those projects when people are exhausted, but to continue to figure out how to resource the work. Our crip skills and working, living, and organizing with low spoons are going to be crucial. They already are… We have knowledge the world needs.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs

“When I think of disabled literature and writing, I can think of a breadth of writing that spans decades and generations, that uses the D-word and does not. I think of Audre Lorde—Black Lesbian poet warrior mother, legally blind, living and dying with cancer, whose work shines with the knowledge she gained from living with bodily difference and fighting the medical industrial complex. I think of Gloria Anzaldúa, queer Latinx maestra who started her period at age three and lived with bodily and reprogenital differences, living and dying with diabetes.

Some of my work as a disability justice writer has been to look at the legacies and work of those foundational second-wave queer and trans feminist writers and creators of color—Audre Lorde and June Jordan, Gloria Anzaldúa and Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, Chrystos and Sapphire, to name a few—and to witness the disability all up in their work, even if they did not use that word because of any number of factors including the whiteness of the disability rights movement of the time.

June's last decade of writing was all about her cancer. Gloria's writing had everything to do with her diabetes and neurodivergence and life-long bodily differences. Marsha and Sylvia were both neurodivergent Trans Black and Latinx activists and creators whose writing, performance, and art was at the center of their lives and activism. Chrystos and Sapphire's Indigenous and Black feminist incest survivor stories and poetry write from spaces of surviving extreme trauma, chronic pain from stripping and cleaning houses, CPTSD, grief, and psychiatrization.

"I also think of the deep legacy of disabled writers (some dead, some still living but having done this for a while) who intentionally, politically identified as disabled.

Laura Hershey. Leroy Moore. Qwo-Li Driskill. Aurora Levins Morales. Billie Rain. Dani Montgomery. Nomy Lamm. Cheryl Marie Wade. Emi Koyama. Pat Parker. Tatiana de la tierra. Raymond Luczak. Anne Finger. Leslie Feinberg, who died of Lyme disease. Peggy Munson. Beth Brant. Vickie Sears. Writers who are small press, micro-press, self-published, indie press, out of print. Writers I know and cherish, whose names I call when I talk about disabled writing.

We are so often kept apart, we disabled people, and kept from knowing each other's names. We are told not to hang out with the other kid with cerebral palsy, told to deny or downplay our disabilities or Deafness or ND. We often grow up not learning disabled history, Deaf literature, or that those are even a thing.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs

“I thought of Care Work as a community in your pocket when you have no crip friends or you are all alone, as so often we are. I have written or co-created nine books, but it wasn't until my fourth book that I started writing unapologetically about disability. It still felt like a risk. As a friend once said, "Everyone wants to write the poem that makes people go "yeah!" and pump their fist at the performance." So much of the time when I'd tried to write, or read poetry about being disabled, about being chronically ill, the opposite happened: instead of wild clapping and screaming, I got met with awkward silence, the nervous laughter, the "I'm not sure if it's OK to laugh," the #SadFace. If you wanted to be the best, to have people love your work, too often if felt like too much of a risk to write and perform crip work.

I was able to finally take that risk and write and perform and publish disabled poems in Bodymap, my third book of poetry, because of the collective work in disability justice writing and performance. Because of Sins Invalid and individual disabled BIPOC writers, because there was starting to be a movement of disabled writers and creators, queer and of color, who were creating space to do our work. I could believe there was an audience who was hungry for the work, and I got it. Without that, my writing would have stayed in my journal, stayed in the drafts that didn't make it into the books I published.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs

“I do know how expensive it is to be helpless. How many things don’t count as necessary. A wheelchair ramp. A wheelchair van. Clothes, air conditioning, prayer cards.”
― Betty Culley, Three Things I Know Are True