July 2026
by Mimi Draft, ETB Communications Manager

July is Disability Pride Month, an annual celebration of people with disabilities and a commemoration of the Americans with Disabilities Act, signed into law July 26, 1990. This year’s theme is “The World Works Better With Us.”

I’ve spent more than a decade in the nonprofit sector. In nearly every role I’ve held, from intern to manager, diversity, equity, and inclusion have surfaced as central to how we deliver services to the people we serve. That has been true whether I was examining the income inequality faced by people seeking treatment for substance use or advocating for programs that gave parents tools to strengthen their families. I’ve been fortunate to work alongside teams that addressed the barriers standing between a person and their ability to thrive, not just survive.

As a Black woman from the American South, identity has always shaped how I understand the world around me. What Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw named intersectionality was present in my life long before I had the academic language for it.

So as a professional “do-gooder,” aka a nonprofit employee, it became impossible for me to ignore how these overlapping systems also shaped the lives of the clients we served. A few years ago, I started turning the word “inclusion” over in my mind. Did it mean everyone had room to show up as themselves? Was it the act of tolerating differences or truly considering them? I knew I hadn’t yet grasped what it meant to feel fully included in a society built on bias.

What Accessibility Actually Means

Around that same time, I began working for an organization that trains and supports providers serving people with disabilities, helping them build better access into their programs. Accessibility sits at the core of that team’s ethos, alongside diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Accessibility? I thought I understood it. It’s a wheelchair ramp. Elevator access next to the stairs. Braille on public signage. Closed captions on television. That was the full picture of an accessible environment, as far as I knew.

There is no real equity or inclusion without accessibility.

That role put me in constant conversation with my own life. As a child, my mother was medically retired and classified as legally disabled before she turned 40. But that was simply my normal. My dad cooked most of our meals on the nights my mom was too sick to, all while working 12-hour factory shifts and caretaking for his wife. My mother lived through long hospitalizations with sickle cell disease, hospitalizations that eventually pushed her out of a job she loved. And, oh yeah, I have sickle cell disease too, which meant my parents watched me like hawks anytime a sporting activity or a South Carolina summer afternoon tempted my adolescent mind.

That was just my life.

Wasn’t everyone raised by a career patient advocate? Didn’t everyone have a parent who knew the health care system inside and out? Didn’t everyone grow up sitting in the support groups and meetings that eventually became a thriving nonprofit organization? Not until I joined that accessibility-focused team did I understand that I’d been raised by people already doing the work of accessibility as a practice of inclusion.

What the Ramp Doesn’t Tell You

As a communications practitioner, my job is to learn an industry and help my employer reach and connect with the people they’re meant to serve. In that disability advocacy role, I realized I’d been living within disability justice as a guiding principle long before I had a name for it. I also realized how much further I still had to go.

I learned that a ramp and an elevator are real strides toward accessibility. But do the staff working inside have access to plain-language explanations of their roles and responsibilities? Closed captions and sign language interpreters are essential at any event, but is there a quiet space for people with sensory sensitivities to step away and regroup? Did the program account for different learning styles? Is there a remote or hybrid option for people managing physical disability or chronic illness? Is the language clear, plain, and direct enough to meet neurodivergent collaborators wherever they are?

You may never know if the person across from you has a disability, visible or invisible.

When an environment is both inclusive and accessible, there is less room to dismiss anyone’s ability to show up as their full self.

In that fully remote role, I once had a sickle cell flare-up that kept me in bed for about a week. Leadership never asked for a doctor’s note or rushed me back into meetings. Instead, they offered gentle check-ins and enough paid sick time to cover my absence without question.

Making Access the Standard

Accessibility is all around us, and yet we call it a perk. An amenity. A nice-to-have. What if we made it the standard instead?

In my work with Expanding the Bench® (ETB), I’ve learned so much about culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE), and that practice keeps reinforcing what my own life has already taught me. A diverse and equitable experience is not complete without inclusive and accessible considerations. I’m grateful for the learning environment my ETB colleagues continue to build.

I’m writing this from my remote office with a heating pad nestled against my back. My hope is that it moves you, wherever you’re reading from, to look for opportunities around you to build access and inclusion into your own work and personal lives. Reach out to us at ETB. Share your own stories and ideas around accessibility.

Together, we can keep building a community where every member is fully seen and fully affirmed.

Happy Disability Pride Month, y’all.