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Disability-rights activist Stephanie Thomas to give keynote at CU �Ǹ�Թ� disability symposium Sept. 28

When she was 17, Stephanie Thomas was involved in a tractor accident in New Hampshire that resulted in a spinal-cord injury and began using a wheelchair.��

She didn’t want to learn how to drive. But at the time, public transportation across the nation was not accessible to people with disabilities. “Paratransit” systems were sometimes available but offered limited services.

“You could only go so many times a week, for certain kinds of trips, such as to the doctor. They often weren’t compatible with living life; going to the grocery store was not a priority.” says��Thomas, a long-time disability-rights advocate who is now the archivist for the well-known organization��’s online museum.��

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Activist Stephanie Thomas will give the keynote speech at the �Ǹ�Թ�’s��2026 Access, Innovation & Disability Symposium on Sept. 28.��

She will give the keynote speech at the �Ǹ�Թ�’s��2026 Access, Innovation & Disability Symposium on Sept. 28.��

No access at Harvard

When Thomas arrived at Harvard University, there were only nine disabled students on campus, and there was no accessible public transit or other accommodations to assist them.��

“I had to learn how to drive, and I was sort of annoyed by that,” she says.��

She became interested in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibited disability discrimination in federal programs or activities and disability rights more broadly.��

It was the time of anti-war protests, civil rights, women’s rights.

“It wasn’t surprising, at least not to me, that disability rights just began to be thought of as a thing,” she says.��

She got involved on campus—“nothing revolutionary, just advising on accessibility”—and began to learn of egregious examples of discrimination: A deaf woman who spoke seven languages was not allowed to be a language major because a required language lab used audiotapes; a student who had a seizure when fire-alarm strobes went off was unable to evacuate and was left behind; and the university’s disabled student-services advisor’s office was located on an inaccessible second floor.

“Nobody could get to the guy,” Thomas says. “But nobody wanted to anyway; he was that much of a jerk!”

After graduation, she took a job at EPOCH (now known as VOLAR), an independent-living center in El Paso, Texas. Her boss sent her to a meeting of a coalition of local organizations working together on state-level issues in San Antonio.

“I met my husband Bob Kafka there, and we hit it off right away,” Thomas says.��

She also recalls seeing a brochure from ADAPT with the image of a bus sticking out of a toilet bowl and the slogan, “Don’t flush, organize!”—a takeoff on labor organizer and musician Joe Hill’s famous aphorism, “Don’t mourn, organize!”

Feeling patted on the head

When Jim Parker, a friend of the couple, attended a training sponsored by ADAPT, a national grass-roots community that organizes activists to engage in non-violent direct action to assure the civil and human rights of people with disabilities and started in Denver, he was energized by the experience. So, he, Thomas and Kafka decided to start ADAPT of Texas.

“They were forcing people to face up to the problem, and Bob and I got excited,” she says.

At a public hearing in Austin, she worked hard on her testimony, putting in many hours of research, only to “feel patted on the head, thank you, sweetheart, and don’t let the door hit you on the butt as you leave.”

But when Bob started testimony from the same notes as his wife, he stated that he was with ADAPT, and Thomas noted that the reaction was very different.

“That name was a cattle prod to people on the committee. They sat up straight and said, 'Whoa!' When I saw that being a member of ADAPT could do that, I wanted in!” she says. The couple started ADAPT of Texas and began organizing local actions such as working on access to transportation, kerb cuts and more. At the same time, they got involved with the Atlantis Community, an independent living center in Denver.

“Before there were kerb cuts, you just had to drop into the street and cross your fingers,” she says. “You had to learn what restaurants you could get into, where you could shop for clothes—it was all very hit or miss.”

Bathrooms were not accessible, there were no interpreters and people with disabilities were often relegated to nursing homes. “There was just no expectation that disabled people belonged in society,” Thomas says.��

Congress changed the landscape with the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability and protects those with disabilities in employment, public services and public access.��

But the current presidential administration is undertaking sweeping changes that will undermine much of the progress of the last three and a half decades, Thomas says.��

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Stephanie Thomas (third from right) at a groundbreaking event with Accessible Housing Austin. (Photo: Accessible Housing Austin).

Special education is being moved from the U.S. Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services. “That’s horrible,” she says. “That department has nothing to do with education.��

Meanwhile, scheduled deep cuts to Medicare, critical to millions of people with disabilities’ lives, won’t kick in until after the mid-term congressional elections in November, a ploy to keep voters from taking that into consideration in casting their votes, she says.��

And the Department of Justice has issued an advisory arguing that neither the U.S. Supreme Court's 1999 decision in��Olmstead v. L.C., which held that people with mental disabilities have a right to live in the community rather than institutions, nor Section 504 requires states to provide services to people with disabilities “in the most integrated setting appropriate.”����Although not binding, the advisory is expected to guide federal agencies under the current administration.

“Hundreds and hundreds of people have been working for the last four decades to get people the right to live in the community,” Thomas says. “Nobody is forced to live in community; you can still live in a nursing home if you want. But this is taking that right away from everyone else.

“People will become second-class citizens if they need assistance to get their pants on or go to the bathroom. It seems like we should be past that by now.”

Get involved

Thomas says the first step to fighting the trend against disability rights is to get involved.

“People need to vote, to speak up,” she says. “This is not the time to put your head in the sand.”

She’s concerned that national and local protests about civil rights seldom mention disability rights. She partly blames the easy “clicktivism” of social media for the shift.

“It’s a lot easier to write a post or send an email and call it done—and that doesn’t get in the face of the people who actually have power, which is what you have to do,” she told the magazine�� in July.��

And she fears that the ever-expanding list of disability conditions is having an effect on public awareness and concern.

“Once everybody becomes disabled, you’re no longer a distinctive minority, and you start to water down your rights legally,” she told New Mobility.

Stephanie Thomas will give the virtual keynote speech for CU �Ǹ�Թ�’s��2026 Access, Innovation & Disability Symposium at 3 p.m. Monday, Sept. 28. Register for the speech��.��

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