What Does Disability Pride Mean to You? Personal Reflections from the Disability Community
I like to start off this special blog with this question…
What is Disability Pride?
Yes, that question is directed at you. What is disability pride? Sure, there is a disability pride month during July (in case you don’t know). However, I’m not referring to the specific month. I’m asking how do you personally define it?
The trick is to remember that pride means something different to everyone. Some tie pride to community, some to agency, maybe legacy, or perhaps recognizing the many different identities that encompass who you are. Know that pride can be something that you can have conflicted feelings about. Pride can exist alongside anger or frustration. For example, you can feel proud of being part of the community but can hate how much it hurts to get up in the morning or struggle doing daily tasks due to your disability. It is ok to hold both joy and anger about your disability.
One person who influenced me during my exploration of disability is the late Alice Wong. She wrote in her book Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century:
“To me, disability is not a monolith, nor is it a clear-cut binary of disabled and nondisabled. Disability is mutable and ever evolving….Disability is pain, struggle, brilliance, abundance, and joy…. Being visible and claiming a disabled identity brings risks as much as it brings pride”
This is where this blog comes in. It would feel arrogant to me to define disability pride without including the people who have shaped me into the person I am today. Rather than define disability pride solely through my own lens, I wanted to hear different perspectives from the people who have shaped me. So, I asked them one question:
“What does disability pride mean to you?”
This blog is partly an homage to Alice Wong's Disability Visibility, a book that has influenced how many of us think about disability and whose voices get to shape those conversations.
But more importantly, this blog is a thank you
Thank you to the people who have supported me, encouraged me, challenged me, and enriched my life throughout my messy journey. Some of you have known me for years, while others are more recent additions to my life. Most of you have left a mark on my life in some way.
You have touched my life, and I want to give it back twice as much by creating a space to share your voices. At the same time, it gives me the opportunity to say something I probably don't say enough:
Thank you for supporting me when you didn't have to. Thank you for being part of my journey. I appreciate all of you more than my heart could communicate.
Holden Roberts
To me, it means recognizing and uniting to counter the fact that our society wants to cut corners wherever it can financially, and that leads to inaccessible spaces and non-individualized and underfunded services and programs. Each specific group of disabled individuals only do so much in a vacuum, but collectively fighting for it together as the largest minority group holds a lot more weight.
And so, disability pride is asserting that we are part of a broader community and we all stand to benefit from refusing to be swept under the rug OR letting our fellow disabled people have the same happen to them.
Bio:
Holden Roberts, aged 25, is a disability advocate and independent living specialist. He works to advance equality and democracy through his work and civil service. He's a person with autism who enjoys cycling, poll managing, gaming, and hanging out with his friends and girlfriend.
Emily Gasper
I recently started a new job in a new town. This past weekend, I popped into Scuppernong, a local bookstore, and the entry way display case featured Disability Pride Month selections. I was heartened to see both non-fiction and fiction books centering disability identity. New to me were Beasts of Burden — Animal and Disability Liberation and Out on a Limb: A Novel. As someone who utilized the 10 Principles of Disability Justice, developed by Sins Invalid, to frame and inform my dissertation, it was affirming to see disability liberation deeply considered and intertwined with another liberation movement. Similarly, disability identity representation in a spicy romance novel is both fun and hugely important for challenging assumptions that disabled people live small, stunted lives.
I also enjoyed brunch at a lovely cafe in my new town, Chez Genèse. This is a sunny, plant-filled, French-inspired restaurant that utilizes an integrated hiring model. This means both disabled and non-disabled people are on the team. While not the first time I’ve noted employment for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities highlighted by a business, Chez Genèse is an exemplar in terms of disability advocacy. For instance, Chez Genèse has a pinned post on Instagram that proactively addresses the value of person first and identity first language.
I'm grateful I've had academic and personal opportunities to examine disability identity. I'm proud of my research contributions. And I'm so pleased that disability is valued as a meaningful identity in my new community at any time, but especially during Disability Pride month. For me, disability pride is the sense of affirmation I feel seeing my new town highlight the breadth, depth, and value of disability identity in multiple local establishments. My identity and my professional contributions are part of a larger disability community striving to expand the understanding of disability as a lived experience, and for that, I am both grateful and proud.
Bio:
Emily Gaspar, Ph.D. is a lifelong learner and leader with roots in the desert Southwest, a vibrant career and family life on the east coast, along with a deep commitment to domestic and international exploration. Emily spent much of the first half of 2025 in Melbourne, Australia completing a Fulbright research project, which you can hear more about here.
Jessica Vaught
Disability pride is about celebrating who we are and embracing the idea that there are many right ways to think, grow, and learn. While traditional classrooms were historically designed around standard models, minds that see the world differently often bring creativity, pattern recognition, persistence, and fresh approaches to problem-solving. As a visual-spatial learner, navigating my own path taught me the deep value of cognitive diversity. Today, I am proud to use these strengths to bridge the education and business worlds, bringing a practical mindset to educational goals and helping build innovative pathways for students. My journey is one example of why cognitive diversity is a superpower worth celebrating and integrating into everything we do.
The education system has a wonderful opportunity to expand how we support experiential learners in later grades. Many students thrive through hands-on engagement. For instance, memorable lessons like learning forestry through tie-dye camouflage, studying fossils by dissecting cookies, and identifying plants through sketch art show the power of interactive learning. Watching caterpillars transform into butterflies or creating student-led constellation projects can build deep, lasting understanding. Extending this immersive, high-impact style of learning through twelfth grade—rather than scaling it back after elementary school—can help more students recognize and use their strengths.
To every student who has repeated a grade or struggled within a traditional framework: Your unique way of learning may reveal strengths that traditional measures cannot capture. When we look beyond traditional averages and honor diverse learning styles, we create more ways for every student to succeed.
About Jessica Vaught:
Vaught is a published children’s book author whose debut title, The Rainbow Pencil, encourages young readers to embrace their strengths and creativity. She is also the founder of Penzie Press, LLC, and an advocate for childhood mental health and neurodivergent learners. A visual-spatial learner herself, she draws on professional experience in recruitment, management, operations, and academic mentorship to champion inclusive, hands-on approaches to education. To learn more, visit TheRainbowPencil.com or connect with her on LinkedIn at: LinkedIn.com/in/jessicavaught.
Travers Scott
I was involved with queer arts and activism for decades before I had any kind of disability consciousness, so my feelings about pride are inevitably shaped by experiences with LGBTQIA+ events and organizations. However, sexual/gender minorities and the disabled have both been marked as sick and/or criminal at various times in various ways. So ‘pride’ with both, for me, is about refusing the active residual or historic sense of being shameful, sick, immoral, or offensive. I work on my own internalized homophobia, sexism, and ableism, but other work is public: making explicit efforts at visibility and resisting the urge to apologize.
In my classes, I make a point to talk about my husband and my impairments, health, and divergences. I’ve also stopped apologizing for not joining work-related social events (anxiety!) or sports games (stereotypical gay!). When someone asks why I don’t use the campus gym, I explain, flat-out: As a gay man, I’m vulnerable to false accusations of impropriety, and I don’t want to be in risky situations like a locker room with students. So, I would say Queer and Disability Pride for me right now means being unashamed, visible, and unapologetically able to say ‘no’ sometimes.
Bio:
D. Travers Scott’s new book is Convenient Discrimination: Crips, Queers, and Other Misfits https://bookshop.org/p/books/convenient-discrimination-crips-queers-and-other-misfits-d-travers-scott/0ae707753ee204ec?ean=9781666960198 He is Professor of Media and Communication at Emory & Henry University.
Caroline Plumb
Disability Pride means so much to me! I grew up believing that my disability was something to be ashamed of. I thought if I didn’t talk about it, my disability just didn’t exist. That somehow, just by mentioning it, I was speaking it into existence. As I got older, I realized that my disability is a part of what helped me become who I am today, and if I talked about it, maybe others would feel less alone.
One of the moments that fills me with pride is getting to watch Para Soccer at my university. I’m currently a Junior at Clemson, the only university in the United States with a collegiate Paralympic soccer program. These past two years, we have hosted a Paralympic soccer game in the spring, with a clinic prior to each match. It is the clinic beforehand that brings me the most pride. Seeing young kids with disabilities involved in sports healed something in me I didn’t realize was broken. I love gathering a group of friends to watch the matches, and I hope these kids and their parents know they’re destined for a future full of love, laughter, and meaningful friendships. When I think about Disability Pride, I think about showing the younger generation that your disability is something you should be proud of, not something you should hide.
Bio:
Caroline Plumb (She/Her) is a junior Performing Arts: Theatre major at Clemson University. She has mild Cerebral Palsy.
Clemson Para Soccer Instagram: cuparasoccer
My Personal Instagram: sweet_caroline18
Sara Secora
Disability Pride, to me, means recognizing that the way I move through the world may be different, but it has never made me less capable. I have been homebound for much of my life, and building a career in voice acting, casting, and directing meant finding my own path in an industry that was not always designed with someone like me in mind. What once felt like a limitation became part of how I learned to adapt, advocate, and create opportunities from where I am.
My disability has also shaped the way I work with others. It has made me deeply aware that talent and potential do not always look the way we expect them to, and that accessibility can be the difference between someone being excluded and someone thriving. Disability Pride means not hiding that part of myself or treating it as something I have to overcome to be successful. It means being proud of the life and career I have built with my disability as part of the story, not in spite of it.
Bio:
Sara Secora holds many titles: wife, proud pet mom, gamer, voice actor, and a LOUD disability advocate. Sara has worked for over 12 years in the industry as both a professional voice actor and disability advocate. If she wasn't busy enough already, she also works as a casting and voice director, with past projects including Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader, SMITE and SMITE 2, and Ready or Not. For more information about Sara, you can check out her website. Pictures of cats are included: https://www.sarasecora.com/
About Eden
Eden Alon is a disability coach and community facilitator who works with teens and young adults with disabilities to build confidence, communication skills, and independence in everyday life. With a background in communication, advocacy, and nonprofit work, Eden has supported hundreds of people through coaching, workshops, and peer-led programs.
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