1/7/26 - Marriage, hotels, and the burden of justifying ourselves

Good afternoon ...

How is the first full week of the new year going? Here in Northeastern New York it's been snowing again. Fortunately, I like staying indoors most of the time. And I am lucky to be able to stay put when I need to. So I don't feel quite as restricted as I actually am. But I continue to be fascinated and frustrated by the distinctive barriers disabled people in winter climates face when confronted with snow, ice, and freezing temperatures that last for weeks. How do other disabled people in cold climates around handle it? And what unique and different problems do disabled people in extremely hot climates face? Send your comments to my email: apulrang@icloud.com and I'll share them at the end of the month.

Also, if you haven't done it already, please take a few minutes to complete the 2026 Disability Thinking Weekday poll, about the future of this newsletter. Click the button below to get to the poll:

A Federal Judge Nominee Said Disabled People Shouldn’t Be Wed. In Fact, Many Can’t.

Julia Métraux, Mother Jones - December 17, 2025

"It is also important to recognize that policies do exist that prohibit some disabled people from getting married, so Olson’s views are not so out on the periphery. Disabled people don’t have true marriage equality ... If a disabled person does get married, they risk losing federal benefits such as Supplemental Security Income or Disabled Adult Child, which provide funds they need to live independently with their disability, and at rates that are arguably not very livable."

This version of "marriage equality" is one of the oldest, most "evergreen" disability policy issues in the US. It's an unusually simple and obvious injustice, but coupled with a somewhat strange lack of progress over the years. In a more normal political environment, these marriage "disincentives" should be easy to fix in a bipartisan way. Liberals and progressives should find it easy to support a measure to expand basic human equality. And at least some conservatives should feel comfortable voting for what would be a widely popular way to encourage the formation of more traditional families. And yet, this hasn't happened yet, even in times over the last few decades when most of the political winds would have been behind measures like this. Now it's harder than ever to imagine the necessary cooperation in Congress, or state legislatures. Or is it? Maybe a polarized moment like now is a good time to try again for a bit of sensible bipartisanship.

35 years after ADA, people with disabilities still find hotels unaccommodating

Joseph Shapiro, National Public Radio - December 24, 2025

"People who responded to the NPR survey say that since passage of the ADA they're able to travel more — and want to use hotels more. Almost all said they avoid home-sharing sites and alternative lodging–such as Airbnb–that are exempt from most federal accessibility laws ... But people who use wheelchairs noted their frequent frustration when they can't easily use a hotel. One of the most common complaints in the NPR survey was that people reserve an accessible room online, or call the hotel directly, but arrive to find no reservation or the room was given away."

This is a terrific article that includes not only lots of personal, stories of accessibility failures in hotels, but also some pretty specific and plausible reasons why it still happens, and a number of feasible steps for improvement. The best thing about this piece is its specificity. It's not just general complaining about vaguely disappointing visits. The barriers and failures described are here precise and immediately understandable. This would be a great addition to any list of introductory articles on the Americans with Disabilities Act and accessibility in general.

What They Can’t Quantify

Grace Dow, Grace Dow Writes - January 5, 2026

"Those tests didn’t fully reflect my intelligence. They couldn’t capture how I solve problems, how I adjust, or how I think deeply about the world. They couldn’t measure my hopes, dreams, or the quiet determination that has pushed me through every challenge I’ve faced."

In this blog post, Grace Dow describes a feeling that's common among people with all kinds of disabilities. We are repeatedly forced to reduce our living, breathing, feeling lives to cold facts and figures. Accessibility in the physical environment helps us avoid this, because when it's there we don't have to ask anyone for it. But more individual accommodations and services are different. We have to ask. And the way all human services are set up in the United States, we have to qualify for them. We have to meet criteria. And that means needing to translate our hopes, fears, passions, goals, and rough details of our lives into measurable statistics for others to consume and process. Grace describes this beautifully, and hauntingly.

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