Why Disabled People Are Always Expected to Adapt — Instead of the World Changing
Disabled people are often told, directly or indirectly, that adaptation is just part of life. Figure it out. Make it work. Find another way. Use a workaround. Be flexible. Try harder. Ask for less. Wait longer. Lower your expectations. Again and again, the message is the same: if something is inaccessible, inconvenient, exhausting, or unfair, the disabled person is expected to adjust. Not the building. Not the website. Not the employer. Not the school. Not the transit system. Not the event organizer. Not the friend group. The disabled person. This expectation is so common that many people barely notice it anymore. It is treated as normal. Practical, even. Just part of how life works. But it should not be normal. And it is not harmless. Because when disabled people are constantly expected to adapt to systems that were never designed with them in mind, what gets framed as resilience is often just forced survival inside an unfair world. The ...
