Last week, I went to Anaheim for the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, the biggest disability-and-tech conference of the year. I think this was the 22nd CSUN Conference that I’ve attended, which puts me in the “oh, I know you” category. Apparently, half of my subscribers were in attendance as well. (Thanks to both of you!)

This was the 40th CSUN, having grown from an on-campus event in Northridge to some hotels around LAX to San Diego and now a block south of Disneyland. This year’s crowd was large, loud, kind of thirsty, but above all, anxious. The consensus is that next year’s event will be smaller, mainly due to the massive amount of federal funding that keeps much of the ecosystem afloat.

If you do work related to disability in the United States, it’s hard not to be connected to the federal budget in some way. Vendors who touch government agencies or projects need to show their Section 508 compliance reports in order to close deals (though how well that works is a newsletter in itself). Disabled-led companies can unlock access to 5% of federal contracts earmarked for “economically disadvantaged small businesses.” (Naturally, the status of this program is in limbo.) University and nonprofit programs compete for grants and other funding from an array of federal departments: Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs, to name a few. Even state rehabilitation departments rely on funding from the Department of Education—which is functionally, if not legally, being wound down.

Back when I worked at the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), our number one funder wasn’t membership dues. It came from what is now the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR). (We also received funding from similar agencies in Canada, the UK and the EU.) My paychecks were cut by MIT, and my business cards said W3C, but my salary, not to mention a lot of the web accessibility policy we take for granted today, was paid for not by W3C member companies, but by public-sector grants and contracts.

Needless to say, thanks to *gestures* all of this, a lot of that kind of funding is up in the air, if it hasn’t been canceled already. I talked to one longtime colleague who told me their lab had received a multimillion-dollar grant in October, which was being clawed back after they had started hiring new employees to fulfill it. And that’s just one story of many. I don’t think a lot of people are even fully aware of what will happen to people doing brilliant work in the disability space because the number one funder of disability research, rehabilitation services, training programs, assistive technology and evaluation tools is not just taking itself out of the market, but trying to reclaim grant and contract dollars that had already been released.

When we are finally told that this DOGE thing was a huge success, and you’re getting a few hundred or thousand dollars in tax rebates, you should know that’s not your dividend for trimming the fat. They are cutting muscle and bone. If this isn’t hurting you individually, or your company, your school, your nonprofit, it’s hurting someone you know. And like I said last time, these cuts, like USAID, the Department of Ed and the Voice of America, don’t just amount to turning off the engine. In some cases, they’ve stripped the whole vehicle for parts: firing employees, canceling leases, selling off equipment. Every institution we care about, or whose programs we depended on, will need to be rebuilt from scratch. And that’s by design.

A libertarian take on this might go something like: well, if the market wanted accessible products, then why would the government need to spend so much to subsidize it? The answer is a basic tenet of inclusive design. Markets work great when you’re the target demographic. A large amount of disposable income and a set of needs and desires in a narrow band with millions of other people will assure you that companies of all shapes and sizes will make you something you like… as if moved by an invisible hand.

The problem is, a lot of people don’t fit that description, and that creates an imbalance. Where that imbalance lives, inequality is sure to follow. One class of people will benefit from a system that isn’t designed to benefit others. And at that point, the state has a decision to make. It’s clear that this administration’s answer is shut up and take what we give you, a message that’s been addressed not just to disabled and older Americans but also to women, LGBTQ+ folks, nonwhite folks, and not just non-citizens but people who look like them. There’s a reason these policies were put into place, and a reason why they survived administrations who’d really have preferred they didn’t exist. When businesses are focused solely on making the number go up, they don’t want to be told to do anything different, and that’s more or less what led us to where we are today.

Fortunately for us, there’s a rest of the world, and some fraction of it lives in prosperity and liberal/social democracy. And what I have to say to you, is that we are going to need you to keep the pressure on multinational companies to do the right thing. It’s become clear that civil right policies in the US will be applied unevenly, if at all, for the next few years. As I’ve mentioned in previous editions, a lot of companies will be thrilled not to have to pretend to do this work, and would happily market their inferior products around the world, with a smirk. Guess you’ve got no other choice!

For those of you outside the US who don’t support this administration’s actions, I think the best way to stick it to the US-based companies who are going along with *gestures* all of this, is to inform them that your country’s laws and policies haven’t changed, and will be strictly enforced. The European Accessibility Act, scheduled to come into effect in June, will be the most substantial update to global accessibility policy in over a decade. Its implementation will vary from member state to member state, but if enforcement is taken seriously, the end result will be to keep standards high globally, even among those US corporations who’d really rather not.

The global demand for accessible and inclusive products is no different than before. Only its center of gravity has changed.

And on that note…

I’m going on vacation tomorrow. When I come back, I’m planning a speaking tour. Maybe two: one for US practitioners looking for up-to-date information to bring to their organizations, and one for the rest of the world to get a solid grip on doing business with American vendors and customers. My aim is to start booking dates in Europe before the summer holidays. If you’d like me to visit your city, send me an email and I’ll do my best to schedule it.

Office hours will be off this week and next, but will return the first week of April.

Have a good week!