The Disability Collective: Disability - Informed Knowledge Sharing, Advocacy and Capaticy Building

On October 16, 2025, the Disability Alliance held its final event as a university organization. 

I formed the Disability Alliance in 2018 to address my own needs for disability community. I struggle with acknowledging the impact disability -- low vision and blindness -- has on my life and, at that time, I needed other models to follow, other experiences against which to compare my own.  Over time the Disability Alliance created community across faculty, staff and students and offered a unique space to gather and share our disability-informed knowledge across generations, class-based differences, and professional affiliations.  Here I found mentors in blind and disabled students and learned from them disability pride, and understanding. 

The Disability Alliance was my first experience building disability community.  It was a support system that helped me to be honest with myself, with my colleagues and with the students across the university.  In October, university leadership explained that a recent letter from the Department of Justice detailed new restrictions for organizations receiving federal funds prohibiting the support of special interests.  We were no longer able to use university resources -- space, virtual platforms, time-- to gather and organize (read more about the wide-spread impact of the Federal guidance here: Roo News and the dissolution of UMKC's diversity groups.  

Disability requires support. It requires understanding and deserves access.  

With this in mind, we are transitioning to non-profit status to continue our work!

Today we are The Disability Collective and we work to improve the quality of life of people within the disability community.  We continue to build awareness and understanding around disability by gathering and translating the experiences produced by disability into stories, policies, procedures, data and knowledge that become tools to improve access for everyone.  As we move forward, we will continue to share and amplify our experiences with disability to build community, and celebrate our bodies and minds together.